Occasionally a "Merde!" or a "Sapristi!", words Emil was not supposed to use or even know, drifted from the room. They supposed to use or even know, drifted from the room. They were followed almost at once by a m.u.f.fled crashing sound were followed almost at once by a m.u.f.fled crashing sound from the workshop as something heavy, a spokeshave or a from the workshop as something heavy, a spokeshave or a 49 49 wooden mallet, was thrown forcibly across the room. His father was having one of his tantrums. Hard on his curses, father was having one of his tantrums. Hard on his curses, his father stuck his head out of the workshop, a puzzled his father stuck his head out of the workshop, a puzzled sheepish look on his face that Emil could not account for. sheepish look on his face that Emil could not account for.
"Ah, Emil," he said, motioning the boy into the workshop.
A franc glinted in his hand. "Go out and buy yourself a candied apple, and when you return we will play a game." candied apple, and when you return we will play a game."
Emil took the coin willingly enough, although his father"s tone surprised him. Where had his anger gone? He decided tone surprised him. Where had his anger gone? He decided to buy a candied apple from the stall in the square with the to buy a candied apple from the stall in the square with the bluebird fountain. bluebird fountain. He had gone out of the house then, into the trap set by the Brotherhood. That had really happened. The other things? They had really happened too. Then they had not. He had gone out of the house then, into the trap set by the Brotherhood. That had really happened. The other things? They had really happened too. Then they had not.
In the long hoped-for sanctuary of his recovered childhood, Emil Montfalcon burst into tears.
Roz dropped down from the high wall around the house"s back garden, into a mound of scented leaves. An insect brushed against her ear. Flowers - Roz struggled to remember the name of the wretched things - grew in profusion: scarlet; yellow; and jet black.
Chris paced around the room. Outside, a bird sang. Outside, Paris stretched in the leisurely, unseasonable sunlight. Somewhere Monet, his eyesight failing, began to dream of painting waterlilies. Somewhere Toulouse-Lautrec, dead drunk in a flop-house, dreamed of watching dancers kick their legs high in the air. The whole city smelt unusually alive, more vital and intense than anywhere he had ever been, and he had nothing to do but wait and read up on politics. Sometimes he wondered if his sense of duty was as strong as his family had always said it was. It would be so easy just to go out for a walk. No one would care. Jean Mayeur"s death probably did not even have anything to do with the psychic flux and the time-rifts. In the city he might find a real lead. He was not getting anywhere here. His reading had taken him up to the beginning of 1894 and he still did not even know what the 50 Dreyfus case was. Sighing, he started to look round Anton Jarre"s office again.
It was like every office in the new wing of the Prefecture building. It achieved the paradox of smelling strongly of fresh paint without appearing to have been decorated. The ceiling was flat and drab without any mouldings or cornices, and the walls were a mottled white tainted with an underlying hint of some other colour.
It was the simple things you missed once you left your own era, Chris decided. At home he could have thumbclicked a sensor on the wall and reset the colour. Okay, Adjudicator dorms had only a very limited palette range but at least options would have been available. Nothing here showed any sign of having been customized. He had hoped that there would be something to let him gauge his superior officer"s personality, but the room was bare. Evidently Inspector Jarre had not yet stamped his character on the room. The general feeling was that of the interior of a box.
No one seemed to have seen the inspector this morning and Chris had not yet met him, but he got the strong impression that everyone else knew something about Jarre that he did not, and they were not talking. They were, however, definitely keeping away from this part of the building. That meant his presence here was unwitnessed. He examined the desk more closely. It was well made and imposing, almost grandiose, but it was completely out of place in the room. Like putting a concert holo-rig in a back bedroom, the effect was to make the room seem even smaller.
Taking his freshly laundered handkerchief from his uniform"s breast pocket, he ran it through the bronze handle of one of the desk drawers and tugged. Locked. Why lock an empty desk?
He took a flat leather wallet from his inside pocket and unfolded a vibropick-lock he had confiscated from an Undercity Delta-grade during a training exercise that had got real, real quick. A nineteenth-century desk lock should be easy to pick.
51.David stopped outside Brother Tomas"s house and unfolded the letter Mirakle had written for him. Mirakle had impressed him as the sort of man who would find it amusing to send a patient off with an insulting message about himself, but the letter was innocent enough. "Monsieur Clayton has a problem with dreams," it read. I trust that you will be able to a.s.sist him to make best use of his reason and abilities, and ensure that they are not misused." It ended with a Bible reference: Daniel 4:16.
David shrugged. His family in Boston had a great New England Bible chained in the library, but its contents had never interested him. No doubt the reference was to some plat.i.tude or well-meaning nonsense.
He banged on the bronze door-knocker.
The man who answered the door was far older and balder than anyone, even a lay brother, had any right to be. He was also taciturn to the point of imbecility, and though he ushered David into the garden at the back of the big house, he neither acknowledged David"s request to meet Brother Tomas, nor denied it.
In the garden, however, David felt some of the panic that had gripped his heart ebb gently away. The winter sun shone here with a summery intensity, and drowsy bees hovered around the earliest of next year"s blooms, deluded as to the season. The garden recalled the one at his family home in Boston, and at that instant David felt sure that if he had only heard a voice speaking in an American accent he would burst into tears.
When the man in m o n k " s robes put his hand on David"s shoulder, he almost fainted.
Roz watched as the man in the ancient outfit - Brother Tomas, she presumed - took David by the hand and led him to a wooden seat between the house and a building that stood between some trees. Its architecture was ornate and she judged it was a chapel. Either that or the world"s most elaborate outside toilet.
They talked for some time, and Brother Tomas read something that David pa.s.sed to him. They were too far away for 52 her to be able to lip-read. Then Brother Tomas took something small out of the pocket of his robes. A mechanism? A weapon? It was too small to make out. David"s body went into spasms, throwing him back off the seat.
A weapon, then. His limbs twisted and bent. Breaking? No, changing. Legs lengthened, strengthened, tearing through his fashionable baggy trousers. His knee joints buckled; reversed like a bird"s. Roz winced, imagining the sound of tendons tearing and re-knitting. He seemed to be trying to scream. Nothing came out of his throat, at first. Then something did. Roz thought it was his tongue.
She took the gun out of her handbag. It looked unrea.s.suringly alien. Far-future technology, the Doctor had said, way beyond your time. Absolutely un-reproducible by nineteenth-century science. Guaranteed to stop any known psychic force dead. Nothing about its likely effects on monks with mutagenic weaponry.
s.h.i.t!
Pleased with his work, Tomas replaced the tiny doll"s-house chair into the black wooden box in the hidden pocket in his robes from which he had taken it. His silver tweezers went into a flat wallet in the same pocket. Montague and his creatures might let the power dwell permanently in their bodies, but he had seen the final results of that too often to take the risk.
David was growling. Flecks of foam and spit gathered on his distorted lips. His wide tracker"s ears were twitching.
Tomas looked around the garden. Roses, berberis darwinii, laburnum and maple trees met his gaze. There was no visible threat. That meant nothing.
Tomas smiled. The power should have laid down the instructions in the boy"s brain by now. He spoke a single word: "Fetch."
David"s muscles tensed. The tactile pads that had grown out from the backs of his hands pressed into the soft earth.
The claws that curled up in the palms of his hands moistened with a thin liquid as modified sweat glands activated. He 53 53 leapt towards the woman-shaped fire that burnt in his new eyes. A word slurred on his drooling lips: "Rrrozzzz."
He was on her before she could aim the gun. His body was unmercifully fast. Unmerciful to him too, she suspected.
Surely his bones could not stand the tug of such muscles?
His forearm smashed her across the face, razor hairs cutting the flesh under her eye. She tried a couple of standard blocking moves. It was like fighting a mechanical crop-picker. Each blow nearly shattered her arms. If this kept up, she was going to die. Battered to death in a garden in Paris, centuries before she was born. Killed without ever knowing why.
"Wait." Brother Tomas"s voice was cold as a mountain stream.
Confused by the blows she had not been able to block, Roz saw, as if in a dream, another older man, perhaps a servant, whisper in Tomas"s ear.
"Take her into the chapel," Tomas said to the thing that had been David Clayton. "I"ll deal with her later. And stay out of sight, your young lady is here. It wouldn"t do for her to see you like this."
54.
Chapter 4.
Augustus Mirakle flung the closet door wide open. His white-faced receptionist spilled out onto the floor, her blonde hair flooding over the floorboards. He ripped the gag from her lips. It was her stockings, which had been bundled up and thrust into her mouth. Her legs were bare.
"Who did this?" He did not bother putting any sympathy into his voice. He knew what this meant. They were after him. One faction or another wanted his head on a spike. He would have to talk with Brother Tomas. It was a pity that he was just as frightening as Mirakle"s enemies.
Chris sighed. The photograph was crude by any standards.
Photography was still new and expensive. The woman was red-haired, he thought, although it was hard to tell in sepia.
Not as attractive as she might once have been, perhaps. The two children were bright and happy. Cute as a bepple, both of them. He felt vaguely guilty, and pushed the drawer shut with a pencil.
This was so frustrating. Roz and the Doctor got all the interesting jobs.
He decided to go and see if the Doctor had sent him a message. They had arranged another way to keep in touch as well, but Chris still had not managed to believe in it. Pending an emergency or an important discovery, he was going to stick to paper.
In the church of St Cecile in the thirteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, 55 the second morning service was over. Father Patrick cleared away the fragments of the Eucharist. The sun shone through the stained gla.s.s behind the high altar. It was a beautiful day.
Cold but sunny, with a crystalline feeling in the air. He was happy.
# "Father , wil l yo u hea r m y confession? " Th e voic e cam e suddenly at his elbow. He jumped slightly. He had thought himself alone in the church after Madame Duclare"s depar-ture, and had not heard the footsteps of another parishioner.
Turning, he saw an untidy-looking man with a battered hat clasped firmly across his chest.
The man"s eyes were strange. No - why had he thought that?
- they were normal. It must be his voice that was strange. Most people came to confession nervously, even when their guilt was hardly noticeable. Small venal sins normally, thank G.o.d. The parish had been spared the violence that was brewing in the city.
This man"s voice was confident, and yes, kind. Father Patrick found himself being led to the confessionals.
"Is it long since your last confession?" he asked, a formal breaking of the silence in the dark of the curtained and incensed air.
"This is my first. At least, my first in your church."
"And what is your sin, my child?" Strictly, as this was a first confession of a non-parishioner, possibly of a non-Roman Catholic if the voice"s stress on the word "church"
had been intentional, Father Patrick knew that he should have asked if the man was interested in baptism or confirmation, but he felt an urgency in the man"s voice that made him want to proceed. If the man was suffering he should be helped at once, not be held at arm"s-length from G.o.d by formalities.
I am about to hurt someone." The voice had the finality of a funeral bell. There was a pause. Patrick felt a cold fear move in his throat, and rubbed absently at his scarred cheek.
He had heard of cases of criminals who bragged of their crimes under the seal of confession, tormenting priests with evils done or about to be done. He considered demanding that the man leave his church, but before he could compose himself the voice began again.
56."There are people who see things, who feel things, but who cannot live with what they see and feel. Rather than do so, they retreat from the experience. Some in one way, some in another." The voice was sad, but it seemed an impersonal sorrow. Patrick tried to see how this related to its owner being about to hurt people. Perhaps this was a true confession; a real attempt to avert a horror foreseen.
"Last night I spoke with such a man. He had been made to investigate something that terrified him. Then his reaction was deemed unusual. Worthy of study. He was locked away.
Like the other secrets."
"Is it this man that you are going to hurt?" Father Patrick tried to break into the man"s musings, to direct him back to confession. This talk of secrets was disturbing. There was no place for them before G.o.d. Father Patrick devoutly wished to believe that.
"No. I left him sleeping peacefully, but he told me things that had been collected over years. Odd murders, strange disappearances. Dates and names, and aliases. He told me of a witness who had been released years ago. He told me where to find him now. I think he spoke so freely to keep from saying something else. I"ll need to go back there, but no, he is not the man I have to hurt. I " m sorry."
The feeling of cold foreboding returned to Father Patrick.
Was this man hunting down an old enemy? Seeking revenge for an ancient wrong? "If you are here to confess, then do so.
It is not a confession to brag of a crime not yet committed."
"Forgive me Father, for I must make a man face things he has forgotten, and does not even know he has forgotten."
"If recovering these memories would help others, would not a Christian choose to remember, if the choice was left to him? Do not confess, but seek permission openly, and if it is refused seek elsewhere."
"Do you really believe that a Christian would choose to remember, Father?"
"I do."
"Then speak to me of what you saw, Father Patrick, when you went by another name, in the crypt of the eglise St Roch.
57.Tell me what sent you back to the church of your childhood, and to the veneration of the saint who drove the serpents out of Ireland."
A cold hand seemed to twist in Father Patrick"s intestines.
His lower jaw felt heavy and ill-fitting. In his head a set of barred doors were opening.
"I never went back to them, I swear it. I never harmed the child."
"Then tell me what you did see, Brother Viers. Then perhaps we can grant each other absolution."
Brother Tomas snipped a blue-black rose from a bush with his dainty silver secateurs, and ran a slim finger along the supple velvet darkness of the petals. He did not rise from the wicker chair to do it, and his movements had, to Claudette"s eyes, a practical economy that spoke of spiritual calm. The sun shone down on his garden like a beam from the lighthouse at Alexandria, or the light that shone from the faces of the Muses upon Delphi. Claudette, despite her dislike for traditional religious poetry, felt like quoting Browning.
Tomas"s beautiful voice, clear as a temple bell, forestalled her: " " T h e lark is on the wing, the snail is on the thorn, G.o.d"s in his Heaven, all"s right with the world.""
The casual mind-reading was only what Claudette had expected, for the master, while not of course p.r.o.ne to the weakness which in ordinary mortals would be showing-off, did not allow a chance to pa.s.s in which his wisdom could cast its holy shadow, which was pure light, on the minds of his followers. His voice set a longing loose in her brain. A need for who knew what? More than David had to offer her, she felt sure.
She had expected to find David here, sitting at the master"s feet. Now, however, she was not sorry that he was nowhere in sight.
"This is the beauty we strive for," Brother Tomas said in his genderless voice. "It took five days" concentration to 58 58 weave the changes that will make this flower breed true. Now the bush can be left to bloom, and the world has become richer and more strange."
His voice changed, becoming a command. "Take it."
Claudette reached for the flower. This was the living art that she had sought so long. In her haste, a thorn nestling just below the rose pierced her hand. A dizziness worse than the spell she had woven on David that morning for his own good burst through her.
Tomas"s voice came softly into her paralysed ears. "There is a later verse of that poem of Browning"s that"s even more appropriate, my dear.
" "All service ranks the same with G.o.d - With G.o.d, whose puppets, best and worst Are we; there is no best nor first."
"It is time for your service to enter a new mode."
Jarre met Picquart at the railway station. Georges Picquart saluted crisply as Jarre approached.
The shorter man snorted. "It"s me, Anton Jarre, remember?
You"re my commanding officer; you don"t have to salute me."
"I was your commanding officer, until the Tribunal reported.
Now I"m off to command a mud barracks in Tunisia, and you"ve been seconded to the Gendarmerie. I"ll write and we can compare notes on who"s deeper in the merde."" merde.""
Jarre found himself blushing. Georges had never used bad language in all the time he had commanded the International Espionage Section of the French Secret Service. Jarre swore often, at least on duty, but it was somehow shocking to hear Picquart do so. Perhaps it was because, especially in the black civilian suit with a high white collar, he looked more like a preacher than a soldier.
"I wanted to see you before you went, Georges." Jarre stumbled over the words. In the five years he had served under Picquart he had never called him by his first name, 59 e.
only "sir" or " C o l o n e l " . Neither seemed appropriate now.
Picquart spoke quickly: "That"s very kind, Anton. But perhaps it"s best if I just fade away. No one"s going to get any points from backing me up, not after Esterhazy"s testimony."
"I know. But I still had to come. There"s something you need to know before you go. I don"t want to waste time thanking you for trusting me when I came to you and said that I didn"t think Dreyfus was selling military secrets to the Germans, whatever Joseph Henri claimed to have discovered.
That"s a given. You trusted me and I " m grateful, but I want to say don"t write to me, and don"t contact me again. I have a wife, you don"t. I have two children. I can"t afford to be a martyr, Georges. You do see that? Dreyfus is in Devil"s Island prison. Our careers are in ruins. No one"s got anything coherent out of Agent Gris since that business at Mont-St-Michel. The hidden cause is over, at least in France. We have to let it go, Georges. Let others hold the secret flame for once."
Georges turned away. "I see," he said neutrally. They stood for another ten minutes in silence while the train was made ready, and then Picquart got on it. He went straight to a seat in the carriage and sat down. He did not look out of the window. The train pulled out in a cloud of evil-smelling steam and oil.