by Lavie Tidhar
She went low then, and he went high, and she grasped his leg and yanked him down from the air, bringing him crashing down hard on the floor, and then she put her gun arm to his head and fired, at point-blank range, and heard him scream.
When he pulled away his fist lifted her off the ground and, too quickly, he turned. His skull was ruined, and his mouth opened in a scream of rage, but no sound came. Her back hit the wall. She lifted her gun arm again, trying to aim but, too quickly, he whipped around. No! she tried to shout, but he had opened the door and was gone through it – too quickly!
She heard the lock close from the outside.
It took her a moment to realise she was trapped in the Phantom's cellar.
She rose slowly to her feet. She hurt in numerous places. She felt ravenously hungry, too, as if her body had been expending energy beyond its natural ability, and now needed to compensate for it. And she knew she was no longer the woman who had first met the Phantom, there in the undermorgue of Paris, in what seemed a lifetime away.
For it had been a lifetime. And she was a different person now, a different thing.
She went to the kiln. And she pushed it.
She had never had such strength, but her conviction lent her power, and her desperation drove her. She knew this place could not, should not exist. She kicked the metal with her artificial leg and again she pushed, hearing the strong foundations groan, the heat burning her–
But she would not burn.
With the last of her energy she jumped, flying at the wall, leaping from it, back at the kiln. The impact jarred her body, and she fell numb to the floor–
But the great, obese, obscene object had succumbed. Slowly, it toppled over.
And the fire burst out.
Blinking tears, she pushed herself up, feeling as if she were drowning. Her gun arm shook as she pointed it at the door. She fired, through the flames, watching wood fly. When she kicked the door it fell back. Cold air rushed inside, touching her cheeks like a mother's hand. She ran, and the fire pursued her.
SEVENTY
Dismissed
"You're a fool."
Winnetou's voice, like cold water. She had come crawling out of the burning building, soot and ash over her and the taste of fire in her mouth. Arms dragged her away. She sat, propped against a wall, and watched the building burn.
Confused girls in a gaggle outside, throwing her strange looks. Wrapped in firemen's coats, feet naked in the cold. But the fire warmed the night.
She knew he was still nearby. But not pursuing, any more. He was her prey now, and their roles had changed. She felt his fear, and it warmed her.
Winnetou, above her, his face angry. His men ringing the building – too late. The killer had gone but some of his intended victims, at least, had survived.
"I did what I had to do," she said. Speaking quietly, her throat raw from the smoke.
"I told you not to get involved."
"I told you, I was already involved."
He turned away from her. She let him go.
Run, she thought, aiming her words at a misshapen figure running through mists. Run, Tômas. I'll catch up with you soon enough. She felt tired, so tired… and yet, strangely, at peace.
She knew it wasn't over. But she had done what she had to do. Master Long had been right. Sometimes it's the best we can do, she thought.
And sometimes even that's not enough.
She saw a familiar black carriage come to a stop. She expected the two automatons to come out of it. Instead, it was the Monsignor himself – itself – who came to meet her.
The ancient automaton glided across the hard ground. His robes hid his means of movement. She did not think he had legs… The carved face looked at her expressionlessly. "You have disobeyed my orders."
There didn't seem anything to say to that. She didn't. He raised his hand. A figure stepped out of the carriage. Two others followed behind it, like obedient shadows.
"Dellamorte…"
The countess, at least, was courteous. "Milady de Winter," she said, nodding. "I trust your journey was not unpleasant."
"I am much obliged," Cleo said, "for all your courtesy."
"It was the least I could do."
They stared at each other. A small smile played at the corners of the countess's mouth, was answered. "I trust Captain Karnstein is well?"
The countess inched her head. "He is recovering," she said.
"I'm glad."
Hovering without a need for an answer was the question: What are you doing here?
She already knew.
She recognised the two figures behind the countess. McGill, and the leopard woman, from Scab.
So they did not trust her to do her job.
"I am to be relieved of my duties," she said – not a question. The countess looked elsewhere. The Monsignor's face, of course, did not change expression. He said, "My colleagues in the Council think highly of you. So do I. However…"
"You planned it all along," she said. "You had to, for them to have arrived so quickly–"
"You were to be detained on Scab," he said – the same scratchy, even voice, the recording of a long-dead human. "Countess Dellamorte, alas, let her emotions get the better of her–"
"Karnstein," Cleo said.
"We are not so different, you and I," the countess said. And was that apology in her voice?
"You are unstable," the Monsignor said. "You would have been more useful being studied. I cannot allow you to run free and interfere. There has been a communiqué… The auction is set to commence. I shall bid – for the Council. And whether I win, or lose… we must have it. The countess's team shall supervise the retrieval of the item. You are not to interfere." He coughed, the sound as artificial as the rest of him. "Am I clear?"
"You were never clear," she said, or thought she had. She felt so tired… Let someone else take the burden for once, and let her sleep, and be at peace… she had done what she could. One did not expect thanks in the service of the Council.
"Take her back to her lodgings," the Monsignor said.
McGill and the leopard woman approached her. Wearily, she pulled herself up to her feet. "I'll walk," she said.
"I don't think–" the countess began, then subsided. Milady inched her head, and the countess nodded. "Very well," she said.
The fire still burned. It lit up the night, sending showers of sparks and embers floating on the wind. Sunlight was gradually touching the sky on the horizon, drawing a panorama of colour above the black outline of the city, and it merged with the fire so that it seemed the sky itself was coming alight. She began to walk away then, following the still dark, empty streets. Dawn was approaching, but to Cleo it felt far away.
INTERLUDE: Moving Pictures
In the white city, Kai sat in the darkened space of the Zoopraxographical Hall and watched the silent screen.
Moving pictures. They were like the shadows that flitted behind his eyes, those glimpses of another world. Cigar smoke curled up into the air and was illuminated by the beams of light from Edison's new machine. A hush in the packed hall, and he knew that, amidst all those people, he was truly alone.
They were looking for him, everywhere, across the black city and the white. He had seen their silent watchers, in the Midway Plaisance, in the Electricity Building and the Manufacturers and Fine Arts building and around the lake. They looked for him inside the pyramid…
But of all the buildings, of all the tall, impossible buildings of the White City, it was the Electricity Building that frightened him most.
Tesla's building.
The Fair was lit up with electricity, Tesla's alternating current, and the statue was in love.
The statue needed the electricity.
Craved it, with a hunger that frightened Kai even more than this entire alien city did, with its strange people and displays, its masses of humanity, its bustle and noise and commerce. He was frightened, and he could tell no one that he was. Only here, in the darkened room,
did he feel some safety. Safety from the voices, safety from the watchers. Safety from himself.
Images flickered on the screen and the audience was spellbound. There was no musical accompaniment, nothing but the changing images on the screen. Kai hugged himself, drawing himself into a ball in his chair. I could hide, he thought. I could hide here forever, and pretend none of this was happening. Pretend I was someone else, somewhere else.
Once, he had wanted to be a wuxia hero. In the books the heroes were never scared. They fought, bravely, for a just cause. They faced the dark. But Kai was not afraid of the dark. It was the light outside that scared him, and only in the darkness did he find some comfort, some escape.
He thought of the woman he had seen in his dreams. A strange woman, darker than the mountain people who lived high above Luang Prabang, a woman who was fashioned into a weapon, much as he himself had been. He wished he could go to her. He wished she could help. But there was no one who could. The voices were in a cacophony of excitement, whispering that the time had come. He thought of their plan and shivered. He stared at the screen and rocked in his seat, lost just as he had been all those years before, when he left his father's shop and ran into the forest, clutching a strange statue in his hands. He wished he'd thrown it away, then. When he had the chance.
He rocked in his seat and watched the pictures flickering across the screen, and waited, alone in the dark. It would not be long now, the voices promised.
PART VII
The End of the World's Fair
SEVENTY-ONE
The Magician of the Fair
She woke up clutching her head, the jade flaring in her eye socket, the pain coursing through her like a green turbulent river. The voices whispered, Ninety-eight percent complete, ninetyeight point one percent complete… they whispered Quantum sequence identified, locked and origin point identified and Rerouting power to accelerant device in progress, making her want to scream.
She rose up, washed, dressed, loaded her gun arm, ate a cold breakfast in her room and thought.
And realised she was still being played.
The Council was like the vast mind of a chess player, and its pieces were alive. It did not like its pawns to know the grand design, used them unsparingly, sending them off with as little information as possible – or the wrong information. Watching them follow a trail, whatever the cost.
And she had not been taken off the board, she realised. Dismissed, the Monsignor had said. But chess pieces were never dismissed. They were eliminated, or used. And she had been sent back unharmed…
The old machine, the entire power of the Council at his disposal, still needed her. The countess would be watching the auction, yes, and her strange, misshapen creatures with her – but the Council had a suspicious mind.
Did they expect a ruse?
The main game would take place without her. That was certain. But what if the main game turned out to be a lie?
She watched herself in the mirror, her hair like a dark globe around her head. She touched her fingers to the eyepatch. The pain was with her always now. Would it ever stop? Soon, she thought, thinking of the voices, counting the rising percentages… one way or the other it would end.
She looked at herself, and finally smiled. A young, unfamiliar woman looked back at her from the mirror. They nodded to each other.
Go, her reflection seemed to say. You and I must follow the path we've chosen long ago. Wherever it leads.
She turned away from the mirror, knowing what she had to do.
She took a tram to the white city. It was late in the afternoon. She came to the gates of the World's Vespuccian Exposition. The white city could be seen from a distance, the outline marred only by the lizards' pyramid, that enormous structure dominating the centre of the Fair. The lizards' alien green metal shone wetly in the sunlight. Look at our power, it seemed to say. Though we let you play at being builders, at being free, we are still the true power in this world, now. The Everlasting Empire of Les Lézards is named thus for a reason. Come and see our glory.
She paid the entrance fee and walked in.
The white city. Already the sun was setting, and the electric lights were coming alive, illuminating the white buildings. Massive searchlights mounted on the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts building swept the grounds. There was light everywhere, white electric light, and the buildings, huge, cavernous, seemed to grow out of the very ground, rising high into the air. She walked along the Midway, heading for the lagoon that lay nestled between the buildings. There were so many people…
And watchers.
The sensation stole on her slowly, but would not go away.
Watchers in the crowd, waiting, calculating… she passed an Egyptian village and a troupe of Russian Cossacks, an orchestra, a miniature zoo, getting lost in the mayhem, not heading anywhere in particular… She paused when she came to a giant cannon. "Krupp's Monster," she heard someone say. She turned and saw a woman speaking, apparently dictating into an Edison recorder. "A fearful, hideous thing, breathing blood and carnage, a triumph of barbarism crouching amid the world's triumphs of civilisation." The woman glared at the giant cannon, then said, "End quote," crisply. But Cleo rather liked the weapon.
Or was it a weapon? Or was it as the countess had told her, that Krupp, and others, were looking to – what? Send people into space?
Well, it was not her concern. She kept going, pausing now and then, checking her reflection, turning abruptly – but there were too many people. She could not tell who, if anyone, was following her.
There were fire-eaters and belly dancers, displays of cheese making, a display of scalping, phrenologists with human skulls marked by areas, Mongolian archers, food-sellers, photographers carrying their bulky equipment this way and that, machines that spun sugar, booksellers extolling the virtues of Scientific Romances and imported Penny Dreadfuls, Bedouins riding camels, chess-players hovering over a board the size of a town square, where the pieces were all automatons…
She passed a crowd of surging people and saw the flash of lightning beyond them. Curious, she pushed forward. A man was standing on a stage, and – impossibly – lightning danced around him, but he was not harmed. The man raised his arms and smiled at the audience. There were gasps, and cheers. The lightning flashed on and on. Nikola Tesla himself, she realised. She watched, repulsed and fascinated, then turned away.
The city rose all around her. She passed jugglers and swordswallowers and a fortune-telling machine. The wheel was always in sight, turning slowly, turning, cars loaded with people hanging from its frame. Ferris's wheel. She passed a short, straight, smooth path that led up to a ramp, and stared: a machine with delicate wings rushed along the road to the ramp and, instead of falling, launched from it and soared slowly into the air, a steam engine belching steam in the tail. A man was sitting in the small cabin between the giant wings. The crowd gasped and cheered – it was a sound she was getting used to.
The magic of the Fair…
The sign said, Du Temple Monoplane and, below: Félix du Temple, Proprietor. She stared at the monoplane. She'd used one once before, during the Robur Affair…
More flying machines, most on the ground. She checked out the signs. Stringfellow's Aerial Steam Carriage. Wnek's Gliders. L'Albatros artificiel. One sign towering above the rest: The Montgolfier Brothers: Dominating the Skies Since 1783.
But it looked as though they'd found some competition.
She turned away again. Somehow she had found her way to the lagoon. An island rose in the middle of the water, overgrown with wild growth of flowers and trees. The roof of a temple peeked out from behind the vegetation. Electric boats hummed their way across the surface of the lagoon. She watched the water and saw stars beginning to blink into existence, faint at first but growing larger and more luminous. When she raised her head she realised she had been wrong, and she smiled. They were lanterns, hundreds of floating lanterns rising slowly into the air.
At that moment the place felt bew
itched. The white city was reflected in the calm water, bathed in unearthly light. And a voice beside her said, quietly and unexpectedly, "Night is the magician of the Fair."
She turned, slowly, and was not surprised to find Master Long standing beside her. In his hands he held a lantern – a thing of bamboo and thin paper. As she watched he lit the small candle underneath the canopy of paper and, after a moment, gently let the lantern go. It hovered in the air between them, as if uncertain. Then, gracefully, it began to rise above their heads, and soon joined the others, becoming another bright star in the skies above the Fair.