by Ilsa J. Bick
Normally, his mind went a little fuzzy, quite quickly, as the drug, carried in his blood, swirled through and around his brain. Now, he was comfortable, but only just. Teetering on the brink was more like.
“What’s in this?” He watched Kramer dismantling his syringe. “This isn’t … ahhh!” A sudden icy fist slammed his chest. His head snapped so violently he heard the crack of tendons and bone in his neck.
Distantly, he heard Meme: “Doctor?” And then Kramer: “Leave him. It will pass.” Evidently, she didn’t listen, because the next thing he felt were her hands on his cheeks. Her face swam out of a red haze. “Constable,” Meme said, “what is happening?”
“Hurts.” The word rode a hiss through clenched teeth. “Not right. Not supposed to … Oh God.” Another blistering shudder, and he plugged his mouth with a fist to keep back the scream.
“Doctor.” Meme turned a pleading look. “Help him.”
“This will run its course,” Kramer said. Then, more sharply: “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“I know you must have an antidote.” Through a fog of pain, Doyle saw that the girl was hastily rummaging through Kramer’s phials. Selecting one, she held it out. “This reverses the effects of morphia, does it not?” When Kramer didn’t reply, she said, “Doctor, please. I have never defied you, but—”
“Then do not begin now.” Kramer’s voice shook with rage. Extending a hand, he snapped his fingers. “Give me that.” When she made no move, he said, “Do not overstep. You are my creature, girl. I made you, and I can just as easily—”
“N-no, l-leave her out of this.” He couldn’t let her risk her position. He’ll turn her out to die on the streets. Doyle pressed a fist to his chest. “S-sometimes, it happens.”
“I do not understand,” Meme said to Kramer. “The lies, what you told Battle, and now—”
“I said give me the phial!” Kramer’s hand flashed. The blow caught Meme just below her left eye. Staggering, she let out a sharp cry. Cursing, Kramer wrenched the bottle from her fingers. “How dare you defy me!”
“N-no!” Panting, Doyle struggled to his feet, but he was off-balance. Swaying, he clutched at the tea cart. Cups and china saucers slithered to the floor in a bony smash. Trembling, he latched onto a wingback to keep from falling. “Don’t h-hurt …”
“Remember, you are my creature.” Kramer shook the girl violently enough for her head to snap on the thin stalk of her neck. “You serve at my pleasure. Do you hear?”
“Damn you, leave her!” Doyle’s arms shuddered under the strain of his weight. When I’m past this, wring your neck, tear your head …
Patience, poppet. A snarl in his left ear. There is a time and place. This is not it. Choose your battles. You gain nothing by playing the white knight here.
“Yes, Doctor.” Except for the fist-sized splotch under her eye, Meme’s face was pale as porcelain. “I apologize. It is only that you taught me to do no harm and yet—”
“And I’ve done none. It is a serum of my own making, and believe me, I have no wish to harm the good constable.” Cutting her off with a tone as cold as the slush passing for Doyle’s blood, Kramer thrust her aside. “You, Doyle, sit down before you break anything else. I wouldn’t poison you. How would I explain that to Battle? Oh, so sorry, your constable dropped dead whilst I was stitching his arm?” He tossed the syringe’s needle and tube in a basin of carbolic acid. “I’ve remedied the constable’s physical symptoms and the worst of that craving. It’s passing even now, isn’t it, Doyle?”
It was true. His heart was only racing, not trying to blast out of his chest. “Yes.” He knuckled sweat from his forehead. “But what’s in it? I’ve a right to know.”
“A right?” The half-mask rode up a little as Kramer arched his good right eyebrow. “I told you. It’s a combination of morphia with a touch of seven-percent—and a little something extra for clarity and to scrub your mind clean.”
“Clarity?” Something extra? Wash his mind until he was, what, a blank slate? Meme had drifted closer. Her hand brushed his back: a gentle touch, but it helped center him. Why was she being so kind? “Whatcha mean?” he asked Kramer. “You’re talking riddles. I’m a person, not a piece of parchment.”
Poppet. Black Dog, at his ear. Think of the girl. Don’t give him an excuse to take it out on her.
Black Dog was right. “I’m sorry.” He straightened enough that the girl’s hand fell away. Be strong. Think of her. “You caught me by surprise. I’ve only had that happen once before, when what I got wasn’t … pure.”
“Oh, my cocktail’s pure, but you wouldn’t understand the chemistry behind it.” Kramer nested the dismantled syringe back into purple velvet and closed the morocco case with a decisive snap. “Bring me what I want, and I assure you: if you wish, you may spend the rest of your life in an opium fog.”
4
HERE WAS THE surprise: then, wreathed in the scent of lemons—and later, when he’d rejoined Battle in the asylum’s vestibule and turned to find the girl watching him from the top of the asylum’s wide marble staircase—Doyle wasn’t sure he wanted that at all.
BODE
The Other Side of the Screen
1
“BOY!” THE CALL came from the asylum’s vestibule. Half run off his feet, darting between the men’s ward on second and the women’s ward on first, Bode threw a glance down to find Battle, elbows akimbo, steel-gray bowler tipped back. “Could you see what’s keeping my constable?” Battle called. “Haven’t got all bloody night, you know.”
“Yes, sir.” Balls to that. Not paid to be your errand boy. “Right away.”
Except it wasn’t right away, because that quake hit, and he was a good long time putting patients back to rights before he remembered the inspector. God. Bode hurried for Kramer’s office. Probably already done with the constable. But if word got back he’d not relayed Battle’s message … he didn’t need any more drama.
Kramer’s door was ajar; the room, empty. A wool overcoat hung from a coat tree, along with a bloodstained jacket and vest. (Kramer was a prig, but all doctors worked in formal attire, dressed to the nines.) From the light of an oil lamp and what filtered in from the window, he could see that used instruments were still strewn atop a wood stand, though some had clattered to the floor; a curl of black thread looped through a needle’s eye; and there was a basin half-filled with murky liquid, the remainder of which had slopped to the carpet.
He should’ve left right then and there. No Doyle meant that the constable was probably on his way back to the inspector at this moment. Besides, Tony and Rima would be here soon, and he had to make sure they got what victuals he’d squirreled away and none the wiser.
Yet he was curious. Something untoward had happened here. His eyes strayed over smashed crockery on the floor, an overturned cup. The quake? Probably, quite possibly, but still he couldn’t shake the sense that there was a touch too much disarray.
Then his eyes fixed on the cart and those biscuits and that plate of sliced lemon and a whole one besides, all begging for a home—and he felt a talon tug his gut.
Walk away. Spit pooled under his tongue. A fast look over either shoulder showed him an empty hall. He toed the threshold. Don’t do it.
But he did. Darting inside, he worked fast, cramming two biscuits into his mouth at the same time that he grubbed up a double handful for his pocket. As soon as he bit down, he nearly choked. The biscuits were tasteless and stale, like sand. No wonder they’d been left. He looked for a place to spit them but saw nothing. Christ. Maybe some lemon would help …
It should’ve registered before he even put the slice in his mouth. No scent, no tangy aroma. Too late, he remembered that the juice would burn his cut mouth something fierce, except it didn’t. The lemon had all the taste and punch of poor water. His throat convulsed in a swallow. Could not eating well put you off your food, make everything taste bad? Unless the lemon had turned. Probably should leave the other one. Biscuits are enough. Well, presuming
that they tasted better to Rima and Tony than him. He felt the hard knuckle of his mouthful of biscuit and lemon sliding slowly down the middle of his chest. Nicking the lemon is so much butter on bacon. Still, it was food, and Kramer was always going on about scurvy.
Pocketing the lemon, he thought, All right, get out. He would have, too, and maybe nothing else would’ve happened, except his gaze strayed back to Kramer’s jacket and vest. He wasn’t like Weber; he’d only ever stolen food. But his mouth throbbed from those nasty slaps, and his chest burned with the memory. A toff like Kramer probably had something nice. No watch chain he could see—no use anyway; nothing kept proper time—but maybe a nice penknife?
The jacket wasn’t soiled, but the vest was crusted with dried blood. One pocket was empty, but the other showed the conspicuous bulge of something long. Might be a knife, or a pen, a pencil. Whatever it was, he suddenly just wanted it. Payback. Reaching into the pocket, he felt something angular … metal …
He’d just drawn out a pair of brass spectacles with queer purple lenses when his ears pricked to footsteps and then Kramer’s angry, slithery hiss seeping through the open door: “… in my office.”
Shite, SHITE! He was so startled, his heart nearly rocketed out the top of his skull. Clutching the spectacles, he darted his gaze round the room, looking for a hiding place anywhere. God, God, Kramer would be here any second! Then his gaze hooked on the foot of the doctor’s exam table, and that folding screen.
“You will explain,” Kramer was saying, just as Bode scurried into a dark wedge between the screen’s edge and a standing wardrobe. The smart clap of the office door made him wince. His heart was thumping. His knuckles tented white, and he forced himself to relax his grip on the spectacles. Ruin them and he was really cooked. Sweat crawled down his neck. If Kramer or whoever was with him came around to this side, they’d spot him in an instant. But they shouldn’t need to. He swept a frantic look over the exam table, which seemed to have been tidied up. No soiled sheets or bandages, only bare wood. All the mess seemed to be on the other side, so that was good.
Holding his breath, he reached a hand past his waistband to the inner pocket. At the slight tick of brass against Graves’s iron skeleton, his lips skinned from his teeth in a tight, fearful grimace. Damme if that wasn’t loud.
On the other side of the screen: “I’m waiting,” Kramer said to someone. “Well?”
“I have already apologized. I know I was wrong”—and Bode thought, Oh no. “I do not know what else you want,” Meme said.
“An idea of what possessed you?” There was a splash of liquid against porcelain and then the louder chik of a spoon. “Your complete lack of self-control?” A noisy inhalation as Kramer sucked tea. “You’ve taken a liking to the constable? Strange. Here I thought you were quite fond of Bode.”
“You know I … I am fond of him,” she said. “Though that does not mean the reverse is true. After today …”
“What, you think Elizabeth is competition? That was misplaced chivalry.” Kramer made a blustery, horsey sound. There was the tick of porcelain as Kramer replaced his cup and saucer. “Not only is she far above his station; she’s mad.”
“She is also very beautiful.”
“You are just as much the beauty. Perhaps you need to make your interest clear to the boy.”
“I do not … I would not know where to begin.”
“Do what comes naturally.”
“Naturally?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re a girl; he’s a boy. You need me to draw you a damn diagram?” Kramer’s tone was brutal. “Tell me, do you think about him? Of yourself with him? Of his hands, his body?”
God. Bode’s ears weren’t only burning; his entire head was going to spontaneously combust. Weber had been bad enough, but listening to this made him want to rinse his brain with carbolic acid. Leave her alone, you sod.
“Myself with …” The words came out small. “I … I do not understand.”
“I mean this.” Meme let out a sharp gasp, though from where he cowered, Bode couldn’t see what Kramer was doing, and probably just as well. “Do you think of his hands on your breasts, his mouth on your neck, your hand on his—”
“Doctor!” Through that narrow gap between screen and wardrobe, Bode saw Meme bumble backward until she was stopped by a bookshelf and could go no further. All he could see of Kramer was the hand with which he cupped her left breast, and then Kramer himself moved in closer. “P-please, do n-not …,” Meme began.
“I’m talking this.” With a fierce snarl, Kramer pressed one of Meme’s hands to his trousers. “Feel that. That is the mark of a man. Do you think of Bode and this, and yourself lying with him in sweaty sheets?”
“No, no!” Though Meme wasn’t shouting, Bode heard it that way. Tears streaked her cheeks. “I do not understand.”
“Yes, I know.” Kramer said it as he might a curse. Releasing the weeping girl, he stepped out of Bode’s line of sight. “Missing something, just as he said would happen.”
“I do not know what you want from me,” Meme said, and if he’d the balls he thought he did, this would be the moment Bode should burst out and do something. But the courage he’d felt with and for Elizabeth didn’t translate to Meme. What’s wrong with you? Shame surged in his chest. You could help. But show himself now, what was the point? Talking yourself out of it, you coward. Weber was right; he was a meater.
“I do everything you ask. I work for you. I lie for you,” she said.
“Nonsense. No one’s asked you to lie. We’ve simply omitted. Here.” Through the slit, Bode saw Kramer’s fingers, from which dangled a kerchief. “Blow your nose.”
“No.” Meme put up a warding hand. “I do not wish to.”
“Fine, then smear snot all over your blouse if you’ve a mind. At least that would show some spark.”
“Is it not that which angers you? My spark? What I did with Doyle?”
“There’s a time and place. But since we’re on the subject … yes, what you did could’ve been ruinous. What was that? Whatever possessed you to defy me for someone like Doyle? Don’t delude yourself: addicts are not to be trusted. Pity him all you want, but he’s not a baby bird fallen from his nest for you to rescue.”
“I told you.” Turning aside, Meme drew a hand over streaming eyes, a curiously childlike gesture that made Bode’s shame all the worse. “I felt sorry for him.” She was facing his way now. “The way you badgered and humiliated …”
That was when Meme looked up and through the gap, and their eyes met.
2
BODE’S HEART SKIPPED a beat. His guts iced. On the other side of the screen, Meme’s dark blue eyes shimmered even as her face stilled. They stared at each other for a long beat and then two, and Bode had time to think that if it had been anyone else, he’d have been out the door, on his ear, in the snow so fast your head would spin. A complex welter of emotions seemed to cross her face, though he doubted Kramer could see. His own emotions were much simpler; he was terrified.
“Humiliated him.” Straightening, Meme turned away from Bode. “The way you humiliated me just now. What I think of Bode or any boy—”
“But you don’t, do you?” Kramer’s tone was flat.
“That is my own affair. Is that not correct?”
“Perhaps.” Pause. “You felt something, though, didn’t you? Just now? When we were talking of that young buck?”
“Is that the point? For me to feel something for Bode? Or are you speaking now of Doyle? Because you also hurt him.”
“I already told you. That injection was for his own good.”
“Really. I thought it was all part of your experiment.”
“Do not bait me. You know that this work is necessary. That serum will strip him of artifice. Think of him as an onion, and now I shall peel back layers until what passes for his essence reveals itself.”
“It was not right to trick him.”
“Who said anything about subterfuge? He got his prec
ious drugs—”
“And your serum. What’s in it?”
“What, you want a blow-by-blow chemical breakdown? The formula? And what will that tell you, eh? The specific composition is unimportant. What is more, of all people, you are the least equipped to understand what I’m after.”
“And what is that?”
“I told him. I told you. I am after … clarity, his essence. A clean slate. I want Doyle freed of what little memory he may possess, and illusion. A tabula rasa, if you like, upon which I might write something new … no, more than that: I want to restore what’s been denied us, what we lack.”
“Lack? Write something new? Doctor, he is a person, not paper you scrape with a knife when you have made a mistake.”
“No, you see, that is just it. The serum will rid him of mistakes.”
“Mistakes? What kind? And then what? You remake him? Give him a new personality?”
“No.” A pause. “Something much more specific than that … No, don’t ask me to explain. You truly wouldn’t understand. It would all seem quite foreign, words spoken in an unknown tongue. To be frank, I’m not sure I really have a grasp of it myself, but I will know it when I see it.”
“But how will manipulating Constable Doyle help us? Why make the constable steal those—”
“Enough.” Kramer made an impatient sound. “You are my assistant, yes, but I do not owe you an explanation for every single move I make. I know what I’m doing, and you are not to question me and most certainly not indulge in ridiculous, ruinous outbursts. Do you think it’s wise to call me to task for lying in front of a bloody constable?”
“Then why have you?” If Bode had been in her shoes, he’d be pissing his drawers. How could she be weeping one moment and so calm the next? Why hadn’t she turned him in? Because she cares for me? “You lied to Battle’s face,” she said. “You know where McDermott is.”
“A man like Battle will never understand what’s at stake, that I do what I must to try and save us. I am doing this to save you, Meme, though you do not seem to see this at all. My God, girl … you are unique amongst us, my pearl without price.”