by Lavie Tidhar
The pub was dark, smoky, and full of hazily seen figures. Orphan removed his coat and looked about him for Irene Adler. He saw a white hand beckoning to him from a booth in the corner, and went to join her, next to a small ship's-window that had fog climbing to it outside like ivy.
"Sit down," Irene Adler said.
She was sitting alone, a half-drunk glass of white wine before her. Her bright, alert eyes had dark rings around. "I'll get a drink," Orphan said.
He went to the bar, paid, and returned with a tall glass. As he sat down opposite the inspector a shadow fell across the table.
He had seen that face before. The black curly hair, the sharp nose, the smooth features: Lord Byron. A youthful Lord Byron, without the ravages of time. "Byron," Irene Adler said. "Please, sit down. Orphan, this is Lord Byron."
Byron sat next to the Inspector, opposite Orphan. He didn't speak. Orphan, captivated – he had seldom seen one of its kind before – studied him overtly.
It was disconcerting. The youthful features, the hair, even the eyes seemed that of a young man, but now, as he examined them, he thought: they are precise and unchanging, the way a doll's are. This was not Byron, the poet, the rebel, who was long time dead. It was a remarkable simulation of a man, yet a simulation all the same, and now that he could see that, could examine him in this way, in an almost intimate fashion, Orphan noticed the way the face moved mechanically from one expression to another, the too-sharp angles of the body, even, when Byron turned his head to look at Irene, the small, tell-tale metal tag that was embedded discreetly in his neck.
Byron turned his head back to Orphan and now Orphan could see that the eyes, too, were unreal: they were glassy, marble-like, devoid of feeling or even true sight. The Byron simulacrum sighed (and Orphan marvelled at the way his chest moved, the way the air travelled through its throat and nose) and said, "I am not human."
There was a silence. Orphan could think of nothing to say in reply.
At last, it was Irene who spoke. She looked across the table at Orphan and said, "Do you remember what happened at the Rose?"
Orphan, looking at her, thought of Lucy.
"Describe it to me."
He shook himself. His mind slipped back to what he had seen. Henry Irving, in his guise as Shakespeare. Beerbohm Tree stepping onto the stage as the Ancient Mariner holding in his hands a heavy, leather-bound folio. Irving opening the book.
The book exploding.
"What happened to Beerbohm?"
Orphan, lost, looked into Irene's eyes. He had not thought of the young actor. He tried to think back, but could conjure no clear image. "Did he not die in the explosion?"
Irene looked down into her wine glass. The Byron simulacrum sat quietly, like a machine that had been temporarily switched off. "What I tell you is a state secret," Irene said at last. "But I think we are beyond secrets now, Orphan." She raised her face, and he could see the deep weariness in her eyes, the moving shadows.
"Beerbohm Tree was found, dead, in an abandoned warehouse by the docks a few hours after the explosion at the Rose. He had been there since at least the previous day. He had not been at the Rose at all." She twisted the stem of the wine glass. "When we… when I found him, there was not much left of him. His hands were clasped about what was left of his chest. They held a blackened, broken object. It might have once been a book."
"The Bookman…" Orphan said. "But I saw him there," he objected. "I saw him at the theatre." Even to himself he sounded petulant. Then his eyes fell on Byron and he whispered, "It was a machine."
The Byron automaton stirred. "Was it?" he said. "What is a machine, Orphan? La Mettrie wrote that 'the human body is a machine which winds its own springs'. Can a machine act in a play? Can a machine play music? Can a machine love?"
"I… I don't know," Orphan said. He looked from Byron to Irene. "I don't understand." He wanted to shout. "What has this got to do with Lucy?"
"Following the explosion in Richmond Park," Irene Adler said, "a brief, powerful burst of concentrated energy was recorded, originating at the very moment the book exploded in Lucy's hands. We have recorded a similar transmission after the explosion at the Rose. These books with which the Bookman so cunningly kills – they are not mere books. They are devices."
Orphan swallowed. The beer stood forgotten on the table before him. He said, "Devices of what?"
"Perhaps," Irene said, so quietly she may have been speaking to herself, "they are recording devices."
"And they record… what?" He thought back to the Rose, to the counterfeit Beerbohm Tree, indistinguishable from the real thing. As if the man had been copied in his entirety, as if he had been recreated, made anew, and left to perform his role as if nothing had happened… And he said, in a hushed voice, the thought cooling him down as if he were still outside, and it was snowing, "You think he takes people's souls."
Lucy, he suddenly thought. So that was what the Inspector had wanted him to understand. If she was not killed, but merely… what? Abducted? Translated? Taken by the lord of Hades, to reside forever in his dark and lonely court?
"Perhaps," Irene Adler said. There was such pain in her eyes that, for a moment, Orphan couldn't bear to look at them. She was, he thought, gazing inwards, looking deep within herself at a memory he could not see. She, too, he thought suddenly, the realisation striking him, had lost someone she loved to the Bookman. And he wondered who it was.
Across the table from him Byron stirred again. "La Mettrie," Byron said, "says that 'the soul is but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and which an enlightened man should only use to signify the part in us that thinks. Given the least principle of motion, animated bodies will have all that is necessary for moving, feeling, thinking, repenting, or in a word for conducting themselves in the physical realm, and in the moral realm which depends upon it.'" He sighed and looked down at himself, and shook his head as if confused. "I will ask you again," he said. "What is a machine?"
But Orphan didn't answer. Could it be, he wondered – could Lucy, somehow, still be alive? Could she come back, the way Beerbohm Tree had come back, if only for a short while? He said, his voice choking, "How could I get her back?"
"Listen," Irene said. She inched her ear at Byron, prompting him to speak.
"I don't know who – what – the Bookman is," Byron said. "But I know this: there are more artificers on this earth than the bureaucrats of the Babbage company who made me. I am but a machine. I am human-made, and as imperfect as a human. But I listen." His eyes, those great and vacant marbles, were no longer empty, and he turned his head in a delicate movement, as if listening to something unheard. "I listen to the talk of machines, to the exchange of Tesla communications, to the constant hum of the aether. We simulacra are rare and far apart, so far. But we talk to each other, and to others who are not like us in form, but whose souls are. And the rumours persist."
He spoke with a great gravity, and a little sadness. And it seemed to Orphan that he knew why, for surely what he was learning was a secret to these beings, and not easily shared. Impulsively he said, "Thank you, my Lord," and saw the Byron simulacrum smile. "I am not Byron," he said. "I am made to look like him, to sound like him, to quote his words and pretend his moods. But I do not have his talent for poetry, nor his love of it…" He sighed again, and for a moment he was Byron, an older, wiser lord who carried a heavier burden on his slim shoulders.
After a moment, Orphan said, "What rumours do you hear?"
Byron raised his head and his fingers tapped a gentle rhythm on the tabletop. "That there are others, like us and not. That there are other, alien beings, not human nor mechanical, but something of both." He shook his head. "A storm is coming, Orphan. A great storm that travels over the sea and lashes the waves into submission, whose origin is one island and its destination another. We believe…"
He fell silent.
"Believe what?"
"It is of no importance."
"Please," Orphan said. The simulacrum smiled.
"I do not know who, or what, the Bookman is," he said. "All I know is that he is bound, whether in love or in hate – and the two are often merely two aspects of the same emotion – with Les Lézard. And the story is told that – like love and hate, perhaps – the Bookman too has an opposite. Perhaps another aspect of himself. Who knows? Is he real? Is the Bookman?"
"He killed… he killed Lucy."
"Ah, empirical evidence," Byron said. "Yes. Again, I'm sorry."
"What do you believe?"
Byron laughed. It was a grating, harsh sound. "We believe in the Translation," he said.
"Translation of what?"
"The translation, perhaps, of us all. Goodbye, Orphan." He stood, then, pushing his chair back, his movements stiff and unnatural like those of a toy. "But what your part in this is, if any, I do not know."
He made to turn away from them. But Orphan stopped him, rising and putting his hand on the simulacrum's shoulder. "Please," he said. "Who can I turn to?"
Byron turned to him, and for a long moment they stood facing each other, unmoving, Orphan's hand resting on Byron's shoulder.
At last Byron turned away. Orphan's arm dropped to his side. The simulacrum began to make his way towards the door, his steps slow and heavy and mechanical.
Halfway he stopped, and turned back. Orphan watched him, the fine, pale, manufactured face looking back at him as if seeking an answer to a different question. Then it changed, as if a corner of a picturepuzzle had become suddenly clear to him, and he smiled and said, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried across the room, "Ask the Turk."
NINE
At the Cock-Pit
A forum there is for debate,
A Fives Court for milling in fun, Sirs,
A Parliament House for the great,
With a cock-pit for cruelty's sport, Sirs.
– John Ashton, The Treats of London
Orphan walked home across the bridge, deep in thought. When Byron left he had finished his drink and thanked Irene Adler. They barely spoke, each of them isolated in a separate pool of thought. He wanted again to ask her who she had lost, but thought better of it when he saw the expression in her eyes. Instead, he rose from the table and made his way outside, where an icy fog had settled over the city like a pale northern invader.
His footsteps barely echoed as he walked across the bridge. He could see no living thing, as if the city was deserted, and he was alone in it, the last living man left in a ghost town. Even the whales were silent. To save Lucy, he thought, I must find the Bookman. But where do I start? He missed her, with a terrible urgency that surprised him even as it hurt. They were bound together, he and her.
When he reached the Strand he thought he heard a soft smooth sound coming from above his head and, raising it, glimpsed for a moment the movement of a velvety darkness low in the skies. An unmarked black airship, he thought, and almost laughed to himself. It was a fanciful idea, one of Jack's. He continued past St Martin in the Fields, and thought he caught another glimpse of the blimp, passing high to his left. He walked up St Martin's Lane and turned left with relief into Cecil Court.
Payne's was a haven of light in a dark world. Stepping inside, he was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling of home. The familiar, conflicting smells of the books vied for his attention. The musty tang of old volumes, the polished smell of new leather bindings, the crisp clear scent of freshly printed books, all rose to greet him, like a horde of somewhat-dysfunctional relatives at a family event.
Lit candles were scattered haphazardly around the room, perched precariously on piles of books and on the long counter. They cast spheres of light interlinked by shadows that fluttered like painted eyelids. He made his way into the back room and found his bed unaltered and waiting for him, a worn, comfortable companion.
On the small table rested a sputtering candle and beside it were two glasses and Jack's bottle of Old Bushmills.
It's like I hadn't left, Orphan thought. It's as if the last few days never happened, as if I only just came back from meeting Lucy. He felt a sense of unreality steal over him, but the sense of loss he felt was real enough, and would not let him sink into comforting dreams. Instead he lay down on the bed. Behind closed eyelids the candle flickered, lulling him into sleep. He felt exhausted, still weak from his injuries, and cold.
"Orphan."
When he opened his eyes the candle had burned down to a stub. One of the glasses on the table was missing and the bottle had been moved. A shadowcowled figure watched him from the doorway and for a moment he felt panic, ascribing to the unseen face the hideous countenance of a nightmare: he had fallen asleep, he realised, and he dreamed… he dreamed of the Bookman, a monstrous being made of the yellowing pages of thousands of books, with a face like bleached vellum and gilt-edged eyes, who stalked him through a maze of bookshelves where no light penetrated.
The figure in the doorway moved and it was only Jack, holding a glass half-full with amber liquid. His face was drawn and tired, with shadows around his eyes.
"Jack."
He sat up, feeling groggy. His foot hit a shelf and sent books flying to the floor. He shook his head, trying to dispel the cobwebs that stretched inside it, and with them the last images of his dream. Jack came forward and sat down in the chair opposite. He poured drink into the remaining glass and offered it to Orphan. "I'm sorry."
Orphan nodded and accepted the drink, and they sat in silence. Orphan contemplated the glass in his hands and could think of nothing to say. It was Jack, therefore, who finally broke the silence. "What will you do now?" he said, and he looked at Orphan with his head cocked to one side, a strangely sorrowful expression on his face.
But Orphan didn't know. He felt disorientated, unsure of the time, unsure even if it was still night, or whether day had crept over the city while he was sleeping. So he said, "What's the time?" and watched Jack nod, as if Orphan's question had confirmed something he had previously only suspected. "Four, four-thirty." He must have seen the confusion in Orphan's eyes. "In the morning." He stood up suddenly, depositing an empty glass on the table. "Come with me."
"What is it, Jack?"
His friend shook his head. "I want to show you something. Come."
With a groan, Orphan rose from the bed. He felt curiously light-headed, as if this was all but part of a bad dream, and he was still asleep. He left his untouched drink on the table besides Jack's glass and followed him out of the room.
The door banged behind them as they stepped outside the shop. Though the fog had abated the air was cold and damp, and a strong stench, as of an open sewer, filled the air. It had rained while Orphan slept, but it had done nothing to cleanse the city. Black velvety night pressed oppressively over Cecil Court, unhindered by the feeble gas lights that stood on St Martin's Lane.
He followed Jack without speaking. They crossed St Martin's and went through New Row, past shuttered shops and onto King Street. He could hear the sounds of a fight, screams and breaking glass followed by hoarse, wild laughter coming from the old Bucket of Blood pub on nearby Rose Street.
Jack led him on. The market square, lit by gaslight, was a place of shadows and squalor. Tired prostitutes, mainly women but with two or three bare-chested men amidst them, converged in small groups underneath the roofed market, negotiating with late revellers who seemed unsteady on their feet. A man cursed loudly and was pushed away; he walked off, still swearing loudly. On the corner of the Opera House a man stood behind a stall and a small fire, and the heavy smell of frying onions and sausage-meat filled the square like a march of invading soldiers.
Orphan liked Covent Garden during the day, when the fruit and vegetable market was open and continental restaurants filled the air with the scents of garlic and cooking spices. He avoided it at night, when it became, or so it seemed, the lode-stone that exerted its powerful pull on every lecher and drunk in the Lizardine Empire. Even this late the barely discreet bawdy-houses on the side streets were no doubt operating, and the pubs and drinking establis
hments were still seeing out the late stragglers who refused to wave goodbye to the night and adjourn at last to their beds. He wondered what they were doing there at this hour, Jack and him, but his will seemed to have seeped out of him, and he merely followed in Jack's footsteps, not asking the question, content to merely walk on through the haze of the market.
They walked past a group of drunk students halfshouting and half-singing the words to the old favourite, "If I Had A Donkey Wot Wouldn't Go". Orphan smiled when he heard the closing words, followed by a last, spirited chorus:
Bill's donkey was ordered into Court,
In which he caused a deal of sport,
He cocked his ears, and opened his jaws,
As if he wished to plead his cause.
I proved I'd been uncommonly kind,
The ass got a verdict – Bill got fined;
For his worship and me was of one mind –