The Great Game

by Lavie Tidhar

  He stood in the shadows and few people noticed him and those who did moved aside, as though instinctively knowing not to come near. He paid them no heed. He watched until he saw a shadow come slowly out of the building and recognised him as the one he wanted but still he waited, waited for him to walk down the narrow passageway that ran alongside and only then, unhurriedly, he stepped out of the shadows and began to follow.

  It when he was going towards Drury Lane that Smith began to have the feeling he had forgotten something. He stopped in his tracks. It was early evening and the theatre-goers and the cut-purses were out in force.

  He knew Byron did not work alone. Above him, above all the automatons, was the one they called the Turk. Once a chess-playing machine, he had quietly gained political power amongst the disenfranchised simulacra of the new age, seldom seen, always in the background. The Mechanical Mycroft, as some in the Bureau called him, snidely. If they knew he existed at all.

  What could link Mycroft and the Turk with Alice in Bangkok?

  But a more pressing question arose in his mind.

  The Byron automaton must have known what Mycroft had known.

  He turned around and began to run.

  He could hear the distant cries even as he again approached the Bucket of Blood. As he ran he almost bumped into a small, undistinguished man who passed him going in the opposite direction; the man moved aside elegantly, avoiding impact, and Smith went past him, barely sparing him a glance.

  The cries grew louder; in the distance, a police siren. A crowd of people gathered outside the Bucket of Blood, blocking the way into the narrow alleyway beside it. He pushed his way through.

  Stopped when he came to the body.

  The observer had found the encounter interesting, for several reasons. For one, the device had obviously been waiting for him. It didn't put up a fight but had waited, its back to the observer, as though offering up what it had.

  The observer's blade was already out and so he came to the device and inserted the blade in the same place as it did all the others, the base of the head, going inwards into the brain. Only this time he felt nothing, and was momentarily confused.

  "I am using distributed storage, I'm afraid," the device said, politely. It took the observer back, a little. None of the others spoke to him. Not until they were dead, at any rate.

  The blade came out, went back in. A series of stabs–

  A boy, standing in the shadows on the other side of the alley, watched this with wide-open eyes. He saw a man crouching over the fallen body of another man (it was too dark to distinguish details), savagely stabbing it, over and over and over. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. He had followed the observer from the crowd, having tried to pick his pocket earlier. The stabbing went on and on.

  Smith knelt beside the body of the automaton. There was, of course, no blood, through sparks flew out of the holes in Byron's body, and a viscous sort of liquid did, in fact, seep through the cuts and out, hissing as it touched the paved stones. Smith pushed the body onto its back. Byron's blind eyes stared up at him.

  "Byron," Smith said. And, when there was no response – "Byron!"

  But the machine was dying. Blue sparks of electricity jumped over the body and the crowd surged back, as though afraid it would explode. Smith raised his head; for just a moment he caught sight of a small, frightened figure standing at the other end of the alleyway. Then it disappeared.

  "Byron!"

  "Step aside, Smith."

  He knew the voice. But he didn't move. He checked the automaton but the blue sparks were increasing and he felt an electric shock run through him and he jumped back.

  "Everyone back!" The voice was authoritative and the crowd obeyed. Smith found himself dragged away; strong arms held him even as he fought to get back to Byron.

  But the automaton's body was aflame in a blue, electric light now, and the ground around it was hissing, yellow acidic liquid spilling out of the multiple cuts. Smith was pushed to the ground, still fighting. "Don't–" he began–

  With his cheek pressed against the cold hard stones he saw the flames begin to rise, yellow out of blue, slowly at first, then growing larger. Weight pressed down on his back; he couldn't move. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn't, and so he watched as the Lord Byron automaton burned, there in the alleyway where, centuries before, the dissident Dryden had been attacked.

  "So ends the old," the earlier voice said, close, in his ears, "to give birth to the new," and Smith closed his eyes, at last, and knew that they were wet, and he said, "Go away, Adler. Please, just go away."

  ELEVEN

  The last time they had met she was an inspector and he was Mycroft's errand boy. Now Mycroft was gone and Irene Adler was chief of Scotland Yard, and looked it.

  They were sitting opposite each other in the bare interrogation room. When the fire had consumed the old automaton, Adler had instructed her officers to release Smith, but keep him where he was. She had secured the perimeter of the site, had officers interviewing potential witnesses, and two chattering police automatons, short squat things on wheels, were bent over what remained of the former Byron machine.

  "You," she said, turning at last back to Smith. "I thought you were dead."

  "Retired," he said, shortly, and she snorted. "Would that you were," she said.

  "Retired?"

  "Dead."

  "Adler," he said, "you need to let me go."

  "I need you to explain yourself."

  "This is a Bureau affair."

  Her eyes narrowed. "When a prominent member of society dies in the open, in my city, that makes it my affair."

  "And if he weren't prominent?" Smith said, knowing it was a cheap dig. She didn't dignify it with an answer. He said, "You're not handling the Mycroft investigation." Trying a different tack.

  "I've been ordered out of that investigation."

  "And you will be ordered out of this one."

  She smiled. There was nothing cheerful in that smile. "Until that happens," she said, "it is still mine."

  He sighed. He had been handling it all wrong, and now more people were dying. Had Byron known? he suddenly wondered. He must have known. Yet he did not appear to fight. Was he taken by surprise? Smith couldn't tell. He did not understand the mechanical, the way he thought. But it changed nothing. Byron was dead. Gone. The people at Charlie Company could build another replica but it would not be Byron, just something that looked like he had. A copy of a copy.

  And now Smith was angry.

  "If you won't butt out," he said, rudely, "then maybe you can help."

  "Can I?" Irene Adler said. "I'm overwhelmed."

  He ignored her. "There was a boy," he said. At that she paid attention. "I saw him, for a brief moment. He was watching. It is possible he saw the… the murder."

  Was the destruction of a machine, however human-like, murder? Could it really be called that? He didn't know. It didn't used to be but the mechanicals had gained in power since the quiet coup of eighty-eight.

  "What sort of a boy?" Irene Adler said. Tense. Attentive. Smith liked that in her. She would follow every scrap of information, never let go of an investigation until she solved it. She was smart and capable and she ran Scotland Yard well… but this was a shadow investigation, and not her domain. And where the hell was Fogg? The Bureau should have been all over the investigation by now, and wasn't. And the news would be all over the papers by morning.

  Smith closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Tried to picture the scene as it was, the brief glimpse of the boy. "Around twelve years old," he said. "Worn clothes, too large for him. Pale face. Black hair. Thin." He opened his eyes again. The details added up. "A street boy," he said.

  Irene Adler sighed. "Do you know how many there are, in this city?"

  Smith did know. And an avenue of questioning had already suggested itself…

  And now there was a commotion outside, and he leaned back and smiled at the Scotland Yard chief.

 
The door to the interrogation room banged open and Fogg came in, trailed by a bemused police constable.

  "Adler!" Fogg barked.

  "Smog," Adler said, not turning to acknowledge him.

  "Fogg," he said, irritably. He looked tired and out of his depth, Smith noted with some satisfaction. "Your part in this investigation is over," Fogg said. "We do not need you stomping about all over the place making noise." He turned to Smith. "And you!" he barked. "This is a mess, isn't it, Mr Smith?" Fogg pinched the bridge of his nose. "And you right in the middle of it, as usual. This is a disaster!"

  Smith said, "You are upset over Byron's death?"

  "Death?" Fogg glared at him. "Do I look like I give a whiff about that damn machine finally expiring? Don't be absurd, Smith. This has your mark all over it, doesn't it? What a mess. What a public, public mess."

  Neither Smith nor Adler replied. They exchanged glances. "Yes, Mr Fogg," they both said, in unity. Fogg glared at them. "You," he said, pointing a long, thin finger at Irene Adler, "stay out of it. And you," he said, turning the finger, like an offensive weapon, on Smith, "outside. Now."

  Smith gave the chief of Scotland Yard an innocent look and got up. He followed Fogg outside, through the station corridors and out into the street, where a black baruch-landau stood, belching steam.

  "Get in," Fogg said.

  Smith got in. The interior smelled of new leather and polish. He wondered if Fogg did his own buffing, and smiled.

  "And wipe that smirk off your face!" Fogg said.

  "Yes, headmaster."

  Fogg let that one pass. He signalled the driver, and the horseless carriage began to move.

  Mycroft, Smith remembered, had preferred the comforts of his own black airship: watching the city from high above, drinking scotch, smoking a cigar. It was easier to see things from a distance, he liked to say. And in comfort, Smith always added silently.

  Fogg was street-bound. "A disgrace," he said.

  "A mess, I think you said," Smith said.

  Fogg shook his head. "Were there witnesses?" he said.

  So he wasn't dumb. But then, Smith had learned long ago not to underestimate the man.

  "Scotland Yard–" he began.

  "Adler is out of this!" Fogg snapped. Whisper at the Bureau had been that Adler and the fat man's brother had been linked, in the past. Smith had a fleeting image of the bee keeper, standing in the rain, not speaking. What did the bee keeper make of all of this? Rumour had it he, too, was a part of the events in eighty-eight, but shortly after that he'd been retired–

  "They interviewed the crowd outside the Bucket of Blood," Smith said, patiently.

  "And?" Fogg snapped.

  "And they found nothing."

  Fogg snorted. "If you were a witness to such a crime, you wouldn't stick around to be interviewed."

  "My thoughts exactly," Smith said. Fogg looked at him. "So," he said again, "was there a witness?"

  Smith told him about the boy. Fogg looked thoughtful. "You know that part of town," he said. Smith nodded. "The… undesirables," Fogg said. Again, Smith merely nodded.

  "Good," Fogg said. "Then follow that trail."

  Smith was angry with himself. He had been so close… Could he have prevented the attack? Could he himself have seen the killer?

  Was he following the wrong path? This chain of events did not begin in London. He was looking at it wrong. He needed to step back, to start at the beginning. He said, half to himself, "But the killer is here."

  He raised his head, saw Fogg smirk.

  "Do you know where I've been in the past few hours, as you two were having your little heart-to-heart in there?" Fogg said.

  Smith said, "No."

  "I was called to Dover," Fogg said.

  "They found another body," Smith said. Thinking furiously – How could the killer get from London to Dover in that time?

  "Yes," Fogg said. "They found a body."

  "Who is it?"

  "Somebody. Nobody. A pastor, by name of Brown. It seems he was in the habit of crossing the Channel regularly."

  Smith: "A courier?"

  Fogg, with pursed lips: "Possibly."

  "What was he carrying?"

  "Nothing was found on the body."

  "But the injury matches?"

  "It matches."

  "So our killer is on his way to France?"

  "He was not on the ferry – that my people could find."

  But the killer had his own ways of getting around, and not be seen, Smith thought. He felt suddenly helpless. Chasing shadows, they called it in the trade: following an impossible trail, and never catching up.

  Fogg signalled the driver. The baruch-landau stopped and the door opened, as though by itself.

  "Get out," Fogg said. And, as Smith climbed out into the street, a parting shot: "You used to be good."

  TWELVE

  The observer came out of the water dripping, and so he stood and waited for the water to evaporate. He noted the water was very cold, and the currents strong. As he swam across the Channel he had passed a steam-powered ship, carrying passengers, and a sleek tea clipper with taut sales, and two wooden boats pushed by oars that met in the shallows and exchanged what the voices had told him were contraband goods.

  The observer was in no hurry. He stood and watched the water and the small island he had – partly – left behind. He found the world fascinating. Steam and sail and man-power, all sharing the water. That mixture of old and new, and they kept striving for the new, the newer still. Such a curious place. The voices argued and shouted and finally quietened, leaving him momentarily alone. He wondered what it was that had stopped him from taking the small boy, in that city where the whales sang in the river. He had been much taken with the whales. He had gone to see them, standing on the Embankment, and, as though sensing what he was, they came close, one by one, and showed themselves to him, and sang. He loved their song.

  He should have taken one of the whales, he thought. He would have liked their song, to accompany the voices.

  But there was time, there was plenty of time. He had been rushing about, to start with, with newfound eyes, excited by everything, eager for new experience, but that had been…

  He did not have a term for it. It was one of the voices who finally offered a suggestion, and the observer contemplated it now.

  Unprofessional.

  Perhaps, he admitted, he had been a tad unprofessional. Certainly he should have taken the boy.

  Why hadn't he?

  A strange, unfamiliar word, whispered by the woman. Compassion. What a strange notion, he thought. Yet something in the boy's frozen stare, the wide eyes, the under-nourished face, had halted him. It would have just complicated things, the observer thought. His quarry had not been the boy but the strange man-machine, and by letting the boy go he had freed himself for his primary task.

  The observer shook himself, raising naked arms against the rising sun. It felt wonderful, he thought, to be here. Clouds fascinated him, and migrating birds. And people were intensely fascinating, to the observer.

  Before the observer had got into the water he had stood, the way he stood now, naked on the shore before the Channel, with moonlight instead of sunlight illuminating his artificial flesh.

  He had shuddered, his body shifting and changing, drawing power and material from the humidity in the air, the salt water and the fine chalk. The voices had risen into a frightened crescendo before he silenced them. His body shuddered and shivered, splitting, the extra material of him lying down at last on the sand like an egg.

  The observer had waited for his body to seal itself again, then crouched by this egg and put his hand on the warm, thin membrane. After a few moments the surface broke and the egg hatched.

  The thing inside was not yet human, nor did it have shape. Blindly, it burrowed into the sand, feeding, converting solids and gas into–

  At last the child rose out of the sand, and the observer helped him up. They stood, facing each other, identica
l in height, identical in shape. The moonlight reflected on their flesh. Then, not needing to speak, the observer turned to the sea, and the other put on his clothes, heading back into the city.