The Constantine Affliction

by Tim Pratt

  Pimm coughed. “Well. Freddy brought it home, really. She has a passion for novels. I read parts. And only from the first volume. I confess the portions devoted to the particulars of sailing were only slightly less tedious for me than those passages devoted to theological musings.”

  Ellie nodded. “I commented on the author’s longwindedness on the former subject in the review I penned for the Argus, but nevertheless, it is a worthy volume, with much of value regarding the subject of unhealthy fixations. You should never resist the opportunity to learn something new, I think. Pray give the story another look. We could discuss the text.”

  “Just tell me if the mad captain ever caught his great fish?”

  “I will not satisfy your curiosity. You’ll simply have to read it yourself.”

  They emerged into the fading day, all squinting against the fog-dimmed sun. “Finding a cab in this neighborhood will be difficult,” Pimm said.

  “Carrington brought us in a carriage,” Winnie said. “That horrible Crippen took the horses away somewhere. Oswald came separately—perhaps the carriage that carried us is still here?”

  “I know where they keep the horses and such,” Ben said. “Around back here.”

  They tramped around the perimeter of the warehouse, until they found a disreputable set of stalls, and the poor horses, still hitched up to the carriage. Ben looked around and pronounced the area deserted. “Will this conveyance suit Your Majesty?” Pimm said. “I’m afraid we will all have to ride together.”

  “It will have to do,” the Queen said, and sniffed.

  Pimm opened the door of the carriage, then backed suddenly away. “Ben,” he whispered, and Ellie stepped forward to peer into the coach.

  “Crippler” Crippen was seated inside, leaning against one wall of the coach, quite asleep, a thread of drool running down his chin.

  “Ah,” Ben said. “Allow me.” He put down the batteries, reached into the carriage, grabbed the ex-fighter by the ankles, and jerked him out of the carriage in a single motion. The back of Crippen’s head banged the seat, then the carriage floor, then the step, then the ground. Crippen squawked and waved his arms, until Pimm cocked his pistol and pointed it down at the man.

  “Aw, Ben,” Crippen said, rubbing his head and looking up at the giant holding his ankles. “What’s all this then?”

  “I’ve gone over to the other side, Crip,” Ben said. “I’ll have to tie you up, I’m afraid. Will you give us any trouble?”

  Crippen sighed. “Even on my best day I never faced more than one man at a time in the ring, and never a fellow with a pistol.” He looked hopefully at Pimm. “Am I to understand you’re hiring help, sir? Sir Bertram pays me quite handsome, but I’m open to other offers—”

  “I am afraid I have no positions in need of filling just now,” Pimm said. “We’ll just bind you and prop you in the stable, all right?”

  “Just promise to send someone ’round to get me later, Ben,” Crippen said. “It’s been terrible cold nights, lately.”

  Ben glanced at Pimm, who nodded. “Consider it done,” Ben said, and commenced to bind his old associate with a length of coarse rope he found dangling over the side of one stall.

  Ellie drew Pimm aside. “That man attacked me with a knife. I understand we hope to avoid further violence, but to simply set him free—”

  Pimm blinked. “Ah, no. I will indeed send someone to get him—but that someone will be a policeman. Probably best if we don’t mention that to him, though.”

  Ellie laughed, relieved. “I should never have doubted you.”

  “Oh, no. It’s always wise to doubt me. There’s no better way to avoid disappointment.”

  Ellie had never expected to ride in a carriage with a Queen, and the experience was not what she might have imagined. The Queen was a querulous, portly man, after all, though undeniably regal. Winnie and Ellie sat across from Her Majesty, while Pimm sat up top with Ben, who was driving the horses across the city toward Pimm’s home. The opening ceremony at the Exposition was due to start in Hyde Park near sundown—some of the effects were meant to be more spectacular in the dark, or so the handbills promoting the event had promised.

  Ellie worried they wouldn’t make it there before Oswald set his plan in action, but Winnie insisted they stop by her home first—“Unless you’d like to fight Oswald’s monsters with a walking stick and a pistol?” When they arrived, Winnie opened the carriage door herself—the Queen tutted—and climbed out, where Pimm was already waiting with the batteries. “This will take me a bit of time to prepare,” Winnie said. “You should go on to the park without me. Look for the devices, the ones made of brass and crystal, and smash them up. Destroying even one of them should be enough to prevent Oswald from opening his portal. With luck, you can stop the monsters from coming through at all. And if not… I’ll be along with weapons.”

  “More harpoons?” Ellie said.

  “Oh, I think I can do better than that. Remember the horrible engine we saw being assembled? Look for me in its vicinity. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

  “Perhaps Your Majesty would consent to stay at my home?” Pimm said, leaning into the coach. “There is no reason for you to go rushing into danger—”

  “We are meant to be at this exhibition,” the Queen said, chins quivering with suppressed fury. “We intend to be in attendance, and to denounce whatever imposter presumes to take our place.”

  Pimm closed his eyes briefly, which Ellie had already learned was a sign that he was attempting to calm himself down. He opened his eyes, smiled, and nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty. Your presence would be an honor.”

  “Don’t allow yourself to be eaten before I arrive,” Winnie said, and patted Pimm on the cheek before hurrying to her front door, batteries held under her arms.

  “Once more into the breach,” Pimm said, and shut the carriage door.

  “I suppose I shall have to give him a knighthood, assuming he survives,” the Queen murmured, apparently to herself, or so Ellie gathered from the fact that she said “I” instead of “We.”

  Forearmed

  Hyde Park was jammed with bodies. Ellie had observed often that Londoners were fond of anything that promised spectacle at no charge, and the handbills promoting the Exposition had been exceptionally lurid for what was, after all, described as a display of “the newest scientific advancements in electricity, magnetism, and alchemy.” Such a thing might suggest dry lectures, but the handbill was festooned with engravings featuring lightning bolts, a levitating man, and, for no reason Ellie had been able to discern, an elephant with enormous curving tusks.

  A portion of the park along the northern bank of the Serpentine had been transformed for the exhibition. The area was lit by hundreds of alchemical lights strung along ropes and hung atop towering wooden poles, and a large stage had been erected, filled with tantalizing-looking mechanical apparatuses, some visible even from the back of the crowd: something like a huge orrery, but featuring a strange configuration of planets, with twin suns at the center; an enormous engine topped with a huge horn, stylized to resemble the bell of a flower; a huge cannon pointed skyward, its barrel embellished with dozens of tubes curving in baroque profusion; a glass-walled tank as tall as a man, full of faintly-glowing pink liquid; and other remarkable devices and displays of uncertain purpose. Oswald wasn’t visible yet, nor the false Queen, and the special seats set up to one side of the stage for the Prime Minister and other high officials were only about a quarter occupied—apparently most of the great men of London had better things to do than attend Oswald’s celebration of his own accomplishments.

  “I’ll work my way around toward the river,” Pimm said, all but shouting in Ellie’s ear to overcome the steady din of the crowd, which conversed, complained, commiserated, attempted to sell one another boiled sweets and ham sandwiches and gingerbread-nuts and Persian sherbet, speculated about what sights the Exposition might present, and bellowed angrily at the inevitable pickpockets. “I think that to
wer must be one of the engines.” He pointed to a dim construction that towered over the crowd on the river side of the stage. “You should check on the far side of the stage!”

  Pimm moved away before Ellie could object—or point out that the engine she and Winnie had seen constructed was on the far side of the stage, not over by the Serpentine. She was left with Ben and the Queen, both of whom looked a little sick, doubtless for different reasons—the Queen probably because she had not been so close to the milling shouting stinking press of her subjects in years, if ever, and Ben because he was taking his position as her bodyguard seriously, and looking around at the hundreds of potential threats to the royal personage, who was, after all, barefoot in a dirty dressing gown.

  “I’m going to go search this way!” Ellie shouted, and Ben nodded glumly as she set off toward the north-west. She was fairly certain the construction Winnie had noted before their aborted picnic was in that direction, though with the landscape so changed by the Exposition’s construction and the crowd, it was hard to be sure of its precise location. Ellie heard the Queen shout, “We wish to be closer to the stage!” and gave a shudder. A man the size of Ben could get the Queen through the crowd, no doubt, assuming he didn’t give himself a heart attack worrying about Her Majesty in the process.

  Ellie wished she had a walking stick, or at least Winnie’s parasol, to help clear a path. As it was, she had to walk to the far edge of the crowd, where the press of bodies was not so overpowering, in order to work her way around the edge, making a slow loop toward the place where Winnie had noticed that peculiar building project. She could just see it, now, a spire raised above the heads of the crowd, more than twice the height of a man—

  “Welcome to the Grand Exposition!” boomed the voice of God. The audience fell silent, apart from a few shrieks of alarm. For a moment, Ellie thought the crowd would break and run, like a herd of deer startled by the snarl of a predator, but the vast voice chuckled and spoke again. “Do not be alarmed! The voice you hear belongs to me, Bertram Oswald, not to some terrifying behemoth. This miraculous amplification—this extraordinary loudness, to put it in simpler terms—is the work of one of the many inventions I intend to reveal tonight. I have toiled long in my workshop, my laboratory, and my studio to create a cavalcade of wonders that will dazzle the mind and enrich the soul!”

  Ellie stood on tiptoe, and could just make out a figure dressed in a white suit standing at the edge of the stage, holding some small device trailing a long wire up to his mouth as he spoke. Ellie looked away and wove her way through the crowd, past people staring raptly at the figure on the stage. Someone who could talk that loudly could command a lot of attention. Fortunately, Ellie knew from recent experience that Oswald secretly longed to be a stage actor—or, at least, loved the opportunity to deliver long speeches. He could probably be counted on to expound on his own greatness at some length before attempting to unleash hideous creatures from beyond the sky.

  If they could just stop the immediate threat the man posed, Pimm could contact his fellows in the police force, perhaps even exploit his family connections to secure a meeting with members of Parliament or ranking ministers, and present their evidence against Oswald—let him be damned by his own journals. They would also, of course, have to present the Queen. Ellie wasn’t entirely sure how that meeting would go… but she knew it would be the makings of a phenomenal article, no matter what.

  She finally reached the base of the tower, not too terribly far from the right-hand side of the stage… and her hopes fell. Amazingly, no one was leaning against the tower, or trying to dismantle it in hopes of selling the pieces, and as she drew nearer, she understood why. The smaller engine in the warehouse had emitted an unpleasant buzz, but this thing was vastly more powerful. The sound was not any louder, not really, but it seemed to make her bones vibrate at terrible frequencies, and her stomach churned abominably when she drew near. She could bear the discomfort in order to smash the thing apart… but that was impossible.

  The engine in the warehouse had been smaller, and it had also been unprotected. This device was secured in a cylindrical cage of black wrought iron, the metal worked in an elaborate astronomical design featuring comets, shooting stars, planets, suns, and the moon in all its phases. Inside the metal cage, she could see crystals twinkling, and the glint of brass. Very pretty, and also very secure. The whole must have been erected by a crew of men working with ropes and pulleys. The tower wasn’t that large in diameter—she couldn’t have reached her arms around it, but Big Ben could have, just—but it was quite tall, at least fifteen feet high. Ellie leaned her shoulder against the tower and pushed, hoping perhaps its height and relative slenderness would make it unbalanced and easy to topple. But push as she might, it didn’t even sway. Too securely seated in the earth. Perhaps with half a dozen more people shoving, it would shift, but Ellie couldn’t hope to knock it down on her own. Oswald’s voice droned on in the background as she pondered and fretted, and Ellie knew she would be hearing his prattlings in her nightmares later.

  She hesitated, unsure what to do next. Work her way back around the crowd and find Pimm? Look for the Queen and Ben? If Oswald saw them, he would be furious, but he wouldn’t be able to do much about it while running his Exposition. She backed away from the horrible humming of the engine, because it was hard enough to think without that buzzing in her head.

  A moment later a carriage drew to a stop on the street bordering the northern end of the park. Ellie squinted and saw a woman climbing out of the carriage, without even waiting for the coachman to open the door, and knew it must be Winnie. Ellie lifted her skirts and ran through the grass toward her friend. Winnie was directing the coachman to lift some items out of the carriage, but she glanced around and saw Ellie, and gave a wave. “Come here!” she shouted. “I can’t carry all this myself!”

  Ellie reached the cab and looked at the items now piled on the ground with just as much bewilderment as the blinking young coachman. The batteries looted from the warehouse were there, but with leather straps attached to them now, alongside a pair of fencing rapiers trailing long wires from their hilts. “Winnie, what are these?”

  “Weapons, my dear. You’ll have to stop being Queequeg, though. How do you fancy being d’Artagnan?”

  “Wasn’t he beaten horribly with sticks by an old man and his companions?”

  “I was thinking more of his formidable displays of swordsmanship,” Winnie said. “Try to avoid old men with sticks, would be my advice.”

  “I don’t know how to use a sword,” Ellie said.

  Winnie glanced at the coachman, who looked predictably aghast at this exchange, then handed him a few coins. He turned back to his horses, muttering.

  “And you were experienced with harpoons prior to this afternoon? I don’t expect you to win any duels, Ellie dear. If you encounter one of those monsters, just jab in the sword, like a needle into a pincushion. The electricity will do the rest.”

  “Electricity?” Ellie said, though it was obvious, really, now that she thought of it.

  “Naturally. We’ve seen the effectiveness of a little bottled lightning against these creatures.” Winnie attached the wires dangling from one rapier to a pair of bolts on top of one of the urns, then slipped her arms through the battery’s straps, settling the device firmly on her back. She held up the rapier attached the battery, depressed a button on the wooden hilt, and a spark sizzled at the sword’s tip. “Be sure not to touch the metal with your bare hands, all right? These swords can do worse than slice you open.” She whipped the rapier through the air and grinned. “Don’t you just love the smell of electricity in the evening?”

  An Unanticipated Arrival

  Pimm thumped his fist against the metal cage surrounding the engine near the river and swore. There was no knocking that thing down, not without a team of drafthorses and some stout chains, or at the very least a few strong men who wouldn’t mind rocking the iron tower back and forth until it worked loose from the earth.
He moved away from the engine, out of range of that hideous buzz that made his bowels all watery, and considered his next move.

  Dash it, he might have to confront Oswald on the stage. A public denunciation could be marvelously effective, and it would be a pleasure to interrupt Oswald’s prattling, but the assault could go badly if the man had guards on hand. Still, if breaking the towers wasn’t possible, the only way to stop the carnage to come was to interrupt the Exposition before Oswald could unleash the beasts from beyond.

  He started to make his way toward the stage, where Oswald was talking about the wonders he planned to display: “I make no claim that my Grand Exposition will be the equal of the Great Exhibition, that marvel organized by the sadly disgraced Prince Albert. Nevertheless, when you consider that all the creations to be featured at this Exposition came from the mind of a single man, I hope you will be suitably impressed. But I could not have created these wonders without the support, in every sense, of my dearest friend, who has deigned to bestow her favor upon this humble subject, and to join us tonight. May I present your Queen, Victoria Regina!”

  The audience knew when they were meant to applaud, and they did, thunderously, as Queen Victoria—or a convincing imitation—stepped toward the front of the stage, dressed in an elaborate white gown, a crown of gold upon her brow. Pimm spotted the guards, now, who had emerged when the Queen did, standing discreetly back on the stage. Oswald whipped a cloth off a shrouded object to reveal a high-backed throne, decorated with the same astronomical symbols as the cage that surrounded the engine, though in gilt rather than black iron.

  The Queen waved to the crowd—no more mechanically than she did at any other public appearance, Pimm noted—and then seated herself on the throne and looked toward Oswald, presumably with an expression of rapt attentiveness and expectation, though from this distance, her face was a mere blur. The presence of a false Queen on the throne rather spoiled Pimm’s plan to rush the stage, though—her guards would seize him before he could even begin an oratorical denunciation.