The Translated Man

by Chris Braak

  “Well, I don’t know,” the old coroner snapped. “If I knew his name was ‘Horace,’ I’d have asked if she knew a ‘Horace,’ wouldn’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Karine mumbled, as she disappeared into her file-room. A moment later she came back with a thick sheaf of papers. “When you started investigating Herman Zindel, sir, I did some research. I know you like information, so I pulled up copies of all the broadsheets I could find with Herman Zindel’s name in them.” She handed Beckett a small clipping. “Zindel knew a man named Horace Lightman. This is from when they both won the Royal Academy of Sciences Order of Distinction, three years ago. They were colleagues at the University, in mathematics and engineering.”

  Beckett took the article, and began to scan it. “Horace Lightman. We need to find him. Karine, I want you to get me an address…”

  “I’ve already done it, sir,” Karine said, offering another paper from her sheaf. “The Ministry of Revenue’s tax records. But it won’t help.”

  Beckett looked up. “Why not?”

  Karine handed the coroner a final page. “It’s a report, sir. The gendarmes in New Bank, you know, they’re very conscientious about your request for….for reports on arrests and….he’s dead, sir. Horace Lightman. He was found dead yesterday, his…”

  “…throat bruised and his lungs crushed,” Beckett finished, reading from the report. “In his home, no visible means of entrance or exit.”

  “Oh!” Valentine looked up from his book. “Bruised throat, that’s like the fellow…”

  “We know, Valentine,” Skinner told him. “Hush.”

  Slowly, Beckett handed the articles back to Karine. “Nothing. They’ve taken his body already and burned it, cleaned his house. We couldn’t even bring a psychometrist on.” A dreadful certainty was growing inside him. “We have nothing. No idea who murdered these men…” Some idea, he though, but it was an idea he’d rather not have had. “No way to connect them to Wyndham-Vie. The log at Corimander Street is gone. The only two people we know that came to Zindel’s home are dead. Unless there’s something good in that book…”

  “Nothing so far,” muttered Valentine.

  “Then we have nothing.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his numb fingers. He shook his head. “I’ll stay here, tonight. You two are welcome to do what you like.”

  Alan Charterhouse packed his papers into a small satchel. He put on his Primeday clothes, the dark blue suit and shiny shoes that his father had always made him wear when they went to church. There was something a little ironic about that, thought Alan, that he should be wearing it when he confessed to heresy. He left his room, which still looked as though a tornado had whirled through, leaving papers and detritus scattered in his wake. He closed the door and locked it.

  That’s it, thought Alan. That’s the last time I’ll see it. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the door again and looked in. He tried to take everything in. The bed with the tall wooden posts and the burgundy curtains. The writing desk with the comically-small chair that accompanied it—his father had bought if for him when Alan was only ten, and he’d never gotten around to getting a new one. The washbasin, ceramic white with little blue flowers around the outside, in the dark-wood carved stand. His bookcase, which still had the old picture books that Ian Charterhouse had read to his son—Benjamin Walpole’s Anything Stories with their crudely-illustrated fables about leopards and tarrasques and therians, Gunther Molnar’s Tales of the Trow, stories of epic majesty accompanied by beautiful copperplate etchings—all the dog-eared copies of Ted East novels, Wolfram Harcourt’s Principles of Mathematics.

  There was paper scattered everywhere. Alan had thought that perhaps he’d tidy the place up before he left, because it didn’t seem fair to leave all of that to his uncle, who’d surely be full of grief when he heard about his nephew’s execution. The fact was that there just wasn’t enough time. Alan was, he realized, sitting on top of a grenade whose fuse was still burning, one that could go off at any time.

  Alan closed and locked his door again and hurried downstairs. Uncle Malcolm was asleep in the sitting-room, and Alan looked fondly on him while he tried to fix the old man’s features in his mind. Last time. Goodbye, Uncle Malcolm. The young man slipped out the front door and into the cold night.

  The air was still cold and raw, and it had been raining all morning and afternoon. The downpour had helped to put the fires out in Mudside. Alan pulled his coat tight about himself and slung his satchel over his shoulder, plunging his free hand as deep into the wool pocket of his coat as he could.

  A deep sense of loss and loneliness washed over him, as Alan Charterhouse left his life behind. He knew what he had to do, and that it was right that he should do it, but the knowledge that it would bring his execution seemed to crowd out all other thoughts.

  There was a tension in the air as Alan approached Old Bank, and he was at a loss to explain it. There were sharpsies, many more than usual, lurking in shadows and corners, gathering in small groups by the crevices in the street that led down to the Arcadium. Alan had not read the broadsheets in several days, and so was not aware of the events that had taken place in the sharpsie ghetto; he was moreover unaware of how remarkable a thing it was that he should be seeing any sharpsies, let alone in the numbers that now wandered Old Bank.

  It was not long before he realized that there were two sharpsies following him, springing along with casual, athletic strides on their bare toes. Alan tried to keep his head down and mind his business, walking as fast as he could without showing fear. He tried cutting through Exeter Street, to move around Old Wall Square, but that turned out to be a mistake.

  As soon as Alan had left the main street, the sharpsies leapt at him. They were quick, much quicker than he was, and soon each one held one of Alan’s arms in an iron grip. Alan screamed, and all fear he’d been damming up inside exploded out, shivering through his muscles, welling out his eyes, covering his face in tears.

  The one on his left sputtered and hacked something in sharpish.

  “I don’t understand!” Alan practically screamed. “I’m not…I’m not…please, don’t hurt me! I’m just trying to…I have to see the coroners!”

  The two sharpsies snapped and guttered at each other this time, then the one on Alan’s right leaned in close, slowly working it’s long jaws with those nasty, huge, hooked teeth. Its breath smelled like raw meat. It rasped something in the back of its throat.

  “Please,” Alan whimpered. “It’s important. I need to see the coroners.”

  The sharpsie rasped something again, and this time it sounded vaguely familiar. “Ghehkek.”

  “I don’t…” Alan tried to understand. Was the sharpsie trying to tell him something? Something in Trowth? They’d reacted when he mentioned the coroners. “Do you . . . you mean Beckett?”

  The sharpsie nodded slowly.

  Alan was now left in the unfortunate position of trying to guess whether or not the sharpsie was favorably disposed towards the old coroner. If it was, there was a good chance it might let Alan go. If it wasn’t, then there was an equally good chance it would bite the young man’s face off. Alan swallowed noisily. “Yes. I need to see Beckett. It’s important…”

  The sharpsie snapped something vicious-sounding at his companion, then turned back to Alan, and curtly nodded again. The two long-jawed men released Alan, then made a gesture indicating that he should be off. Warily, and still sniffling, Alan backed away from the two sharpsies towards Raithower House.

  They followed, but at a distance. When Alan passed another small group of sharpsies past Old Wall Square, the two following him shouted something guttural at the others, and Alan found himself unmolested. The sharpsies disappeared about a block away from Raithower House.

  Strangely, the terrifying encounter with the sharpsies seemed to have purged Alan of his fear. He knew he ought to be jittery and stammering as he approached the guard at the coroners’ headquarters, but he found his stride confident
, his voice strong.

  “My name is Alan Charterhouse,” the young man told the waiting guard. “I need to speak with Detective-Inspector Elijah Beckett regarding the murder of Herman Zindel.”

  The guard said nothing, but retreated into a small guardhouse. Past the bars of the main gate and through the tiny window of the guardhouse, Alan could see another man, this one wearing the silver plate over his eyes that signified a knocker. The knocker cocked his head to the side as if waiting for an answer, then nodded, satisfied. The guard returned from the house.

  “You can go in,” he told Alan. “Through the front door, right at the main stairs, into the parlor at the end of the hall.” For a moment, all of Alan’s concerns vanished from his mind as he thought about what it meant that the Knockers could communicate over distances like that. Was there a way to replicate their telerhythmia? To transmit code through space without a knocker at all? Anyone could send messages, then. You could…

  The iron gate swung open with an ear-splitting shriek, startling Alan from his musings, and he walked across the dark courtyard to where to phlogiston lamps burned blue and unearthly by the doors. They, too, swung open, and out spilled golden candle-light from the interior. Alan followed the guard’s directions, and soon found himself in the red-and-gold appointed parlor.

  Beckett was nowhere to be seen. Skinner was seated primly on one of the couches, while another man, tall, thin, and rakish sprawled on his back—nearly upside-down—in one of the chairs and read.

  “Alan,” Skinner said, as his footsteps reached her ears. “What are you doing here?”

  “I…” The young cartographer found his voice caught in his throat. “Uhm. I need to talk to Beckett.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers from his knapsack, the formulae that he’d been unluckily unable to forget. “About Zindel’s mathematics.”

  There was a sudden growl from behind him, and Beckett stumbled into the room. He was not wearing his coat, but he still had the red scarf wrapped around his mouth and nose. He had no gloves, either, and his right sleeve was pushed up. Alan could see that the tips of Beckett’s fingers were invisible, and there was a livid, glistening blood-red spot on the inside of his elbow where the skin had become transparent. Beckett tugged the sleeve down as he entered. “Why?” He grunted. “I told you to forget about all this.”

  Alan took a deep breath. “I can’t, sir.” He opened his satchel, and took out all of his papers. “I remember everything I see. Almost everything. When it comes to math, anyway. And I wasn’t completely honest with you when I told you what I saw in Zindel’s home.” He spread the papers out on a small coffee-table. “I know what the equations were. I mean, I didn’t know a hundred percent, at the time. But I know a lot about Aetheric Geometry. I mean, a lot. I can do the math. And I’ve figured out what these equations mean.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” Beckett said. “I don’t want to hear that. You know what I have to do, don’t tell me…”

  “Arrest me,” Alan said. Tears welled up in his eyes again, and he heard his voice quavering. “Execute me, if you have to. I know, don’t think I don’t know. I know exactly what . . . you have to kill me. I used to do equations like this, I found them in Principles of Mathematics when I was a kid, and I never thought anything of it. I figured no one would ever find out. But last night I realized that I have to tell you. I can’t keep it a secret anymore, because it means the safety of the entire Empire. This is more important than me.” Alan was weeping openly now; salt tears dripped onto his formulae. “So if you have to execute me, then you have to, but let me tell you what I found out.”

  Beckett was silent for a long moment. Then, “All right.”

  Alan sighed, and began to explain. With each word, he drew farther away from his fear and into the simple science, the pure mathematics with which he had always been most comfortable expressing himself. “Zindel’s equations are the mathematical schematic for a translation engine.”

  “We know,” Beckett said. “The Excelsior.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Alan replied. He knelt down and spread his papers out on the floor. “But it’s not. See here? This matrix, that’s the arrangement of those six numbers, that’s using a triple-pronged stabilizing system, when the Excelsior only used a double-prong. I think it has to do with the way the coordinates are expressed in our space. The Excelsior disaster happened because the engineers that built her engines were only accounting for her transition into real space in two dimensions. It’s a catastrophically stupid error, when you think about it, but I guess it must have been easy to overlook at the time. Since they didn’t imagine they’d be going up or down, they must have figured that two coordinate pairs would be enough. But this…”

  Alan gently spread the pages out, until he found the one he was looking for. “See, here’s where Zindel was going to rebuild a different kind of interlocutor, with a three-prong stabilizer.”

  “So, Zindel and his partner were designing a new kind of translation engine?” Something was nagging at Beckett, now. Was it Valentine’s story that bothered him? Was it his own memories of the kirliotypes in Dangers of Heresy, of the hideously-malformed bodies that had been the victims of the Excelsior’s launch?

  “That’s the bad part. That’s why I had to come to you.” Alan found another page. “See this? These columns of numbers? This is data. And it’s not data that he made up. It’s too precise, it all fits together too neatly. This is experimental data. Zindel wasn’t designing a translation engine. He’d already built one.”

  And suddenly, Beckett understood. The answers snapped together so powerfully in his mind that he, for half a moment, suspected that Skinner could hear the click of interlocking facts. He knew who, really what, had killed Herman Zindel and Horace Lightman, and why. He knew why they’d had to kill the coachman, and what had killed his murderer. And he knew where to go for the last answer that he needed.

  “So,” Beckett said. “Where did they build it, Valentine?”

  The thing young man looked up from his book. “What?”

  “The answer’s in there.”

  Valentine looked startled, then looked closely at the book. He flipped through the pages, checked the imprint. “I don’t understand. Is there a code?”

  “What’s it about, Valentine?”

  He set the book down. “Oh. Well, it’s a kind of, it’s like this: what if the royal family had had this horrible, monster offspring, and they wanted to get rid of it, but they couldn’t kill it? So, they take it up into the mountains and it lives up there in this house on a glacier, right? And it’s told from the perspective of the monster’s keeper, and he has to keep riding up the mountain to . . . to . . . what?”

  Skinner was smiling. “Think about it. Why did they kill the coachman? The book’s about the royal family having a terrible secret, and a man that has to go out into the mountains to care for it. A terrible secret, like Zindel’s engine.”

  Understanding dawned on the man’s face. “Huh. And you think . . . you think James Crowell gave his son the real location, and that’s why…? But it’s not real. The house. It was supposed to be a Gorgon-Vie summer home on…” he checked the book. “Mount Hood. Trust me. I know all of the Gorgon-Vie houses, and they haven’t got anything that far into the mountains.”

  “Not Gorgon-Vie,” Alan said, startling everyone. “Rowan-Czarnecki. It’s called Gotheray Castle.” He met their incredulous stares with his own open face. “It’s on one of the maps. Uhm. Ministry of the Exchequer’s Taxable Land Estates of 1686.”

  Beckett sighed. “Well. I guess you’re going with us.”

  “I…” Alan began.

  “We need to find the house, boy, and you know the way.” Beckett crossed his arms. “Or maybe you’ll tell me that you don’t remember what the map looks like.”

  Alan sighed. At least it meant they couldn’t execute him. Yet. “No, I do. I remember—”

  “Everything, I know. Wait here. We’ll leave shortly.”

  Valenti
ne came into Beckett’s office while the old coroner was shrugging into his coat.

  “Beckett.”

  “What?”

  Valentine shifted uncomfortably. “I…I can’t go. Not now.”

  Beckett said nothing, just stared at him with an obdurate, unreadable expression.

  “You’ve seen…you know what’s happening out there,” Valentine told him, passion warming his voice as he grew enthusiastic about his subject. “The city is ready to explode. The riots we’ve seen…it’s going to be worse than that. Whatever happens is going to be worse. I know it, I can feel it. I don’t know how to explain…it doesn’t matter. I know what’s going to happen. I can’t leave now. My Family is here, they’ll need…” he trailed off.

  “Need?”

  “Me. They’ll need me. I can’t just…I can’t just go…”

  “What do you think they’ll need you for, Valentine?” The younger man was silent. “What do you think you’re going to do? If there’s a riot, if the sharpsies decide to lay siege to Comstock Street? Are you going to shoot them?” Silence, then, as Valentine looked down at his finely-polished shoes. “You want to help, I understand that. You want to protect your city, I understand that to, but listen to me, and listen very closely: there is only one way that you can help your city. There is only. One. Way. You come with me, and we find out who did this. We find the truth. We do our jobs. And if we’re lucky, we can stop this.”

  “Do you really think we can?” Valentine asked after a moment. “That it’ll be enough? Even if we do find out…”

  Beckett sighed. “I don’t know. You never get to know. You just do your god-damn job. Because someone has to do it. This is what you signed up for, this is what matters. Now, go get your coat.”

  Skinner was waiting for them, seated in precisely the same position and location as when they’d left her, only now wearing a long gray overcoat—giving the appearance of having miraculously apparated the coat onto her person. Karine was busy explaining her cross-referencing system to Alan Charterhouse, who listened with wide-eyed fascination. Beckett could practically see the wheels turning in the young man’s head.