The Oldest stirred. The surveyor settled itself for a long wait. It would take the Oldest a thousand pattern-lifetimes or so to remove its attention from whatever historical incident it was reviewing.It had been waiting only a dozen patterns when the messenger pa.s.sed by, its body a ma.s.s of news from the communal s.p.a.ces. The surveyor shuddered as it deciphered the patterns swirling over the messenger"s extrusions into four-s.p.a.ce. Reported cases of Shadow were coming in from the outlying regions; this Cl.u.s.ter was becoming unsafe. The Oldest must countermand Truthseeker"s advice, support those 173 who favoured immediate reunification. It was their only hope.
Dominic opened his eyes and checked his hands for burns.
The old habit comforted him slightly, but he was still puzzled. Why wasn"t he dead? Montague"s agents would never have left him alive. Could the strangers be working for the Grandmaster"s faction? He had always hoped to re integrate the Family into his plans. Dominic had grown to rely on that. He raised himself up on his elbows. He was lying on his own bed.
The two strangers were standing in the doorway. Dominic squinted. If he tried hard he could see the fire in people"s bodies; trace the lines of heat. Boost them. Boil a brain in it> skull, or fry a heart in its own blood.
He concentrated, thinking of the torments the Family had suffered at Montague"s and, yes, at the Grandmaster"s hands.
The lines of fire burnt brightly. Hot blood flowing around the body to the heart. His eyes traced a web of veins. The pattern was wrong, not twisted like Emil"s heat-patterns at the moment of shape-changes, but fundamentally different a!
the very basic level, as if they had grown to an alternative design. His eyes followed the pattern. Two hearts!
One of Montague"s sick aesthetes, then. Power rose in Dominic"s brain. He felt the energy of the stranger"s blood increase. Softly, softly, until both the hearts would burst supercharged with seething blood.
Darkness. Shame. To have come to this (don"t think of it). I am one of them now (must have been one for a long time).
Don"t think that. The power distorted them. Them, not me. I was clever. (Oh yes, so clever.) The nurse"s face. Don"t think of it.
Keeping the power in check. Secret, confined. In its narrow box. Not like the freaks. Need more power, now. So little in her, the small amount she had absorbed from the Pink Room over the years. Bad nursey, taking short-cuts. Punished, now.
How a face dry-eyed can be in tears. Can"t think straight.
174.
Don"t know if I " m the only me that I have left. Can"t even rely on me any more. d.a.m.n him (me), why didn"t he (I) drink the poison?
I need more power, enough to be me again. Only one other possible source here. The Directory agent with the ridiculous name. He had it (saw the future). The residium from the psychometrist was still in him. More than the nurse. Much more.
The thing that had been Henri, that had been Tomas, that had been Jean Mayeur, clattered in its stolen nurse"s form through the empty corridors of the asylum.
Emil checked Dominic"s pulse. It seemed steady, but his father showed no sign of consciousness. The Doctor rubbed at the lobe of his right ear. "Someone"s talking about me," he said, his voice high and querulous. "Is it me or is it hot in here?" A faint, unnatural flush crept over his face. "Turn down the air-conditioning Susan, h m m ? "
Francesque Duquesne crouched in the grounds and listened for the baying of dogs. He had been stumbling around in the damp for hours, getting colder and wetter. The temptation to go back to the womb-like serenity of the Deep Ward was strong but the visions beckoned him onwards. Surely it could not be far now.
Chris whistled softly. Whistling in the dark. Behind him, Kasper held the lantern high, casting sharp shadows down the narrow stone steps.
Jarre leant back from the step ahead, his eyes wide from peering into the darkness. "I hesitate to criticize, Doctor, but do you have the least idea where we"re going?"
Chris considered. What was an appropriately Doctorish response? The only thing he could think of was a piece of cla.s.sical music. He opened his lips to say "Going underground," but the words never got out of his throat.
Something slammed into his right shoulder. The force smashed his face into the brickwork, and the rough stone 175 cracked against his cheek-bone. The pain came half a second later. Whatever had struck him had run through his shoulder, pinning him to the wall. All this in an instant while Jarre"s breathing sounded like it was going to burst his lungs; and Kasper"s silence was worse. Chris forced his head to turn against the stone, sc.r.a.ping skin away with the violence of the movement.
Kasper thrashed on the ground; dozens of long rigid spars of bone driven through his body. A thick wash of blood flowed down the steps.
"Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ," Jarre whispered. The outlines of Kasper"s body were peeling back, and Chris saw that the spars were not sticking into him. They were sticking out. They were his rib-cage. At least twelve feet long, the bones rattled on the floor, skittering like spiders" legs. They were alive. One long spear of bone vanished out of Chris"s limited line of sight. He realized that was what had speared his shoulder.
The thing lurched with the sound of knuckles cracking, and scarlet fire seemed to burst in Chris"s shoulder as the bone thorn moved to and fro. Kasper was growing. The man was turning inside out: turning into ravenous intestines that ended in sucking mouths; turning into a living bone spider death freak thing. Chris got as far as shouting "Get the g - "
before it was on him.
176.
Chapter 15.
Francesque edged around the wall, his hands brushing against the moss-covered stone. He moved as if the wall was surrounded by the narrowest of ledges; as if it stood at the edge of a slope leading down into the pit. His shoulders were trembling as much as his hands now, and his skin felt taut with cold and the numbness of fatigue and illness. The white coat he had found barely covered his upper thighs and offered only the faintest resistance to the chill.
Somewhere in the wall he knew he would find the gate, but it was not the gate he saw ahead of him now, but a great light.
Nor was it his eyes that he saw with.
When the grey hospital van drew up, pulled by two snorting dappled horses, and the nurse pulled him inside, he was too weak to resist. Its interior was a blur of white. A fog of medical scents a.s.saulted his senses. Ether and oil of orange.
Then he saw what was wearing the nurse"s skin.
As he died, his last thought was that if his precognition had been wrong about his escape, then there might still be hope that it was wrong in other matters. France could yet live. A whisper hovered on his lips: "Liberte, egalite, fraternite."
Jarre reached down into the Doctor"s belt, pulled up the golden gun and fired.
The creature that had been Kasper burst like a soap bubble, whirling in a stream of lambent chaff down into the crystal muzzle of the gun. The eyes of the humanoids on the gun"s b.u.t.t lit up with a tiny smug green light. What was left of 177 Kasper, a tattered ma.s.s of organs and broken bones, impacted the steps.
Jarre grinned shockingly. "Effective!"
The Doctor slid down the wall, clutching at his shoulder.
"b.u.g.g.e.r," he muttered. "What the crukk was that?"
Jarre began to have serious doubts about the Doctor"s amazing reputation.
Emil grabbed the chamber-pot from under the bed and flung the damp nightsoil over his father"s chest. Hitting the cloud of power that hovered around him, it vaporized into a thick white wall of foul-smelling steam.
Across the room the Doctor dropped to his knees, out of the line of Dominic"s sight, and rolled for the shelter of the bed. His motion was caught up in the scent of burning hair and skin.
Emil"s hands pounded on his father"s chest, in the instinctive remonstrance of a child"s tantrum. "He"s a friend, he"s a friend." The body he wore gave his blows an unlooked-for strength. Dominic doubled over, wrapped around Emil"s fists by the pain of the impacts; a livid fire burning in eyes that were all pupil. The wooden end-posts of the bedstead charred black with the wild divergence of his concentration. Then a rasping gasp broke from his lips, and his pupils shrank back to specks, surrounded by bloodshot tissue. The gasp died in a fluttering murmur.
Aghast, Emil lifted his great brutal hands from his father"s body. What had he done?
Henri withdrew the needle from the agent"s eye and licked its cold damp length. The power from the man"s brain flooded into his body. Enough to fully heal this version of himself; this sh.e.l.l that commanded the intelligence services of France.
He could not afford now to lose his political power. Perhaps it was even time to take things a step further. Take back the reins of history. Montague"s wild spree must not be allowed to disrupt the plan. Already things were fraying. It was unlikely that Mirakle was still alive, not that the sorcerer was 178 any great loss. Magic was dead. Only power mattered. His power.
Dominic floated on a cold sea. On either side, rocks black as basalt draped in night - unlit by any moon - stretched up into the darkness, height upon height. He tried to move his hands but could not. Were his wrists tied or were they crossed on his chest? There was a weight there. He waited for the familiar pulse of his own blood. It did not come.
Above and ahead of him a light broke, and a sensation of peace tried to insinuate itself into his soul. It made him squirm in resistance. However much he tried to tell himself it had been for the best, that he had kept the Family alive, his actions had still been a betrayal. Ahead, if judgement waited in the light, he would have to face his son.
The boatman coughed.
Dominic opened his eyes fully, and two dull coins fell into the water.
Behind his head, a tall man in a long red robe punted the boat along, his face shadowed between a slouch hat, and a burgundy wrap wound like a gash across his throat. He looked like Aristride Bruant the cabaret artist, or the Red Death.
"Wait. Stop," Dominic murmured in confusion.
"If you want. We could turn back."
Dominic started, a wrench deep in his rib-cage. The scent of mint caught at his nostrils. "Is that allowed?" he heard himself say.
The boatman shrugged cheerfully. " I " v e never seen the rule book, but I"ve known it done." He took a paddle made of some rubbery yellow substance from inside his red robes, and pa.s.sed it down to Dominic, who felt his hands come mysteriously free to receive it. "You don"t mind lending a hand, I hope? The currents are quite treacherous here."
Up from the other side of the bed, the Doctor rose like a wraith. Grey wisps of smoke from his smouldering hair bil-lowed around his head. He grabbed Emil"s hands and forced 179 them with surprising strength back onto Dominic"s chest.
"There"s still a chance." Letting go of Emil, he reached into Dominic"s mouth, hooking his tongue to one side with a practised motion of his thumb. " I " m going to try to restart his breathing. As I inflate his lungs, you"ll have to work them manually." He bent his head to Dominic"s lips and began to blow into his mouth, gesturing at Emil like an orchestra conductor to time the thrusts of his hands.
"I was painted by Toulouse-Lautrec once. The real sitter was ill. A poster for some theatre or other. He said he liked my clothes sense," the Doctor chattered in between his exhalations. "I don"t think the proprietor liked it."
Emil felt his father"s chest move independently under the flat of his palms.
"He"s alive!"
Lucifer growled. The sound was deep and resonant. Deep enough to be dangerous? Pierre could not take the chance.
"Hush," he said, softly laying his hands on the dog"s throat.
"Poor Lucifer, you can"t understand why everything smells wrong here, can you? That"s the smell of death, boy. We"ve come to the catacombs." Lucifer whimpered in response.
Running his hand over the dog"s head, Pierre could feel the hound"s ears p.r.i.c.ked back with fear. What could he see, or hear, he wondered.
Roz screamed. This was getting hard on the vocal cords, but she did not want Montague to catch on to just how pain-resistant an adjudicator could be trained to be. Just how stubborn and pain-resistant a member of her family could be He was more perceptive than she gave him credit for, though, or more schooled in the variety of human cries.
"No, no, no. You"re cheating." His ancient, mad voice grated on her ear. G.o.ddess, he must be in his fifth childhood.
He ripped at the leather thongs around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, exposing them. His hand traced the almost invisible scar on her sternum. Against her will, Roz flinched. d.a.m.n. Some things are too tied to memories not to trigger a response; they work 180 at levels below the will. She avoided the word "subconscious"
even in her head; she"d seen it used to justify too many crimes-But she had to concede that things piled up, memories got embedded, thoughts lost. All but the really unpleasant ones. They just festered.
"I"ll tell you what I " m going to do." Montague wheezed like an undead game-show host. " I " m going to fill you with my power. Make you immortal, Helen, with a kiss. And then when you"re all healed, I " m going to hang you on a tree to die again, and again, and again. Unless you tell me who you"re working for, and your favourite colour, and your dreams.
Now I can"t say fairer than that, can I children?"
"No, Montague." A flat choral response like a tired con-gregation in church. Was she boring them? Roz hoped not.
While his attention was back on her he wasn"t killing civilians with his living dolls.
Still, she knew her limitations. Whether Montague knew it or not, and who could say what was going on in his bald, liver-spotted skull, the healing was the one threat that she could not face. That, not the pain beyond it, left her no choice but to shift her hostage stance; to start seeming to cooperate more. The aches in her body, the scars visible or invisible, the slow grind of aging: these things were were her. Accept no sub-st.i.tutes. Heal them and what was left but memory? She knew too well that there was nothing more untrustworthy than that. her. Accept no sub-st.i.tutes. Heal them and what was left but memory? She knew too well that there was nothing more untrustworthy than that.
Memory could be chopped or edited or erased. It was too easily diced into ribonucleic acid and protein chains and rewoven to a new design. The technology to alter memory had existed in one form or another since humankind first distilled ethyl alcohol. By her time it was simple. It had happened to her once. At least once. How would she know if it had happened twice? The fact that it had been done with her agreement, at her crukking request, only made it worse.
Self-mutilation in the head. The inverse of people cutting themselves with scissors just to feel something; she had memories cut away to stop her feeling. Eventually the memories had come back anyway: her partner dying at her 181 hand. The smell of palm-greasing through the judiciary.
Guilt. She could not risk that happening again. If she had no scars, no aging, how could she know for sure who she was?
"The Doctor sent me," she said. First rule of spilling your guts: keep to the truth until it really matters, then lie like the third-time winner of the Cretan all-comers Mr Fibber compet.i.tion, as Bernice had once put it. Roz had never got round to asking what planet a Cretan came from.
"Ah ha. Aaaaah haaaa. I thought as much. I did, I did."
Montague was practically clapping his hands. "Who is the Doctor?" His tone became conspiratorial and petulant. "Is he a p.a.w.n of the Grandmaster? If so, he should know I killed his master and wiped his blood like spittle from the sole of my boot."
Interestingly, he seemed to have forgotten his earlier insistence that the Grandmaster might somehow have survived.
Roz wondered just how mad he was. If he was just mad enough, she stood a chance of escape.
182.
Chapter 16.
The stairs ended in a laboratory.
A single glance confirmed Chris"s worst imaginings. The room was packed with bodies. Bodies draped like the com-ponents of some complicated mechanism across black wood frames. He stared into the gloom, seeing parts rather than whole corpses; a hand pierced by silver wires here, a head flung back with its mouth clamped with a wedge of studded leather there. He realized he was looking for a particular body, for darker flesh among the forest. For Roz.
Jarre pushed past him roughly, impatiently, the lantern held aloft in one sweating hand. He had recovered it from the mess of Kasper"s corpse and it burnt with a smell of fat. Since his strange, cool comment about the effectiveness of the golden gun, he had said nothing. It was giving Chris the w.i.l.l.i.e.s.
The lantern"s light sent shadows spinning into the room"s mismatched corners. An expression, seeming compounded in equal measure of relief and frustration, pa.s.sed over Jarre"s broad features.
"They"re mannequins. Just mannequins." He kicked at a ruby-cheeked head that grew from the floorboards. With a crack of breaking wood the head came loose from the mahogany armature which had supported it, and rebounded with a crunch-ing thud into the tangled thickets of limbs that thrust wantonly forth from the racks and workbenches fining the chamber.
"Why would anyone want a hidden room full of dismembered mannequins?" His dark eyes were haunted. "Why?"