Red-Handed (Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow 01)
Page 9
“Pardon?” Josephine said.
“Hang on,” Ulysses said, remembering to speak in French again, for his companion’s benefit.
The headline read:
BLACK SWAN – WORLD PREMIERE
He scanned the article beneath, translating as he went.
“Have you heard anything about this new ballet, Black Swan?” he asked.
“No,” the courtesan replied. “Why? Should I?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that it’s been written by the late Roussel.”
“Oh?” Josephine replied.
But Ulysses was already done with the newspaper article and was now patting his pockets, as if looking for something. And then he remembered.
“Can you pass me my jacket?” he said, motioning towards the scruffy article hanging from the end of the bed with his sling-draped arm.
Josephine did as she was bid. “There you go,” she said as she passed it to him.
The bloodied and folded manuscript paper was still where he had hidden it before fleeing the garret room. But it was only as he was unfolded the sheet of parchment that he noticed what had been scrawled on the reverse for the first time.
Ulysses peered more closely at the mark. At first he had taken it to be a blot of ink or a smear of blood but now, as he brought it closer to his face and studied it more carefully, he could see the loops and whorls were too many and too well-intentioned – it was clearly handwriting. The trouble was deciphering what it was supposed to say.
He turned the folded sheet over for a moment and regarded at the words that had been crossed out at the top of the page again:
Black Swan
“What do you make of this?” he said, pushing the paper in Josephine’s direction, showing her the reverse with its strange word-smear.
“Hmm,” the girl hummed as she studied it herself. “I think it’s a name. This here” – she pointed at the end of the smear – “it looks like it was meant to be ‘Montmartre.’ In fact I’m sure it is, only whoever started writing this didn’t finish it...” Her words stumbled into silence as she saw the blood and realised why the message had been left incomplete.
“What about the rest of it?” Ulysses pressed, watching as the colour drained from the girl’s cheeks. “We are attempting to solve a double murder here, after all, so things are bound to get a bit squeamish.”
Josephine swallowed hard, her gaze lingering on the mysterious dark smudges on the back of the parchment.
“See here? That’s ‘M.’ for ‘Monsieur,’ then this bit is ‘Lum...’ ‘Lumière,’ I think, or something very much like it.”
“Monsieur Lumière,” Ulysses repeated, trying the name out on his tongue, “resident of Montmartre. So how far away do you think he lives?”
“THANK YOU,” ULYSSES said, as Josephine helped him into his scuffed jacket. “For all that you’ve done. And Madame Marguerite. And her son, whatever his name is. You will pass on my thanks to them, won’t you? And I promise I’ll wire them the money I owe them just as soon as I get back to England and get things straightened out there.”
“If you really want to thank me,” the girl said as she smoothed down his lapels, “you won’t go.”
Ulysses smiled. “I have to.”
“But you need to rest,” Josephine persisted.
“What I need to do is hunt down a homicidal eight-foot tall gorilla!”
He folded up the sling he had already removed from around his neck and placed it in a jacket pocket, moving towards the bedroom door.
The girl suddenly skipped past him, bracing herself in the doorway, blocking the dandy’s way out.
“Josephine,” he began.
“You can’t go!” she cut him off.
“I have to,” he said calmly, yet firmly.
“Why? Give me one good reason.”
“There’s just something I have to do. Now, if you’ll let me past...”
“But you can’t go alone.” Josephine was struggling to find a decent excuse now.
“I won’t be alone, will I?” Ulysses said softly.
The courtesan’s face fell and her chin dropped onto her chest. A single tear traced a path across her cheek. Catching her chin with his right hand, wincing slightly as he did so, he raised her head and met her gaze again.
“Because you’ll be here,” he said, placing his left hand on his breast, “won’t you?”
JOSEPHINE WATCHED FROM a third storey window as the man who had called himself “Ulysses” crossed the street below, continually scanning the road to both left and right as he did so, his eye-patch almost hidden by the hat now pulled down over his head. With his stubble gone as well he looked like a very different man to the one who had arrived two days ago.
“Good luck, my dashing hero,” she said, the tears running freely down her face, “and may God go with you.”
She watched until he turned the corner at the end of the street and was gone swallowed by the labyrinthine streets of Montmartre.
And she continued to stare at the empty space long after he was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Call Me Ishmael
“IS IT READY?” Le Papillon asked as he regarded the caged beast.
The primate was asleep. It lay on the tilted gurney, secured by the clamps about its wrists and neck, the huge gorilla-shaped cage shut fast around it. The air was redolent with the musky animal smell of the thing.
“Oh, it’s ready, alright,” Moreau said, grinning inanely. There was a manic gleam in his eye.
Eight feet tall, eight hundred pounds in weight, its already intimidating strength enhanced by the cybernetics implanted into almost every part of its body, it was an awe-inspiring sight.
“And he has a name now,” the doctor added.
“He?”
“After all, I couldn’t keep on referring to him as ‘that thing’ or ‘it’ now, could I?”
“Couldn’t you?” Le Papillon looked askance at the doctor. “So what’s he called?”
“Ishmael.”
“Any particular reason?” the anarchist asked, his gaze wandering over the massive musculature and metallic enhancements of the savage beast.
“I don’t know, it just seemed... appropriate. Noble.”
“Next you’ll be telling me that this thing –”
“Ishmael.”
“Ishmael – if you must – is some manner of noble savage. The Caliban to your Prospero, as it were.”
“Who?”
Le Papillion scowled. “Never mind. It’s not important.” For someone so obviously intelligent, Montague Moreau’s education was sorely lacking in places. “So, are we ready?”
Moreau took a seat in front of the Babbage engine control unit built into his desk. He flicked a switch and the mish-mash of machinery the device was connected to began to crackle and hum. Le Papillon wrinkled his nose as the tinny smell of ozone filled the chamber, mixing unpleasantly with the odour exuding from the ape.
“Ready when you are,” Moreau said, evidently thrilled by the anticipation of what they were about to do.
“Time is, as they say, of the essence,” Le Papillon said. Following the doctor’s example, he lowered a pair of tinted goggles over his eyes. “Fire away.”
His gaze flitting between the screen in front of him – an emerald rotating wire-frame image of the enhanced ape displayed upon it – and the cybernetically-enhanced creation itself, Moreau took a lever in his left hand and activated the mechanism.
The crackling hum rose in pitch and sporadic bursts of electric blue began to bathe the cage. As the anarchist watched, the sparking serpents snaked their way towards the crown of electrodes embedded in the great ape’s skull.
The gorilla’s eyes flicked open.
Le Papillon took a surprised step backwards.
“You’re sure you have it under control?” he asked the doctor. “You’re sure it’s safe?”
“For you and I? Of course,” Moreau said, far too casually for Le Papillon’s li
king. “For whichever target I implant inside its brain, not so much,” the scientist-surgeon smirked.
The cyberneticist depressed a button on the control panel; the clasps holding the electrified cage closed released, and the cage sprang open.
Moreau’s fingers danced over the rattling keys of the console as he typed a string of commands into the ordinateur.
The massive animal sat up and yawned. It slowly turned its head from left to right and back again, its obsidian eyes scanning every inch of the room as it did so.
Le Papillon took another step back.
Moreau typed something else into his Babbage engine and the ape stepped down from the cage and gurney, great slabs of muscle moving beneath its rippling, black-furred hide. Biceps as thick as tree trunks tensed as the beast hefted the heavy steel vambraces that sheathed its forearms.
Sparks popped from the cage as the last of the electrical energy dissipated. Inconsequential wisps of smoke rose from the silver fur of the giant gorilla’s back as a last few desultory arcs discharged themselves within the ape’s muscular body.
Still keeping one eye on the hulking brute, Le Papillon lent over towards Moreau. “You have inputted the target’s designation?”
“As we speak,” Moreau replied, his hands flying over the console keyboard.
“Then Monsieur Lumière’s time has come.”
With one final, bold keystroke, Doctor Moreau’s hands came to a standstill, the middle finger of his right hand hovering over the enamelled enter key.
“Wait!” Le Papillon suddenly snapped, with uncharacteristic irascibility.
Doctor Moreau looked at him, eyebrows arching in surprise.
“I want you to enter a second target.”
“A second target? But I thought there was only one left that needed eliminating...” He broke off as realisation dawned. “Oh, I see.”
“Can you do it?”
“Easy,” the cyberneticist laughed. “I don’t think Ishmael is likely to forget the one that got away, do you?”
“Then do it.”
“Do you want him to hunt the bastard down, then?”
“After it has eliminated Mousier Lumière,” Le Papillon replied, peering the length of the cellar at the newest addition to his collection – a black and orange butterfly of the species Danaus plexippus, mounted in a stark white frame all by itself, as if frozen in a moment of time.
“But of course,” Moreau chuckled, his twitching fingers darting over the keyboard again, lines of algorithmic code appearing on the screen in glowing green characters in synchronicity with his deft keystrokes.
“Precisely,” Le Papillon said, a scowl knotting his face. He didn’t like being second-guessed by anyone.
Moreau stopped typing and turned, giving Le Papillon an expectant look.
“Activate,” the anarchist said.
The doctor struck the enter key.
With a grunt, the giant gorilla lurched forward, making for the arched doorway leading from the cellar into an adjoining passageway, which in turn ultimately connected with the labyrinthine tunnels of the Paris sewer system, and a multitude of ways out of Le Papillon’s subterranean lair.
Le Papillon followed, keeping a wary distance between himself and the beast, as the hulking primate squeezed through the archway and into the corridor beyond. Doctor Moreau stayed where he was, observing the creature’s progress via the monitor built into his control desk.
He saw what the ape saw. Bio-electrical impulses travelling along its optic nerves were relayed via the electrodes in the ape’s skull to the transmitter positioned between the animal’s shoulder blades. The transmitter – which was now protected by a shielding collar that surrounded the creature’s neck – then converted those signals into radio waves which were beamed to a receiver in Moreau’s control console. From there they became grainy images on the screen in front of him.
The huge ape moved almost silently along the corridor as it squeezed itself between the narrow walls. The only sounds it made were the padding of its leathery feet on the rough floor, and the scrape of its shoulders against the ancient brickwork. There was a single-minded purpose to its movements. It had been given its target and now it had murder on its mind.
A moment later it was swallowed by the shadows that awaited it in the tunnel beyond. And then it was gone.
Le Papillon allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction. Everything was back on course.
The butterfly had flapped its wings, and on the horizon, beyond the monolithic landmarks of the Parisian skyline, the storm clouds were massing.
About the Author
JONATHAN GREEN is a freelance writer, with more than thirty books to his name. Well known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy range of adventure gamebooks, and numerous Black Library publications, he has also written fiction for such diverse properties as Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
He is the creator of Pax Britannia, and Time’s Arrow is his eighth novel for Abaddon Books. He lives and works in West London. To find out more about the steampunk world of Pax Britannia, set your Babbage engine’s ether-relay to www.PaxBritannia.com.
WHAT WILL BECOME OF OUR DASHING HERO NEXT?
Have you ever read a book and wished you could get into the story?
Have you ever wanted to shout a warning to the hero, or advise him on how best to proceed?
Now's your chance!
In the next thrilling instalment of Time's Arrow, “Black Swan,” our hero – wanted by the French Police for murder – battles his way across Paris, from the Louvre to Notre Dame, in order to prove his innocence. And you get to decide where the story goes next!
Does Ulysses try to contact Department Q for help?
or
Does Ulysses go in search of the mysterious “M. Lumière”?
For more information, and to cast your vote, head over to the Abaddon Books website now!
VOTING CLOSES ON SUNDAY, 11TH DECEMBER 2011!
WWW.ABADDONBOOKS.COM
In which our hero – wanted by the French Police for murder – battles his way across Paris, from the Louvre to Notre Dame, in order to prove his innocence.
But does Ulysses try to contact Department Q for help or does he go in search of the mysterious M. Lumière? And who else will come to his aid in his hour of need?
www.abaddonbooks.com
Start a new life on the moon!
Ulysses Quicksilver visits the British lunar colonies, searching for his missing brother, Barty, believed to be on the run from gambling debts on Earth. The clues lead our detective and his faithful butler into the path of unsolved murders, battling robots, shady millionaires and stolen uncanny inventions. Used to working inside the law, Ulysses is stalled when his pursuit puts him on the wrong side of the Luna Prime Police Force.
But why is Ulysses’ ex-fiancée Emilia also in the colonies? Who is the strange eye-patched man following Ulysses? And what is really happening in a secret base on the dark side of the moon?
Used to meeting every adventure with a devil-may-care attitude and a snappy one-liner, Ulysses will be forever changed by the revelations he discovers on this most deadly of trips
www.abaddonbooks.com
Born of Science - Born of Madness!
Ulysses Quicksilver, agent of the crown, jumps into a time vortex pursuing Daniel Dashwood, a madman bent on sharing modern technology with Hitler’s forces and changing history to suit his evil ends. Rewind several decades, to the time of the Second Great War, to Darmstadt. The Nazis are battling the steampunk empire of Magna Britannia, cooking up necrotic super-soldiers in the gothic towers of Castle Frankenstein.
In the forests outside the castle, other forces are gathering. Ulysses’ father is there, proving that dashing good looks and a talent for swashbuckling adventures run in the family, and wondering why his British masters have partnered him with weakling scientist Dr. Jekyll. The ladies of the Monstrous Regiment are also the
re to help, but there may be other gothic monsters in the hills...
www.abaddonbooks.com
Title
Series
Dedication and Indicia
Welcome to Time's Arrow
Butterflies
Prologue
Part One: Red-Handed
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
Now Choose...
'Time's Arrow, Part Two: Black Swan' by Jonathan Green
'Dark Side' by Jonathan Green
'Anno Frankenstein' by Jonathan Green