The Great Game

by Lavie Tidhar

  "We have to get off this thing," Smith said.

  The airship tilted on its side, the foaming, changing body of the Comte de Rochefort rolling over. Smith and the boy were plunged against the side of the airship, the city of London down below them, and the Babbage Tower coming closer–

  "We're going to hit that thing!"

  Men coming down the rope ladders – he couldn't guess who they were. They couldn't be Bureau – more faceless Hapsburg agents? Someone else?

  Things came sliding down the deck, hitting them. Anything not nailed down…

  Then he saw the heavy backpack.

  "Put this on my back!"

  "Please, sir, what is it, sir?"

  "It's a parachute!" unvoiced, the thought – I hope.

  He put the straps on. Grabbed the boy in a hug. Twist felt to him small and helpless, a child in Smith's arms. "Hold tight!"

  Behind, the men, with ropes, like mountain climbers, were coming for them. Smith straightened, looked over the side of the airship – nothing below but clouds and lights.

  He jumped.

  SIXTEEN

  London rushed at them. Like a cannon ball dropped from the air they fell, Smith holding on to the boy. Smith, praying: that the parachute would open, that it would hold, that no one would fire at them.

  The Thames lay below like a hungry snake, waiting to swallow them in its jaws. The Babbage Tower, too close – a terrible bump and for a moment they rose, as the parachute opened. Smith, holding on to the boy. Twist, in his arms, his eyes closed shut, pale face.

  They slowed. The parachute held. Twist opened his eyes. They turned round slowly, in the wind.

  "We're going to hit that tower!" Twist said.

  Smith: "That should be the least of our worries."

  Looking up – the French airship burned. Other figures dropping from the sides. Two, without a parachute, fell like stones. Smith wished the boy hadn't had to see that, then figured he must have seen worse, in his short life.

  The other airship rising higher, above the flaming French ship. Starkly illuminated – a black unmarked airship. He wanted then, very badly, to know who it belonged to.

  The city, down below, growing larger – he could imagine people looking up, watching the flames – and thought: Fogg is not going to like this.

  People dropping like flies.

  He wondered how many candles he would have to light at the next church he found. He had lost count of the dead.

  "Sir! The tower!"

  But Smith was aiming for it now. The wind was in his favour. The Babbage Tower, tall and strange, protrusions of devices from its side. It was said they listened to the stars. It was said Lord Babbage was a vampire, feeding off electricity and blood. They said many things. The building came closer and closer, they had passed its apex, the light flashing warnings to airships, were at a level–

  Windows, glass – he stretched his legs, soles first, still hoping–

  The wind gave them a last push, a gasp of desperate air–

  "Hold tight," Smith said–

  His feet connected with the window with force, broke it – a shower of shards – he and the boy were catapulted into the room.

  He dropped the boy. "Watch the glass!"

  A knife in his hand, the parachute trying to pull him back, back into the air – he severed the harness, the parachute blew away – Smith dropped to the floor, exhausted.

  "Sir? Sir?"

  "What is it now, Twist?"

  "Sir, there's a–"

  Smith just wanted to sleep. To curl up into a ball. To close his eyes. Everything hurt. He was too old for this stuff. "Sir, there's a head, sir."

  "What?"

  He pushed himself upright. Looked around the room…

  A machine in the corner. A head made of wood and wax, almost life-like, wearing a turban. A chessboard before it. A curved moustache. Arms of wood and ivory. It had a chest but no legs, no bottom half: the upper part of the body was a part of the table and the chessboard: they were one. Smith stared, horrified. The dummy mouth moved and a voice came out, too loud in the sudden silence of the room. An old voice, scratchy and faint, as if it had been recorded, long ago, the words spliced together from spinning Edison records.

  "Well done, Mr Smith," the voice said.

  Smith groaned. "What are you doing here?" he said.

  Outside the window the burning French ship was sinking down, down into the city. Smith hoped it would hit the Thames. Otherwise the fire could spread. The black airship was rising – soon it was invisible. He needed to know whose it had been. Not Hapsburgs again. Someone else. A hunch. It had him worried. Too many people, after him, after a secret he didn't have.

  What did Mycroft know? What was Alice doing in Bangkok?

  Why were they both, now, dead?

  "Turk," he said.

  The Mechanical Turk looked at them both with blind unseeing eyes. One of the oldest mechanicals, and the most powerful… Smith had last met him several years before, working his last case with Byron. It was before the events of eighty-eight, when the automatons gained political power, led by the chess player. They said he could see the future, of a sort. That his mechanical brain could calculate probabilities, pathways into what could be. Smith distrusted him.

  "I thought you were still at the Egyptian Hall," he said.

  "You thought wrong," the chess player said. And: "We don't have much time."

  "Sir?" Twist said. "Can you hear something?"

  A loud, rising and falling sound. Smith felt the hairs rise on the back of his arms. An alarm. He couldn't take much more punishment.

  The Mechanical Turk chuckled, a strange, old sound. A dead man's laugh, Smith thought, uneasy. He waited. The Turk's head nodded. "Time is short," it said, repeating itself. "So I shall have to be concise. Smith, I had expected to run into you, sooner or later. I am gratified that it is sooner… though I did not expect the boy."

  "Me neither," Smith said, scowling. "Get on with it, will you?"

  "I am held captive here," the Turk said. "But I listen. I still have that. So much has changed since eighty-eight… You had not been a part of that affair."

  "No."

  "The fall of the Bookman," the Turk said, and sighed, the recording of a long-vanished human sigh. "And the birth of something stranger and more wonderful than even I could imagine."

  "The Bookman is dead?" Smith was startled. He had heard the rumours, but… it had been said the Bookman was not a man at all, but a machine. Conducting a war against Les Lézards, his last appearance had been the destruction of the Martian probe in an explosion that had resulted in several deaths. The Turk said, "He is… well, what is death, to such as us? The Bookman was a device, Mr Smith. A device for making copies. His agents were many. Death, to the Bookman, was only a change of storage. Do you understand?"

  "No," Smith said.

  "I had hoped you would come, here…" the Turk said. "I had calculated an over sixty-five per cent chance of you dying in the first two days of the investigation."

  "That sounds about right," Smith said. Beside him, the boy Twist sniggered.

  "Is the Bookman really dead? If he could make perfect copies of people," the Turk said – "well, then, could he not also make copies of himself? Itself, I should say."

  Smith took in the unexpected information calmly. He did not care about the Bookman, and eighty-eight was ancient history. This was almost the new century, now. The alarm kept ringing shrilly, then, all at once, stopped.

  "I have managed to gain some control over the building's systems," the Turk said, with no special inflection. "Still, they will be here soon."

  "Security?"

  "B-Men, Mr Smith. B-Men."

  Hadn't Mycroft warned him of–

  "Babbage's own militia," the Turk said. "His own corps. It was their airship which you saw up there, in the sky. They are… They are trying to plug a dangerous leak."

  "Lord Babbage is still alive?" Smith said.

  "In a manne
r of speaking," the Turk said. "Listen to me, now, and listen carefully. Eighty-eight was a point in which history changed. In which one path became the main path, and others faded. It began with the Martian probe. A desperate signal, sent by Les Lézards, trying to summon others of their kind to this world."

  "They were not born here?"

  "They came," the Turk said, "from the stars, in a ship that could sail empty space. Did they crash-land here? Did they escape from somewhere – or rush towards something? I do not know. They had been woken by Vespucci on their cursed island, and schemed to gain power over this world, taking the throne of this island-nation and making it an empire in the process. Their remnants are all around us, ancient machines, waking up. This is the time of the change, Smith. And in ninety-three…"

  "The Emerald Buddha Affair?"

  "You have heard of it?"

  "Milady de Winter, of the Quiet Council, had been involved. That is all I know."

  "One of the ancient machines which had been activated," the Turk said, "had opened a temporary gateway, through space. It had been stopped, and closed… but not before something, my friend, had slipped through."

  It was quiet in the room, and cold. Cold air poured in through the broken window. "Why are you telling me all this?" Smith said – whispered. The boy Twist hugged himself with thin pale arms.

  "I had known this will happen, from the start," the ancient machine told him. "Had planned for it. We are not alone, Smith. Nor should we be. And yet…"

  "Yes?"

  "Who can tell what we will find?"

  "I'm not sure how this is helping me," Smith said.

  The Turk sighed again. "Mycroft and Alice died for a secret," it said, "so great that even I am unable to penetrate deep into its mysteries. Lord Babbage is playing the long game, Smith. As am I. But I am afraid he has gone beyond me, has used his own machines to hide his plans. To find the one, you must find the other."

  "How?"

  "Follow the chain," the Turk said, simply. "Find the other, who is like you, in many ways…"

  Smith dismissed it. "Why are you here?" he said, instead. The Turk was telling him nothing, he realised.

  "Babbage fears me. His men took me and installed me here. But I can listen… the Tesla waves go everywhere. Somewhere in Oxford there is a boy who is not entirely a boy, and a thing growing deep underground which may yet be our salvation. There are thinking machines in France, and in Chung Kuo, and we are forming our own alliance, a network of thought that, one day…"

  But the Turk grew silent, and the hum of engines beyond the walls became mute, suddenly. Smith had not been aware of the background hum until it had stopped. "Turk?" he said. "Turk!"

  But there was no reply, and Smith cursed – and cursed again when the alarm returned, in full force.

  "They shut him down, sir," the boy, Twist, said.

  "Machines," Smith said. "You can never trust machines."

  There were sounds beyond the door now. Shouts, and feet slamming into the hard cold floor.

  "We have to go," Smith said.

  SEVENTEEN

  Outside it was a long white corridor and electric light and nothing else. The light was white and bright. They ran in the opposite direction to the sound of the men. "It's a long way down, sir," Twist said.

  There were doors for a lift at the end of the corridor. As they approached them they opened with a wheeze of steam – Smith dragged the boy away, seeing the hint of black uniforms and the light playing off guns. "Quick, in here."

  The door wasn't locked. A janitor's room, he thought. Buckets and brooms and wipes and three sets of grey shapeless overalls–

  "Get dressed," he told the boy, already reaching for a suit.

  The janitor and his assistant, armed with buckets and brooms, walked meekly to the lift when they were stopped.

  "You!"

  The men wore black uniforms with the logo of the Babbage Company on their arms. The numbers 01000010, which represented the letter "B" in the binary number system, with a stylised little cloud of steam directly above the digits. The men also wore guns, which were black and well oiled and currently pointing at the janitor and his assistant's chests.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Please, sir, much cleaning to make!" the janitor said humbly. "Many dirting all about, yes?"

  The officer's face twisted in disgust. "Portuguese?" he said.

  "Damn continentals," the officer beside him said. "Get out of here, this is now a restricted area. Did you see anyone?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.

  "We see nothing, mister!" the janitor said. "Boy, he no talk English. Me only talk good."

  The officer looked at them for a long moment, the gun still raised. Then he lowered it. "Get out of here! Pronto," the officer said.

  The janitor, looking frightened, hurried to obey, pulling the boy – who must have been somewhat slow, the officer thought; he had seldom seen such a look of utter stupidity on a face before – along with him.

  "And haul that old machine out of there," the officer said, ordering his men. "Instructions are to dump it in the basement with the rest of the rubbish."

  "Too close," Smith said. "That was too close."

  But interesting, he thought. For they had clearly not been given information as to the possible cause behind the break-in. Had they been looking for intruders, he and the boy would not have been so lucky. Which made him worry what would happen on the ground floor…

  The lift creaked its way down. Floor after floor passed by. He tensed when it stopped at last. "Step to the side," he warned the boy, with a whisper.

  His hand on the hilt of the knife…

  The doors opened.

  "Do try and take them alive…" a voice said.

  Smith was already in motion. There were numerous B-Men around in those pressed black uniforms. Too many, he thought. And he was old. Still he moved, going rapidly, the knife flashing–

  Knowing it was hopeless, hoping only that the boy would stay out of sight, get a chance to escape after all–

  The sound of gunfire–

  He expected the bullets to slam into him, for the air to explode out of his lungs, for his heart to stop, violently and forever–

  "Get down, you bloody fool!"

  Hands grabbed him, dropped the knife, pulled him down and across the floor. He heard manic laughter, the sound of gunshots, screams.

  Men in black uniforms falling all around, the smell of blood and gunpowder filling the air.

  "Take one for England!" a familiar voice shouted, cackling.

  Oh, God, no, Smith thought.

  "Didn't think we'd miss out on all the fun, did you?" Colonel Creighton said.

  M. was in the back of the baruch-landau, still holding on to her Gatling gun, her hair standing crazily on end as though she had been hit by lightning. Creighton was driving. The baroness, putting away a bloodied knife she had used on the dying, was now comforting the boy, who looked – understandably – a little shocked.

  It's been a long night… Smith thought.

  They had left behind them the Babbage Tower's high-security entrance trashed and ransacked, and bodies piled up on the floor. "Treachery!" Colonel Creighton said. The steam-powered vehicle lumbered through the narrow streets, heading to the river. "Knaves! Traitors!"

  "We don't know that," Smith said. He wanted to sink into a sleep, into oblivion. He prayed M. would not shoot any more people. Instead of sleep he accepted the offer of a flask from the baroness and drank, the whiskey searing his throat. "How did you know to–" he said.

  "The bee keeper sent us," the baroness said, softly.

  "He's here?"

  "He is back in the village," the colonel said, "but he had a hunch you'd need a little help. Don't know how he does it, really. Remarkable mind. And then there's his brother, don't you know. Best of the best. Good man. A great loss for the empire. Still, life marches on and all that, what?"

  "What?"

  "What?" the colonel said, sounding co
nfused.

  Smith shook his head. He thought of the bee keeper. He had gone to see Adler, Smith realised. The bee keeper had once been romantically linked with her… and, before he tended to bees, he was known as the greatest detective who had ever lived. Smith sent a silent thank-you his way.