by Lavie Tidhar
They were frozen, or near frozen – the observer had kicked into a higher mode for a short duration, had initiated, in fact, the beginning of the process that would end his time here, on this earth – and he took from them with ease, sinking the data-spike into their brains, releasing the data left in there while permanently terminating the living tissue.
In slow motion, the bodies crumpled to the ground, one by one, as the observer moved amongst them like a gardener, unhurriedly pruning back leaves.
At last it was done; only the other remained, this short compact human who had come down from the sky. He recognised him, crisscrossing references from the voices in his head, saw him young, saw him trained, saw him meeting Mycroft for the first time, in a Soho street with the rain falling down, saw him falling for Alice, by the side of a Venice canal, saw him operational, then, a brilliant young shadow executive: Aden, Zanzibar, Vientiane, Moscow, a spell in Tenochtitlan, cultural attaché at the embassy running interference inside the Aztec capital – back in London after an operation went bad in Tunis, then the fruitful collaboration with the Byron automaton, handling internal security, foreign networks, becoming Mycroft's right-hand man and Alice's lover–
The man was an enigma, the observer thought with curiosity. He could read his life like a dossier, perfectly laid out, but what he thought, wondered, wanted – this the observer had no access to, and he was not surprised to find out that he wanted it.
He was, after all, an observer.
He turned at last to the vehicle, which was powered by a primitive internal combustion engine – advanced for this society of coal and steam – using what the humans called diesel, after a German scientist who seemed embroiled in the machinations of the man they called Babbage, and who the observer would have liked to have met.
The observer reached for the front door of the vehicle and yanked it open and slid inside. There was one solitary man sitting in the driver seat, a panel of instruments before him, still frozen in slow-time, his hand reaching out in tiny increments towards the controls. Gently, almost with affection, the observer added him to his collection and, a moment later, laid its corpse down gently against the seat. A new voice in his head, but he shut it down – a flavourful one, this one, a conman and a writer, Karl May by name, and Krupp's agent – he added a new strand to the story the observer was to carry back, and for that the observer was grateful.
The device had been in May's lap. Now the observer retrieved it. He initiated a communication channel with the ancient thing, establishing a protocol and negotiating a handshake despite the device's initial suspicions. He found himself fascinated by what he found, and it was with some regret that he at last shut it down.
When he stepped out of the vehicle, the device safely locked, the ancient tripod machines had wavered against the skyline and then, as though in relief, disappeared.
They did not belong here, they came from a place unexplored for untold millennia, perhaps aeons. The observer wondered which observer would get the chance to go there, when he returned and submitted himself – that is, his report.
He hoped it would be him…
There had been a name for that world. In human speech, it may sound a little like Croatoan.
It was done. The observer let slow-time go, and time sped up–
Smith stood very still, in a changed world. The creatures that, a moment earlier, had threatened him, were now on the ground, and they were dead. The skyline was different, the tripod machines were gone. The city still burned, but it would recover, it would lick its wounds. It always had, before.
Smith stood alone by the black vehicle, alone but for that otherworldly thing, that Erntemaschine.
He looked at the Harvester and it was like looking at a mirror, it was like looking at himself. He hesitated. The machine waited, patient, revealing nothing.
"Alice?" Smith said.
"Smith," she said, out of the Erntemaschine's mouth. There was a load of sadness and pain in her voice he found hard to bear. He thought of his agreement with the Bookman, the other's promises of raising Alice for him, of bringing her back from the dead, and he realised the futility of that offer; he knew then he could not bring the Harvester back with him, that Alice was lost to him.
The Erntemaschine waited, patient, but looking at Smith in a certain way that Smith recognised.
"I can't bring you back," Smith said, and that admission, of his own helplessness, hurt as it left his mouth, like jagged edges of broken glass cutting through his throat and tongue.
"Smith…"
The Harvester waited, knowing, patient.
Smith nodded, once.
There was only one way for them to be together again.
The observer was satisfied. He knelt by the corpse, gently prying the data-spike out of the dead man's head. Inside him a new voice joined the rest, intertwining with one of the other voices in particular. The observer stood up, then, recognising in that small, unremarkable corpse something akin to his own identity, a tool and a servant who yet took a great joy in fulfilling its tasks. Smith… even the name was appropriate, almost a title, like Observer… he silenced the voices. Almost. Almost…
He just had to wait for his other self to finish, at last, the job.
PART IX
Manifest Destiny
FORTY-FIVE
"Mr Houdini," the voice said. "Welcome to Transylvania."
The voice had an awful, scratched quality to it. Harry tried to open his eyes. They felt gummed together, and his mouth tasted of razorblades and old blood.
Alive. Somehow, he was still alive.
He opened his eyes.
Shapes slowly resolved in the semi-darkness of the room. The light was red, the air felt humid, almost moist. He found himself sweating. It was very hot, very humid, like a…
He sat up. Everything hurt. His hands on his head, his fingers through his hair – realising it was longer now, that he must have been in that crate, that coffin, for a long time, longer than he thought. He looked around him.
A large, dark crypt it seemed to Harry, illuminated by artificial red light, and quiet, too quiet. Around him, everywhere he looked, orchids grew, a huge variety of colours and shapes, like living things, waiting, watching… hungry. He suppressed a shudder; could not see another person there. So who had spoken?
"Who are you?" he said.
A strange sound, of bellows, of air going in and out, in and out. A beat, weak and yet amplified, filling up the cavern, like the sound of an old, human heart. Harry squinted into the darkness.
"Hello?" he said.
His voice sounded lonely and thin in that underground greenhouse. The sound of bellows, of air being breathed, as by a vast machine. The pounding of that fragile heart, and Harry's own heart responding, fear rising, palms damp, and he tried to calm himself, to look inwards, trying to think how he could escape, when–
A shape, a sliver of shadow materialising out of the darkness, moving gradually closer, growing in size–
And Harry had to suppress a scream, a thing out of nightmare coming towards him, features slowly resolving, and in the dim red light of the cavern he saw–
It had been a man, once. Now it sat there, welded into its chair, a thing neither human nor machine…
Pipes came out of its back, fed into its lungs, and large bellows moved like butterfly wings, fluttering, pumping air through that ancient, wizened body, keeping it alive…
Glass tubes in which red blood bubbled, the tubes in turn feeding into the old man's arms, his hands…
The face was like a skull, what skin there was hung loosely, yellow like gas flames. There was no hair but thick black wires came out of that skull and trailed upwards, connected once again to the cloud of machines that engulfed this being, this creature, this once-living thing.
It was ancient, it should have died long ago, it was a mummified human body kept alive by its machines, it was–
"Who…" Harry whispered, and his throat felt raw and clogged, and a
chemical taste, suffusing, so it seemed to him, the very air he breathed, lodged itself in his mouth, "What… Who are you?"
The mouth in that faceless skull barely moved, and yet the creature in the chair spoke, its voice amplified through unseen machines. Like an Edison recording, the words were slightly disjointed, scratchy, put together from separate recordings and meshed into a single voice. And now he saw the ancient fingers, bone-like, tapping on a keypad of some sort, like brass buttons there, within reach – producing the sounds he heard, he realised. The man was no longer capable of speaking in his own voice.
"I am Charles Babbage," the mechanical voice said.
Harry scrambled away from the creature. He felt as if the thing was after him, after his youth – that soon it would pounce on him, attach fang-like devices to his neck, empty him of blood, feast on him–
"Really, Mr Houdini," the voice said, and the eyes – the eyes! – they were terribly alive, large and moist like smooth pebbles in a stream, they looked at him, with amusement and curiosity, they were the only living thing in that ruined face – "there is nothing to fear."
The voice chuckled, the same old scratched recording, and the chair on wheels moved closer, and the man loomed before Harry now, and looked at him, his head tilted slightly to one side. Harry could see blood flowing, in measured doses, through the transparent tubes that fed in and out of Babbage's arms.
"We are not so unlike, you and I," Babbage said.
Harry stood up. His muscles didn't ache as much as he had expected. And, in fact, there had been no waste left in the coffin… which he didn't want to think about, at just that moment. He towered over the old man. "You should be dead," he said.
"And so," said Babbage, "should you."
Harry stopped, his rage drying. "What do you mean?" he whispered, and again he heard Babbage laugh, that old recorded sound echoing through the greenhouse. They were alone but for the orchids. "How many times have you died now, Mr Houdini?" Babbage said.
"I don't–"
"Know what I mean? Oh, but I think you do, quite well," Babbage said. "Tell me, when was it that the Bookman found you?"
"I will not–"
Cold sweat, and fear, it couldn't be, he wasn't like–
"Answer my questions? Or do you not know the answers?" Those large, wet, extraordinary eyes gazed up at him, almost in admiration. "I can answer your questions for you, Mr Houdini. Would you like me to? Would you like to know, just what you are?"
The eyes, he saw, were no longer looking at him but behind him, behind his shoulder, and he suddenly had that awful feeling that something, someone, was standing behind him, so close that, almost, he could feel their breath on his skin. He tensed.
"I know who I am," Harry said.
"I will show you yourself," Babbage said, in a voice almost sad. "In a handful of dust…" His head moved, a fraction. "Take him," he said.
Now Harry turned, ready to fight–
Behind him loomed a huge, bald-headed human, with a scar running down one cheek. The man smiled at him, without malice, then a hand like a meat hook descended and grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up.
"Everything," he heard Babbage say, as from a great distance as, suspended in mid-air, he felt the cold prick of a needle enter his neck, "is going to be all right, Mr Houdini. It will be all right."
Famous last words, Harry thought when he woke up. Woke up and wished he hadn't. Woke up, and found himself strapped to a table, the dim light of the greenhouse replaced with strong white electric lights, a bare room, bare walls, and Harry naked, strapped with thick leather restraints–
A mirror above him, adding to the humiliation, adding to the horror of it all – the mirror showing him everything, showing him himself, it was attached to the ceiling, hovered above him like a suspended pool of water–
"We shall begin," a voice said. The same old, pre-recorded voice, and he hated it now, hated that voice, he wanted to kill, he had to escape, he had to–
"Sir."
The voice was surprisingly high; it didn't fit with the face of the man who now stood over Harry. A giant of a man, with a bald dome for a head, a scar running down his cheek – he looked like a pirate, Harry thought, the man looked ridiculous in the white lab coat–
In his hand, Harry couldn't help but notice, as much as his gaze tried to shy away from it, in the man's huge, meaty hand there was a small and delicate and very sharp-looking surgical scalpel.
FORTY-SIX
"Wait!"
Harry struggled against his bonds. And was that a small, almost wistful smile on that huge, cratered face above him? His head thrashed, this way and that, seeing now the wizened old man, this Babbage, in his wheelchair and his life-support machines, watching him, waiting…
"Why are you doing this?" Harry said – whispered. The old man sighed, the sound of bellows releasing air, slowly and tortuously. "You do not know," he said, enigmatically, "how lucky you are."
Harry thinking, keep him talking, anything to keep that blade from descending, from cutting his flesh, from burrowing into his skin… He said, "Who's he?"
The man above him smiled again. Nothing friendly in that expression. It made Harry's blood go cold, an expression he'd heard once, did not believe it could become a reality. No help there, not from this brute–
"His name," Babbage said, "is Mr Spoons."
"Mr Spoons," the man with the scalpel said, nodding. The same high, almost girlish voice.
"He used to be boatswain to Captain Wyvern," Babbage said. "The pirate. But that, Mr Houdini, is beside the point. Mr Spoons–"
"Spoons!"
"Please proceed with the operation."
"No!"
Harry cried out but it was no use. He saw the blade descending, a frown of concentration on the giant's face–
In the mirror above he could see himself reflected, naked, the blade descending, the blade touching his arm, the blade pushing–
For just a moment, a flaring of pain, shooting up his arm and then–
The blade went deeper, made an incision, Spoons moved the blade deftly, opening Harry's arm–
And the pain suddenly vanished, pain receptors shutting off, and something else, stranger, something Harry had seen before but had tried to forget, had kept telling himself he'd dreamed it, the last time it had happened, it couldn't have–
Blue sparks shot out of the cut in his arm, and Mr Spoons, startled, took half a step back before remembering himself and reaching out, and with thick fingers pulling open the folds of skin on either side, revealing–
No blood, no bones. Harry shutting his eyes now, wanting to scream, recollection flooding in–
En-route from the Black Hills, his horse, moving fast, stumbling–
Harry falling, hard, the impact jarring, his head hitting a jutting stone–
Pain flaring, and he blacked out–
And woke up, seconds or minutes later, the horse nearby, unharmed–
Harry's head hurting, his hand reaching to it, finding a sticky residue, his hand, coming back, no blood but a strange, greenish material that seemed to ooze, almost as if alive–
A shower of blue sparks, falling down, scared him. He reached up and his hand passed through them, harmlessly–
On board the Snark, in the midst of ocean, after too much drink, unsteady on his feet, on board, a piece of metal falling, he turned, it cut his arm–
The pain, coming, then, just as suddenly, disappearing. Blue sparks, the same green goo oozing, sealing the wound before he had a chance to register it–
He'd cursed the Bookman, but he'd pushed it away, it had been nothing, a hallucination, there was nothing at all out of the ordinary–
"Extraordinary," Babbage breathed – that is, voice machine and breathing machine meshed, for just a moment. Harry, defeated, stared down at his arm. The strange green goo had materialised over it, was sealing Mr Spoons' cut. Harry had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling…
"Humans," Babbage said, "are such e
xtraordinary machines, Mr Houdini. But you!"
Was that admiration in the old voice? It was so hard to tell… and the frown on Mr Spoons' face suggested he, at least, was not overly happy with the results, so far, of the operation.
"I had tried to get hold of the Bookman's technology for years," Babbage said. "I, alone, had deduced his secret. Nothing but a servant!" The ancient man coughed a laugh. "A servant, a copying machine. Yet how he hated them, and hates them still! For centuries, since his escape from that cursed island, he has been moving through the world, our world, a shadowy figure, the first and greatest player of the great game. Fighting his former masters, these… these reptiles."