by Lavie Tidhar
She realised she had lost time. The walls were closing in on her. Moving, shifting… She giggled.
"Westenra, are you all right? Wait–" Berlyne said. She heard him reaching for something and almost went for her gun. Then there was a flare of bright light – she almost cried out.
"My–" the second word was swallowed up. "What have they done to you?" he said.
She didn't know. She couldn't see, properly. All she knew was that it didn't matter. They had to get to the palace. She resented Berlyne for doing this, for distracting her. Distraction was weakness. Weakness was fatal.
The sound of a shot behind them. She pushed Berlyne. The light died. "Get down!" she hissed.
"You should be in… in surgery!"
"Where do you think I've just been?"
That shut him up. She rolled, waited, gun drawn… squeezed off a shot.
Berlyne: "How many?"
"I don't know." She turned to face him. "You said there's a line. What did you mean?"
"What?"
"A line. To the palace."
"Yes!" Somehow they were moving, at a half-crouch. Their pursuers… she assumed they pursued. She wondered if she knew them, whether Fogg had subverted any agents at the Bureau. It seemed possible…
She hoped she wouldn't have to kill any more people she knew.
Apart from Fogg.
She very much wanted to kill Fogg.
"There's a private underground rail line," Berlyne said. "Mycroft mentioned it, once. An emergency escape route, connecting the Mall with the palace, and from there to a secure location on the other side of the river."
"Do you know where it is?"
"It should be–"
Something swam at her through the thick air, a monster with rushing air and burning bright eyes and a hot breath–
Someone screamed. Berlyne was flying through the air, or so it seemed to her, in her befuddled state. He crashed into her, pushing her off balance. She fell on her back, a few feet away–
The train roared past, breathing heavily. She felt Berlyne shaking beside her. She started to laugh.
"We're never getting out of this alive," Berlyne said, at last.
"Oh, cheer up," Lucy said, standing. "It could be worse. We could already be dead."
Berlyne, following her, rose to his feet. "I could kill for a cup of tea," he said, morosely.
FIFTY-ONE
Berlyne was right, she thought now. He should never have come after her. She should have let him go when he still had a chance. She was crouched into the miniature train car, directly behind the chugging steam engine, her gun pointing back, but they were no longer chasing.
It was a mail car, as it turned out, hence the small size, and a Babbage engine controlling the train engine and the stoker. There was a string of miniature model cars strung together behind the belching engine. It was dark in the tunnel. She had left Berlyne behind.
She could no longer recall exactly what had happened. There were periods of blackness, moments when the weakness and the drugs and the blood loss kicked in. she had followed Berlyne. He had pulled out a device of some sort, similar to the one she had used to wait for Stoker's blimp. Some sort of tracer. He led her down the dark tunnels under London, in search of the train, but the pursuers were close behind them and drawing closer.
They had caught up with them as they had almost reached the hidden platform, down a dank-smelling passageway where pools of rancid water lay, coated in a thin film of grease. The first thing to announce them had been a rolling grenade. She had pulled Berlyne by the arm, violently, and they flattened against the wall as the explosion rocked the underground chamber. Her gun was already out but she didn't use it. She moved silently, coming towards them. There were three, Fogg's men, and she put away the gun and took the knife instead.
She was sluggish and so her first attack missed the man's throat and ran down his arm, opening up a geyser of blood that hit her in the face. She dropped, low, then turn-kicked and felt it connect. He dropped and she crawled towards him and this time, with the knife, she didn't miss.
Which left two…
They had guns and they were firing and she had to crawl through the shadows to get her distance. She found Berlyne slumped against the wall and, when she reached for him, discovered the spreading wet stain on his shirt and cursed, but softly.
"Westenra…" he said.
She said, "Try not to–"
She thought, in the darkness, he might be smiling.
"God save the Queen," he said. Then he died.
She had killed the other two. She must have done, though she couldn't quite remember it. At last she had escaped, into the miniature terminal where the miniature mail train waited. There were more pursuers, coming. She had jumped onto the train as it began to hum and then it moved and she fired back until the attackers receded in the distance and she was alone, at last, riding the mail train to its final destination.
She was a ghost in the tunnels or, perhaps, she thought, she was the only one still alive, and everyone else was dead: they were the ghosts.
She wanted to fall asleep. The drugs were losing their hold and now the pain was returning, it was everywhere and it was vindictive, it enjoyed hurting her.
Not far to go, she thought. Not far…
Blood. There had been so much blood.
She touched her shoulder and was not surprised to feel it wet. She was bleeding again. She thought of Berlyne, fleetingly. "I could kill for a cup of tea," she said, but her words were snatched by the wind and were lost behind. The train ran on.
The observer sighed with almost human relief as it approached along the path to the palace.
He could have gone about it in a human way, of course. Hide in the shadows, climb the high walls, sneak into this surprisingly high-security abode like a thief or a spy, until he'd reached his destination.
Earlier, he might have done so. He had not wished to draw too much unwanted attention to himself… in the beginning.
Inside him the little Siamese – Hmong – boy was talking, the one he had collected what seemed so long ago, in that city of canals and tropical storms. The boy had been a link in a long and fascinating chain, a courier between the woman called Alice and her contact person in Bangkok, a trader who in turn brought in the precious uranium from the mines in India. The boy had not been aware of those facts, of course… He was a chatty fellow, quite cheerful even after death, and the observer made a mental note to decant the boy soon, as soon as he was done.
For this was the end of his observation, he realised, almost with a tinge of nostalgia. He had seen as much as there was to be seen; all that remained was the final piece of the puzzle, which waited here, in this primitive little hovel of a palace, in this strange city where humanity crowded in close together, under their lizardine masters, in the company of their primitive machines…
So very different to the observer's own home…
So he did not attempt subterfuge. He walked up to the gates and the human guards were there and other security systems, too, he could hear the pidgin chatter of machines as they spoke across what the humans called Tesla waves. None of it was going to be much of a hindrance.
He collected the guards on his way in.
Lucy woke up. There was no more movement and she suddenly realised that the train must have stopped, and that she had arrived. Her shoulder throbbed and her leg felt as though ants were burrowing within it, gnawing on the inside. Did ants have teeth? She took a deep breath, taking in oxygen, then climbed off the mail cart. The whole system was entirely automatic, she saw. Little automatons came and collected the mail and carried it into tubes. They had wheels and mechanical arms and a flashing light which must have been there to warn people, which must have meant–
Yes.
There was a solitary person at the edge of the platform. A supervisor, she realised. There would have had to be one, just in case the machines failed. It was a man and he was smoking a cigarette.
She s
till had the ring the Queen had given her. But would he believe her? She did not want to panic him and she did not want to have to kill him. She decided to stick to the shadows, for now.
The exit was behind the man. The automatons, no doubt, remained down below, on the platform, standing still until they were needed again. It therefore took her by surprise when one of the automatons, on its way to the mail drop, turned, and then approached her, switching off its light.
She pulled back against the wall. It was a funny-looking device, not very intimidating. Then it spoke.
"Do not be alarmed," it said.
The voice was tinny and high-pitched and strange. She was not sure how it was produced. These units should not have had auditory capacities installed… She waited.
The small unit came closer. "Ring," it said.
Wordlessly, Lucy reached forwards. The ring the Queen had given her was on her finger. The little device chirped.
"Handshake initiated. Protocol established. Checksum positive. Identification established. Confirmed," the little automaton said. "Confirmed."
Lucy's hand dropped to her side.
"Come with me," the automaton said.
It whirred away from her and began to glide along the wall. She followed. The other automatons, she saw, were now moving in such a way as to mask them from the supervisor. After a short distance they had reached a crevice in the wall and the automaton turned into it and she followed. It led them a short way into a large room – the sorting room, she realised. There were miniature lifts set into the walls and they were moving, up and down. Carrying mail up into the palace…
"Who are you?" she said. "What are you?"
"I am the automatons," the voice said.
"Excuse me?"
"We are minds," the voice said. It had a patient, weary voice. "We are the minds of all the machines humanity has created, we are the Babbage engines made to put together information, to think, to dream… We dream a lot, Lucy Westenra. We dream the future."
"And what does the future hold?" she couldn't help but ask, sarcastically.
The machine made a small, apologetic sound. "Great horror," it said. "Or great beauty."
"What does it depend on?"
"On humanity," the machine said, simply.
"You know who I am."
"And what you are here for. But you'd have to hurry."
"The Turk," she said, suddenly realising. "The Byron simulacrum."
"The one is indisposed," the voice said, "and the other dead. No, not dead. Translated."
"I don't know what you mean."
"The greatest wonder on Earth remains hidden from the observer," the little machine said. "Our secret, the child of humanity and the machines, who will deliver us, when the day comes. He mustn't know."
"Why are you telling me this?" She had no idea what the little mail machine was talking about.
"You will need to know this," it said. "When the time comes."
"Time for what?"
"Only you decide your own future," the machine said. "When the time comes… decide carefully."
Lucy had the sudden urge to shoot the device. It made a whirring sound, as though it were laughing. Its arm pointed at the wall. "In there," it said. "It will not be comfortable, but it is big enough to hold you. It will take you directly to the Queen's apartments." It hesitated, then said, "I… we… have alerted the machines above. They… we… will be expecting you."
"Whatever," Lucy said. The little machine pushed buttons on a control panel at waist height. The lift it had pointed to came down, stopped. Its door opened. "Get in," the automaton said.
Lucy, against her better judgement, obeyed. It was a small confined space but it smelled pleasantly of paper. Good news and bad news came in that lift, and she wondered which one she was.
"Good luck," the automaton said. Then the doors closed and the lift began to rise, slowly, upwards.
• • • •
The observer had had no difficulty making his way into the palace. His collecting net was by now full of humans who were, in themselves, of little interest to his overall report, but that was unavoidable. He had left a trail of corpses in his wake… as one of the voices, a little hysterically, kept pointing out.
He was heading up a large flight of stairs to what was evidently the Queen's quarters when he stopped. He had collected several primitive machine minds throughout his stay here, for his report, including the rather interesting automaton one, which had evidently been modelled, to some extent at least, on a human called Byron.
Something was bothering the observer, and it had nothing to do with the human guards currently advancing on him with guns and bayonets.
Almost absent-mindedly he met their advance. Their attack meant little to the observer, whose physical structure was quite different, after all, to a human's biological equipment, for all its superficial resemblance of one.
No, what was bothering the observer was something else, something quite nebulous. He couldn't quite – as the humans said – put his finger on it.
The human minds were confusing but, once he got used to their format, he could read them quite easily. The machine minds, he would have thought, if anything, would be easier, being of a quite primitive make.
And yet.
It occurred to the observer – almost belatedly – that he was missing something.
Could the Byron mind be keeping a secret from him?
Surely that was impossible.
Unless – and this worried the observer, all of a sudden – the Byron had, in the moments before its termination, wilfully erased certain memories–
But memories of what?
The observer climbed the stairs, on his way to the Queen's quarters. There had been the machine chatter, of course. That had seemed so mundane, so irrelevant, and yet…
Here and there, cryptic references, strange queries–
Were the machine minds hiding something from him?
He reached the top and went down the corridor and found the door. He decided to dismiss those thoughts. These machines were backwards and primitive and he, the observer, was the product of a highly advanced civilisation.
He had missed nothing.
All he had to do now was collect the final specimen for his report.
FIFTY-TWO
Lucy, rising in the lift, which stopped with a jerk. The door opened. She climbed out.
She found herself in the same room she had been in before. The lift's door closed and it disappeared, and now she saw it was hidden behind a wooden cabinet.
A figure in silhouette stood by the window…
Its long, graceful tail beat the thick curtain rhythmically. Moonlight streamed in, and Lucy's breath caught in her throat and she said, "Your Majesty…"
Bending down was hard. The Queen turned. In the moonlight her face looked alien and unknowable. "Lucy Westenra," she said. "I have been expecting you."
"Ma'am," Lucy said. "I have news."
"Then tell me," the Queen said.
Lucy opened her mouth to speak – to tell the Queen everything, about Babbage and his rockets, about Stoker and his journal, about Fogg, and the Bookman, and the betrayal – when the door to the room opened without a sound.
Pale light came into the room from the corridor beyond and a small, rotund figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat stood in the doorway.
"What is the meaning of this–" the Queen began to say.
Lucy moved faster than she had thought possible. Even before a stiletto knife, or some sort of thin, sharp spike materialised in the man's hand as though it were a part of it, she was already moving, her own knife in her hand, and she buried it in the attacker's stomach. He gave a short whoof of surprise but she had already kneed him, then punched his face, fingers curled and palm open, with all her force, trying to break his nose and push the bones into the brain.
Instead the small man seemed to laugh, and he grabbed her knife arm and twisted and she screamed as he broke it. Then he pushed her
aside, slamming her against the wall, and approached the Queen.
Lucy pulled out her gun.
The Queen stood there calmly, and her tongue hissed out and tasted the air, and her long snout opened in what could have been a smile. She shook her head, briefly, at Lucy, then turned to the man–
Who had taken off his hat. In the silver moonlight Lucy saw no face there; he was a smoothly shifting impossibility, as if he were composed of thousands and thousands of tiny things, all joined together to resemble a man.