by Pavel Kornev
Power and safety.
The energy bubbling around could blow any infernal creature to smithereens, and dissolve its remains into ash. Any, even the most powerful demon, would burn here in a few short seconds' time in the blessed flame of electrical discharge; it wouldn't be some mere dash into the underworld with a slightly singed pelt, this creature would be annihilated once and for all.
There is no protection from electricity. Electricity is stronger than magic!
The sett tiles under my feet were slightly trembling, shaking in time with the powerful steam generator in the lyceum's basement. In a strange way, that shivering gave me confidence. I removed my derby cap from my head, went into the complex and took a look around the room, which was filled with bright electric light. The inspector didn't catch my eye. To the sound of the lecture coming over the loudspeaker plates, I had to set out in search of a boss I wasn't even sure had been here today.
I found him in the western wing of the complex. With one leg thrown carelessly over the other, Robert White was sitting back in a wooden bench and, with a helpless look, gazing into a battle painting titled "The Great Maxwell kills a Fallen One." I did nothing to distract the inspector from his thoughts, taking a seat next to him in silence and listening to the lecture.
"We all live in a surprising time. A time of change!" Carried out from the slightly creaking speakers. "The old world is in its death throes. The era of steam is coming to an end, and the era of electricity will soon be upon is! But, as man came to this earth writhing and screaming, so the labor pains of progress are rattling the present, giving birth to conflicts. The greatest minds of our time, Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison have disputes on the course of electricity's development. But don't believe the sensationalist newspapermen smacking their lips, and writing in words the average person doesn’t know. The truth is born in disputes! Remember! Direct current or alternating, it doesn't matter. It's all electricity! Sublime Electricity! Knowledge in its purest form!"
Here the inspector turned to me and asked:
"You do know the story of Maxwell, right Leopold?"
"Who hasn't heard of the great Maxwell and the demon?!" I grew surprised.
"The fallen one," my boss corrected me. "Maxwell made his fallen one obey."
"And what of it?"
"I mean that I do not want to spend my whole life stagnating in anonymity!" Robert White's eyes glimmered in rage. "I don't want the next quarter century to be spent busting my butt, just to make it to senior inspector. And that's the best case scenario! That's if some greenhorn with a high-ranked friend doesn't get it before me! And now, a chance to blow that endless circle up has presented itself, see?"
"I'm afraid I don't," I replied with a confused tone.
But I did understand. I understood it all. And I could feel that understanding jabbing into my chest like a jagged shard of ice. But I didn't want to hear what else the inspector had to say.
The inspector, though, wasn't at all stopped by that.
"The fallen one in that basement," he said slowly, looking at his right palm, "he was real and everything you said was true. I sensed his heartbeat. I felt a living heart in a marble sculpture!"
"And what of it?"
"If he escapes..." Robert White whispered, but immediately corrected himself: "If you free him, we could both become powerful beyond our wildest dreams!"
"No! He would simply turn us to ash on the spot!" I objected, not having tried to persuade the man that I was incapable of freeing the fallen one from its stone prison.
Robert White just broke into laughter.
"The fallen have long lost their power," he declared flippantly. "For the first thousand years, their rule was undivided and unchallenged but, the longer they went, the more they lost their rage. The fallen ceased to be Divine Retribution, and got carried away playing ruler. Some considered themselves leaders of the world, and some thought themselves anchorites. Finally, they became nothing more than a shadow of their former selves. Our fathers and grandfathers on the Night of the Titanium Blades poured their blood over the entirety of Atlantis and another half the world as well, so you can't seriously think that we won't be able to handle one lone fallen one, right?"
"Sure, we'll handle it, but what then?" I grimaced. "We will control the fallen one jointly, and make it obey us. But just think, how will society look on this? Well, I can tell you! The Empress will order us skinned alive, quartered and roasted over a low flame, and that, they say, is extremely unpleasant!"
"I'm glad to see you've retained your sense of humor, Leo," the inspector glanced at me unkindly with his colorless eyes. "As for that old nag, you don't need to worry. She's just the Emperor's widow, and the Crown Princess is a constantly ill little girl. People need a strong hand! The old aristocracy spent centuries licking the paws of the fallen, they'll have to obey – servility is in their blood."
I didn't share my boss's confidence on that. When, sixteen years ago, after the Emperor's death, his own brother, the great Duke of Arabia stopped short in his claim to the throne, he and all his close relatives were cut down at once by a flu from Africa. Few doubted that her Imperial Majesty's hand was mixed up in such a sudden end.
After all, he was her brother-in-law! But us? The inspector and I were simply dust under her feet!
For that reason, I said with as much confidence as I could muster:
"The old aristocracy has long lacked any influence."
"That is precisely why they will support us!" Robert White gave his answer with fanatical confidence. "I'm not such an idiot that I would start an open rebellion, but the power of even one fallen one would be enough to change the balance!"
"I don't like that," I admitted honestly.
"Me neither," nodded the inspector appeasingly. "But we can't just let this chance slip through our fingers." He shook his head and again started staring at his open palm. "I felt his heart beating. They turned him into stone, but they couldn't kill him. I sensed his power, I touched it..."
"If your right hand tempts you, cut it off," I said in a detached manner, looking at Maxwell lashing a fallen one with an electric whip; sputtering fire was shooting off in all directions, as well as pieces of snow-white feathers. "The fallen one is tempting you, inspector."
"Hold your tongue!" Robert White threw in sharply. "It wasn't for nothing that I set our meeting here precisely! My mind is free. Spells and curses cannot touch us in this place!"
"As you say."
"So, are you gonna help or not?"
"I don't like this," I repeated stubbornly.
"You prefer to vegetate on twenty thousand a year in income when you could be rising to the very top?"
"Rising to heaven, more like," I snorted. "But we don't believe in such fairy tales, do we? Though we do have firm evidence that hell exists. And that's exactly where we'll be going if you don't smarten up."
"Nonsense!" The inspector cut me off. "So, yes or no?"
"I need to think about it."
"Make the right choice," Robert White made a wry face, stood up from the bench and stepped off toward the exit; his cane was quivering in his hand like the tail of a disgruntled cat.
I picked up the newspaper he'd left behind, and shuffled off after him on my wobbly legs. I came out of the gates of the lyceum. In a stand on the corner I bought a gas water with raspberry syrup. I sucked down the cup in one gulp, and only then somewhat came to my senses.
To say that my boss's unexpected proposition had knocked me off course is to say nothing. In fact, it scared me. It scared me so bad I was hiccupping. After all, these were in no way empty fantasies, no – Robert White made a habit of getting what he wanted. Also, he could hardly have invented a crazier plot than returning a fallen one to life and forcing it to serve him. Even in stone statue form, that fallen one weighed down with its power. But if all its energy were to escape...
I shrugged my shoulders and continued into a cafe, its overhang lit up with the uneven flickering of fifty electric bulbs. The cafe wa
s even named for it – The Bulb.
Inside, it was absolutely packed with adepts of the Sublime Electricity; the reductionists were having lunch, leafing through thick scientific almanacs, arguing until hoarse, and discussing the latest scientific trends, but I was able to get through into a relatively quiet corner, under a comfortable and not quite so bright bulb.
Basically, the place was quiet, but only relatively.
Yablochkov! Lodygin! Tesla! Edison!
Amperes, volts, generators, circuits, charges!
Electricity!!!
I had already looked everywhere for a somewhat calmer place to sit. Oh well. Just then, a waiter walked up to my table.
"I'll have a scoop of ice cream," I asked, remembering my empty wallet just in time.
"Anything else?"
"No thank you," I refused, putting up the newspaper as a shield.
As luck would have it, the front page was "decorated" with a photograph of a lank old lady with two light-struck eyes – the photographic film had proven incapable of containing the gaze of her Imperial Majesty – Empress Victoria.
I gave a shudder. That sweet old aunty wouldn't even hesitate to feed to her hunting hounds whatever remained of me after the interrogation. That was precisely how this all would end, there wasn't even the slightest doubt. And that was if the fallen one didn't eat my soul first!
Did I even have to say that I didn't consider the inspector's proposal seriously, and wasn't preparing to? I only had to come up with a way to refuse my boss and not make a deadly enemy in the process.
Should I tell Department Three?
I knew quite a few people who hated snitches deep down, and even announced that for all to hear but, thanks to their opportunistic interests, would denounce their colleagues or acquaintances at the first chance. I was not preparing to snitch myself, though.
Snitching is like the boomerang used by the aboriginals of Zuid-India; you wouldn't have time to come to your senses before it comes back and smacks you in the head. It would be one man's word against another's, and who would be believed in the end: the inspector or the detective constable? No, the balance of power was definitely not in my favor.
"Your order!" The waiter announced and placed a little dish of ice cream before me. He did not hurry on further.
I dug a few fifty-centime coins from my pocket, tossed them on the table and dived back into reading, trying to come away from these unhappy thoughts with something.
But I didn't.
Would Empress Victoria be finishing her visit to Paris, restored after last winter's flooding, and returning to New Babylon? On the landing pad, would her Imperial Highness Crown Princess Anna be there to meet her grandmother? Was the fifteenth birthday of the heir to the throne coming up?
And what did I care?
I was only concerned with the inspector's request and... the ball.
I scooped a bit of the vanilla ice cream into my dessert spoon and nodded.
Right, the ball!
Problems must be dealt with in order of their significance. And, if Inspector General von Nalz roasts a certain detective constable over a low flame, Robert White's intention to get the same one involved in unpleasant business would already have utterly no meaning.
Do I have to answer the inspector?
Curses! I'll have to worry about that this evening!
I glanced at my watch, set the newspaper down, shoveled down my ice cream in double time, and stood up from the table. I grabbed the bag with my old suit and, with relief, left the overly noisy institution.
Amperes, volts, lumens...
Phooey!
I HAD TO BORROW SOME MONEY from Ramon Miro for a cab; luckily, he wasn't so small-minded as to refuse his colleague, just asking with a smirk:
"I wonder if your yearly salary will cover your debts, or not?"
"I'll dig you up a tenner somehow," I answered, hiding the pair of rumpled bank notes in my wallet. I said nothing of the fact that, with interest, my debts had already piled up to thirty thousand francs.
"You can take it from your advance," the constable reminded me.
"I can take it from my advance." I agreed and set off to find a carriage suitable for my next appearance.
My income from the inheritance fund would be going in its entirety to paying back debts for the first year or two, so the perspective of losing my detective constable's salary had pushed me into a very natural depression. But not going because of that would be playing right into the inspector's hand! Life is more valuable...
I ROLLED HOME in an open carriage. It was nothing luxurious, but completely appropriate to the occasion. The cabby's livery was decked out in shining laces cleaner than a general's uniform.
"Wait here," I ordered him, opened the gate and went into my home. And there, I whistled in surprise, having discovered Elizabeth-Maria in a pink satin dress, draped in lace, beads and sequins.
"Is it time yet?" The girl wondered, trying on a hat in the mirror. Her miniature reticule was waiting on the rack.
"It's time," I affirmed.
My guest walked up to me and took me by the arm.
"Then let's go!"
I slid my glasses down to the very tip of my nose and looked at the girl above their dark lenses. While I'd been gone, she had applied subtle make-up and, now, with lipstick, her lips no longer seemed withered and thin.
"Is something the matter, Leopold?" Elizabeth-Maria smiled charmingly, doubtlessly satisfied with the effect she'd achieved.
"You are simply charming," I answered, returning my glasses to their place.
We came down from the porch and walked through the dead black garden to the gates.
"How romantic!" Unexpectedly, the girl began laughing uncontrollably, plucking a blackened carnation from its stalk, dead like everything else around. Her graceful fingers nimbly broke the brittle stem off and stuck the flower into the buttonhole of my jacket. "There. Now that's much better!"
I sighed hopelessly and requested:
"Don't do that anymore."
"Why not?"
"They don’t grow back."
"Oh, Leo!" my guest shook her head. "Do you also find dead flowers beautiful? You and I are so alike..."
I swung open the gate, helped the girl into the carriage and, only after we'd pulled away, expressed:
"That is not the issue. I simply remember when these flowers were still alive. Their value to me is as mementos, and not in their, as you put it, 'beauty...'"
"You must value what you have, not look into the past," Elizabeth-Maria reproached me. "I advise you to live in the present day, dear..."
"As you say."
"Or has this house made its mark on you?" the girl continued cooing. "Your butler is also strange. It's simply impressive, his composure. I've never seen the like."
"He’s just old school," I once again let out a couple words, not wishing to speak about Theodor.
"Is something bothering you, Leopold?" Elizabeth-Maria took a closer look at me.
"What do you think?" I looked gloomily at her through the dark lenses of my glasses.
The girl only started laughing carelessly.
"Everything will be alright!"
"Let's hope so," I snorted, not sharing anything on the inspector's request.
I didn't even want to think about that, to say nothing of actually discussing it.
Soon, the narrow little streets of the old town were behind us, and our wheels stopped bouncing around on the uneven tiles. But the jostling was replaced by smog that stretched out over the street. The smoke from the factory outskirts made my throat itch. Elizabeth-Maria just kept silent, covering her face with a perfumed kerchief.
It grew easier only when the carriage turned onto Newtonstraat and the colossus of the police headquarters was looming in front of us. There was a whole file of carriages lined up in front of the central entrance; cabbies were dropping off passengers and immediately leaving, so I came to an agreement with our driver on where exactly he w
ould be meeting us after the end of the reception, jumped out onto the sidewalk and pulled my companion after me by the arm. And when she stepped down from the running board, I pushed down the last remnants of doubt and led Elizabeth-Maria down to the flung-wide doors of the Newton-Markt.
The dress shirt on my back was soaked through with sweat. My mouth had gone dry, and the little hammers of an approaching headache were starting to pound in my temples. But I just smiled and looked around imperturbably. I handed my invitation to the steward standing in the doorway with a look of complete and total carelessness; I simply handed him the triangle of chalk paper and headed directly into the room where we normally held our staff meetings.
Now I could hear snippets of music coming from it, and Elizabeth-Maria slightly shifted her pace to fit the rhythm of the joyful melody. I couldn't even dream of such grace, so I simply walked through the corridor and greeted my acquaintances, who I came across from time to time. I didn't converse with anyone. The most I did was trade a few meaningless sentences for a few seconds.
I saw the inspector general standing near the entrance. The old bobby was busy speaking with a tall fat man and a doughy young boy in a shamelessly fancy suit but, when I approached, he immediately left the Minister of Justice and his nephew and made way for us.
"Viscount!" he faded into a smile. "Won't you introduce me to your companion?"
I swallowed nervously and smiled with great difficulty:
"Inspector general, my bride the Illustrious Elizabeth-Maria Nickley. Elizabeth-Maria, the head of the metropolitan police, Inspector General von Nalz."
"Viscount!" Friedrich von Nalz erupted into laughter, his eyes glimmering with colorless flame. "No need for such pomp! Everyone here today is a friend or sympathizer. No titles!"
"As you say... Friedrich," I bowed my head slightly.
"Come on in! Come on!" the inspector general allowed, then and returned to the conversation I'd interrupted. And I led Elizabeth-Maria into the room.
"That was the meeting you were so apprehensive about?" She whispered to me.
"Apprehensive? Me? Where'd you get that from?"
Then the girl got up on tip-toe and very quietly exhaled into my ear: