Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  He limped past Nate, each painful step cutting his breath short. Then he twisted the handle and opened the door out onto the platform as the train came to a halt.

  “Take a word of advice from a man who knows,” he said, turning to Nate after he had stepped down off the train. He took his harmonica from his pocket and rolled it between finger and thumb like a cigar. “Don’t go givin’ up your life to take revenge. And don’t let it turn you into the very thing you hate most. Some trains just ain’t worth catchin.” Goodbye, Mister Wildenstern.”

  He put the harmonica to his lips and started to play a melancholy tune as he walked away. Nate raised his hand in farewell, and watched the tired, hurt cowboy limp off down the platform in the last red glow of the setting sun.

  XXI

  A LOAD OF BULLOLOGY

  CATHAL’S HANDS WERE COVERED IN LITTLE CUTS and scrapes. The strange metals and ceramics that formed the bulk of an engimal’s body could form some very sharp edges when cut or broken. Handling them could be hazardous. Needless to say, the children were not issued with gloves to protect their hands. Gerald claimed that gloves would merely make them clumsy, and result in more serious injuries.

  “Yeh still haven’t told me why yer usin’ children,” Cathal said, gazing down at the chains that bound his ankles together.

  His hands were free, but his feet were still shackled. He was standing in Gerald’s study in the mine complex. As he watched, Gerald was attempting to impose his will on Tatty’s pet, Siren, by playing to it with his macabre engimal violin. Somehow, the bird was resisting—or at least, it wasn’t doing what he was commanding it to do. Siren was trapped in a birdcage sitting on Gerald’s desk, next to a pile of papers. Cathal watched the exchange with interest. Tatiana must be apoplectic with rage at the theft of her pet—and she would know who was responsible. Cathal had sparred with her enough times to know that she had a violent temper. He could only imagine the language that came out of her when she discovered the theft.

  Every now and then, the little blue and silver bird would open its beak as if in pain, or shake its head, or become agitated. But Gerald was obviously hoping for something more. Cathal was beginning to understand the significance of the music. At first he had thought that Gerald was using specific notes—hidden in the music—to have an effect on the engimals he played to. But now he began to see that the music itself was creating some kind of connection. Gerald believed engimals had a mathematical language too complicated for humans to understand. Perhaps the music was a way of simplifying it.

  It would explain why Gerald and Red used a whistle to open the door of the mine if, as Pip claimed, the door was made out of the mouth of an engimal. Pip had said the whistle made no noise, but Cathal guessed the sound it made had a very high pitch, so that only certain animals or engimals could hear it. He had seen their like before and Gerald had experimented with them a couple of years ago, in his attempts to communicate with engimals back in Wildenstern Hall. This unorthodox key was why Cathal was here now, even though his work in the slaughterhouse had left him sick and exhausted and desperate for sleep. He needed to find one of those whistles. He needed to steal one if he could.

  “What did you say?” Gerald asked.

  The violin had stopped playing. Cathal blinked, roused from his musings.

  “Yeh still haven’t told me why you’re usin’ children to dissect the engimals,” he repeated. “It’s a barbaric enough practice without destroyin’ the innocence of the young into the bargain.”

  “Ah, my little flock of lambs. I think you’ll find that the children of the poor are robbed of their innocence much earlier in life than those raised in a more sheltered environment,” Gerald replied. “And I must have children for the work, because it requires small, nimble fingers and open minds. They must learn as they work, and quickly. The dismantling of each engimal offers different challenges, unique fixings and joints, undiscovered materials. An adult mind is closed by nature, and inflexible. I need minds that still have the capacity to adapt to new modes of thought.

  “There is the hope too that some of these youngsters—like you—might go on to develop a greater understanding of this new science. I give no priority to class or social rank in my vision of the future. Success should be measured on merit, rather than one’s family or property. It is the only rational course.”

  “Still, it’s convenient that these are penniless orphans—a fact that made their abduction a lot easier, I’m sure.” Cathal sniffed, letting his eyes wander around the room, searching the tops of the worktables, the plans chest and Gerald’s desk. “Why do yeh take their blood? They don’t have aurea sanitas, do they?”

  “Ah! Now that is the key to my entire process,” Gerald declared, placing the outlandish violin down on the desk so that he—could gesture with his hands—adopting the position of the lecturer once more. “You see, my early research suffered from two misconceptions:

  “Firstly; that intelligent particles were only found in the blood of a few powerful families. These families have perpetuated this mistaken belief for generations. In fact, I believe there are low concentrations of the particles present in the blood of just about every human being. Obviously, proving this beyond a doubt is a practical impossibility, but one can theorize. And I can at least prove the so-called aurea sanitas families are not nearly as exclusive as they think. Apart from the scientific significance of this, I would take great pleasure in kicking the pedestal out from under their inbred feet.

  “Secondly; I believed that intelligent particles could only survive in the medium of blood, and could only affect changes within that medium. In short, that these particles, like antibodies—or indeed, parasitic viruses or bacteria—could only take action through the body of their host. I believed that our microscopic allies could not exist independently of us—that they needed to act through us to have any effect on the outside world. But I was wrong. Very wrong.”

  Cathal lifted his head at that, distracted from his search.

  “What? Yer sayin’ that these things can move around outside our bodies?” He frowned. He was struggling to grasp what Gerald was telling him. “So … what … you … you can catch them. Like a disease?”

  “I’m saying much more than that.” Gerald smiled. He walked across the chamber and sat down at the church organ that had been installed in the far wall. He started softly pressing keys, randomly at first but then building slowly into a quiet tune. “I’m saying that it may be possible to perform the kinds of feats that would appear as magic to the untrained eye. I’m not just talking about curing disease or healing supposedly fatal wounds. Even when my skills were relatively undeveloped, I succeeded in bringing the long-dead back to life.

  “Think of the legends passed down to us from ancient times. There are the hints of the possibilities in those old stories. Blades that can cut through any material; a medium that can show you events on the far side of the world; vehicles that can carry a person faster than the speed of sound; even the ability to change the shape of an object at will.”

  The music rose swaying from the instrument, Gerald’s fingers still coaxing the notes out softly. Cathal noticed that Siren was hopping restlessly on its perch in the cage. It seemed to be growing increasingly nervous. Could it sense something that Cathal could not?

  “Imagine being able to reshape your body to perform different tasks,” Gerald went on. “Do you remember the legends you heard as a child—of famous warriors who transformed into demonic giants in battle? Gods who could harness the very elements; taking control of the air, the sea, the earth. Imagine being able to fly, Cathal. It might all be possible, if we can only learn to communicate our instructions clearly and specifically enough for the particles to understand.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cathal said. “It’s a load of bullology if y’ask me. I know what you’re capable of, Gerald. There’s no denyin’ yev got power—a type I’m only beginning
to understand. And I’ve seen what intelligent particles can do. I’ve had it done to me. But what yer talkin’ about … that’s … that’s just the stuff of fairy tales.”

  Siren was flapping frantically in its cage now, desperate to escape. It was screeching so loudly it was hurting Cathal’s ears.

  “Music and blood!” Gerald shouted above the noise. “These are the keys. Siren here has an extraordinary range of sounds. Its size and mobility would make it an excellent instrument for commanding the particles, but I would still have to find a way to ‘play’ the creature as I would an organ or a violin. That is a problem, particularly as the little beast is almost as willful as its former owner. It is not enough that I talk to it. I must talk through it to the intelligent particles. For the kind of control I need to exercise over them, I need a complex instrument to convey my intentions. This little songbird would be an excellent instrument. But the engimals with the greatest range of sounds, Cathal, are the leviathans. Like whales, they are capable of sophisticated language, and can transmit signals through miles of ocean waters. If I could control a leviathan, I could command the very fabric of the Earth itself

  Cathal desperately wanted to think Gerald’s ideas the products of insanity, but he had seen enough to know that at least some of what Gerald claimed was true. He realized that it wasn’t just his own life at stake here, and the lives of the children kept captive in this dungeon factory. If Gerald succeeded, he would be the most powerful man on Earth. Possibly the most powerful that had ever existed. And if he was willing to work children to death in this engimal slaughterhouse, what would he do if he could unleash this kind of power upon the world? He had to be stopped, no matter what it took. And to do that, Cathal had to escape as soon as possible.

  The organ music was rising in volume and tempo. Siren squawked in panic, thrashing around its cage. Cathal covered his ears. There was something about the music that seemed to be changing the air pressure in the room.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped.

  Then a breeze started to blow through the room. Papers got caught up in it, pens and other instruments rolled across the worktables, the framed pictures flapped against the walls. It wasn’t a draught from any of the doors. They were all closed. The wind centered on the birdcage sitting on the desk. The cage began to wobble and turn on the desktop, rocking and spinning like a coin dropped on the floor. Then it was whipped off the desktop and thrown across the room. Siren screeched in pain and fear. Gerald stopped playing, and the wind died almost instantly. Cathal stared in amazement and then, forced to take short steps by his shackles, he hobbled over to the cage and picked it up, making soothing sounds to Siren. The engimal was trembling and cawing quietly.

  As Cathal carried the cage back to the desk, stepping over the papers and other objects scattered all over the stone floor, he spotted something lying on the ground under the desk. It was a bone-white whistle, about three inches long. Glancing towards the end of the room, he saw he was still in Gerald’s eyeline. There was no way of reaching down for the whistle without Gerald noticing. He leaned back against the desk and waited for his chance.

  “It will appear as magic to those who don’t understand it,” Gerald said in a low voice, laying his hands flat on the keys and staring down at them. “And most of the people in the world fall into that category. The intelligent particles are present all around us—in the air, like the spores of the dry rot fungus, or carried through moisture, like the spores of the dreaded potato blight. And like a spore, they can inhabit certain kinds of matter and can use their host to reproduce.

  “But they are formed of tiny combinations of atoms, smaller even than a microscopic fungal spore. They are almost undetectable. Each one somehow has the capacity to communicate with those around it—think of that, Cathal! One can only marvel at the science that could have created such things! And they can act as a swarm by exercising some kind of force on one another. The only way I have been able to gather them into concentrations thick enough to view under a microscope is in the medium of human blood—they seem drawn to inhabiting it. A behavior instilled in them by their creators, no doubt. But this difficulty in studying them directly is most frustrating—I am hampered by the limits of today’s science.

  “The engimals are laced with these particles. The creatures were made using the particles both as tools and building materials. Destroying the engimals, crushing their body parts in the grinders, fills the air of this cave with the particles. But mankind does not possess any material capable of capturing them easily. As swarms, they are like the most pervasive gas, but they are little larger than the molecules that form most materials. Each one is so small they can pass through any fabric—even leather or some types of rubber. I have had difficulty containing them even in glass or steel. But in this cave, the children breathe them in, and ingest them into their bodies. The particles can also enter their blood through the many little wounds the children pick up in their work. They invade our bodies like a disease, but a disease that strengthens us, rather than attacking our systems. And I, in turn, mine the children’s blood for the particles, just as the miners of this mountain would have sought out rich veins of silver.

  “I have been experimenting with the materials with which the engimals themselves are made, and have had some success in containing the particles. Once I learned to gather and store them, I began to exercise the kind of control over them that I have over my own body. But what I want is to be able to control them wherever they occur—”

  Red burst into the room, his revolver raised. Cathal stood up straight, stepping away from the desk.

  “What was all dat noise?” he barked. “Is this fella givin’ yeh any trouble, Mister Gordon?”

  “It was nothing, Red,” Gerald replied, lifting his hand as if trying to fend off a bad smell. “Cathal and I were having a civilized conversation and I merely carried out an overly dramatic demonstration to prove a point. There is nothing to concern you here.”

  Red did not look satisfied; he came closer to Cathal, eyeing him with a hostile expression. The scar over his nose ran like a slash of white skin across his flushed face. Cathal wondered how much the hard man knew about what was going on in this mine. If he was being kept in the dark, these strange goings-on were likely to make him suspicious, even fearful. And it was easy to get a rise out of a fearful man.

  “That’s right, Red,” Cathal chuckled. “It’s best to keep yer nose out of the business of gentlemen. A professional toad-eater like you doesn’t want to get marked as bein’ an eavesdropper. Might threaten yer prospects for employment. And yeh should know that a servant isn’t supposed to show their face—especially a face like yours—unless they’re summoned.”

  “You shut yer mout’, or I’ll shut it for yeh, yeh little scut!” Red hissed, casting a wary eye in Gerald’s direction.

  Gerald watched the exchange, but made no move to interrupt.

  “Don’t let the shackles fool yeh,” Cathal replied, tilting his head towards Gerald. “I’m of more use to him than you are. Thugs like you are ten a penny. Yer easily replaced. Makin’ a move against me would be like cuttin’ off your nose to spite yer face … but then it looks like you tried that already.”

  Red’s fist caught him hard across the jaw, knocking Cathal backwards. He fell against the desk, the edge of it hitting him in the upper back. He grunted, sliding down it as Red went to swing a kick at his face, but Gerald stopped the attack with a word:

  “Enough.”

  Red stepped back, obeying like a well-trained dog. He slid the pistol into the holster on his belt and let his hands dangle down by his side. But there was still an animal ferocity in his face. Cathal read the message in his expression: this wasn’t over—not by a long way.

  Cathal rolled his head on his neck and worked his jaw, wincing at the pain in the hinge on the right side. Red had a lean, wiry build, but he could punch like a heavyweight. Placing his hand
s down on the floor behind him, Cathal waited a moment, as if recovering his senses. His left hand closed around the whistle under the desk and, bracing his elbows on the desktop behind him, he slipped it into his pocket as he got shakily to his feet.

  “Someday, Cathal,” Gerald remarked, “you’re going to have to stop sticking your fingers up at the world and start playing your part. I would not expect you to be like that flock of sheep out in the cave, but bloody-minded defiance will only get you so far in life. Reason will always win out over emotion and instinct.”

  “Up the yard with yeh, Gerald,” Cathal retorted.

  Gerald gestured to Red to take the captive out, but Cathal hung back.

  “I have one question,” he said. “Why are you tellin’ me all this stuff? I would’ve thought you’d want to keep it all secret.”

  “And who are you going to tell?” Gerald smirked, waving his hand around at the solid stone that surrounded them. “Besides, I haven’t told you the half of it … and I shan’t. But it’s ego, I suppose. I want someone to appreciate what I’ve achieved. What’s more, I miss our conversations, and the stimulation they provided. As for what you might do with that knowledge, well … there’s only so much …”

  He did not finish the sentence, as if thinking the better of it. But Cathal took his meaning. There was only so much someone of his inferior intelligence could do with this knowledge. While Gerald treated him as a student, the man’s belief in his own genius had inflated enormously. He almost regarded Cathal more as a pet. And a master did not fear the plans his dog might lay. Cathal fingered the whistle in his pocket.

  “You know, bein’ more intelligent than everyone else doesn’t mean you’re always right,” he grunted.

  “No,” Gerald replied. “But it does make you right more often. That’s good enough for me. Try to get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow”

  Will you? Cathal wondered.