After it had gone, Jarre swore under his breath. That had been nasty, but it was for the best. Edouard Drumont"s vile paper La Libre Parole La Libre Parole was digging into the background of everyone involved in the Dreyfus case, especially anyone who might have Jewish blood in his veins. Picquart was a good officer, a solid career soldier; he might live down his support of Dreyfus if he kept quiet. He might even live down his involvement with the body Dreyfus had represented, the shadow agency within the French intelligence community into which Jarre and Dreyfus had been recruited during their studies at the ecolee Polytechnique in 1883. was digging into the background of everyone involved in the Dreyfus case, especially anyone who might have Jewish blood in his veins. Picquart was a good officer, a solid career soldier; he might live down his support of Dreyfus if he kept quiet. He might even live down his involvement with the body Dreyfus had represented, the shadow agency within the French intelligence community into which Jarre and Dreyfus had been recruited during their studies at the ecolee Polytechnique in 1883.
Picquart had been initiated only into the outer "onion-skin" of the shadow agency; his control over it had been 60 60 nominal. Jarre had been next after Dreyfus. Had that been why Picquart had saluted him at the last? It was too late to tell now. Jarre was one order deeper into the mysteries, and like Dreyfus he had Jewish blood. He was the next obvious target for whichever group was out to wreck the Shadow Directory, but he was not going to be discredited or killed so easily. Not if he could kill the enemy first.
Roz stared out of bruised eyes, across the truncated nave of the chapel. David was roosting - she could find no better word to describe it - on the pulpit, his head resting on its side on the great flat reading stand. One of his eyes was open and unblinking.
Tomas entered the chapel. With him, like a sleep-walker, came Claudette Engadine. Roz had seen her at La Belle Epoch, and she had been beautiful there. Now she would, Roz judged, be fabulously attractive to a certain sort of man.
Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had grown larger and firmer, her skin whiter and clearer. Her eyes were large and childlike. They half-filled her forehead. Vast, deep, elven eyes. Roz wondered what good they were. Beyond a certain size there was no functional need to make the eye much bigger. A whale"s eye is not ma.s.sively bigger than a human"s. Then she remembered a craze from her own time: Neotic Make-up. Cosmetic altera-tions designed to make the features resemble those of a helpless infant, to evoke feelings of maternal or paternal love. It had always made her want to kick the designer in the genes.
Tomas patted Claudette on the shoulder. "Sit down, my dear."
Obediently she sat on the edge of a pew, hands clasped in her lap like a little girl in church for the first time.
Tomas turned to face Roz.
"Now, what in the world am I going to do with you?"
When Jarre arrived at work he found his new a.s.sistant chatting idly with the desk sergeant in the main building. The new man was clearly ill-disciplined. He just stood there 61 grinning like an idiot, as if Jarre"s arrival had saved him from some horrible fate.
Jarre tried to work out just why the gendarme was so irritating. He had the frank weather-beaten look of a farmer or a groundsman, and wore his neatly pressed and apparently newly issued gendarme"s uniform as a novice monk in a strict order might have worn his first hair-shirt. He was big, over six foot, and built out to match. His blond hair was cropped close.
Jarre, an always overweight five foot eight, felt a twinge of envy. But he didn"t let himself feel it for long. The mixture of innocence and smugness turned his stomach. It also rang as true as a coiner"s fifty-franc piece. It was hard to be properly scornful of someone who loomed over him, but Jarre did his d.a.m.nedest.
"I"ve had no time to familiarize myself with your record."
He glanced at the duty rosters. Oh h.e.l.l. Oh h.e.l.l. "I have a meeting in five minutes with the Prefect of Police, on the Mayeur case. "I have a meeting in five minutes with the Prefect of Police, on the Mayeur case.
Tell me about yourself as we go. Oh, and I"ll expect you to take minutes, all right?"
"There"s not that much to tell, Inspector," the man said quickly. "My name"s Jean-Paul Armand, and I"ve been transferred from the French Alps to gain some experience of city policing." He stopped and looked unaccountably pleased with himself.
"Indeed. So street crime is rife in the Alps, is it?"
"No, Monsieur Inspector."
Jarre sighed. This was a punishment, he knew. Jean-Paul was evidently the slowest, stolidest, least quick-witted officer in the whole of France, carefully hand-picked as a living ball and chain to keep Anton Jarre out of trouble and away from the Dreyfus business. Well, h e " d see about that. As soon as the meeting was over h e " d have Jean-Paul a.s.sessed for fitness, marksmanship and legal knowledge. Something would give him the opportunity to get this yokel onto someone else"s back. Jarre smothered a flash of guilt. It was in Jean-Paul"s own interest to be moved. Very shortly, Jarre"s company was not going to be healthy.
62.
Chapter 5.
" D o you like t h e m ? " Tomas asked. "I know they"re gaudy.
Even obvious in a way, but they will be mingling in my service with creatures even more vulgar and debased.
Think of their degradation as the mimicry of an exquisite moth."
He reached over and prised open Claudette"s mouth.
"Good teeth. One of my few regrets; poor dental hygiene. If you ever have to grow a second set of teeth in adulthood, you"ll know why." He closed Claudette"s mouth gently. " S h e " s a valuable addition to my flock, if perhaps a trifle past her best." He sighed with apparently genuine disappointment with the unfairness of the world. "It"s a difficulty. Harvest too late and something is already lost; harvest too early and work in the world goes undone."
Clicking his teeth in thought, like a farmer examining his stock, Tomas saw tears well up in the girl"s eyes, and carefully wiped them away with an immaculate white linen handkerchief.
"There, there, my dear. It"s not as bad as that. It"s not as if I were Montague, you know. I pride myself on preserving beauty. Look at David here."
The tears curved down the cla.s.sical beauty of Claudette"s face.
After Jarre and his stooge left the lobby, the desk sergeant took the envelope addressed to Armand from the cubbyhole under the desk and placed it in his pocket. Major 63 Henri would be interested to see who was trying to contact Armand, or more likely who was trying to contact Jarre.
The meeting with the Prefect went as well as Jarre had hoped, which was to say badly. Train a parrot to say "crisis, what crisis", give it an ill-fitting drab suit so that it resembled a parrot in crow"s clothing, and provide it with an uncle in the Senate, and you would have Jules Perraudin; civic leader and chief of police.
Armand had not helped matters by sitting there with his mouth open, taking no notes whatsoever.
Once Jarre had the man back in his office he rounded on the gendarme viciously. Inwardly he knew that he was only taking out the anger he had felt on being on the receiving end of Perraudin"s septic tongue, but he was d.a.m.ned if he was going to be ignored by a subordinate.
"I told you to keep a record of the meeting."
Armand looked puzzled. "I did."
"Really?" said Jarre with heavy sarcasm. "I suppose you memorized everything the Prefect said."
"Yes, Inspector. He began, if you will pardon me, by calling you an obsessive misanthrope with delusions of proficiency, then he said that Doctor Tardieu was an antique pox-doctor who should have been retired ten years ago, and that so far as he was concerned Jean Mayeur hung himself, or if he was murdered it was a public-spirited act carried out by a posse of concerned citizens and should be applauded. He went on to say that as far as contributing to the activities of the Surete goes, he would be happiest if you and -" Armand blushed "- your muscular dunce over there spent your time rogering each other in back rooms rather than investigating anything."
Jarre scowled. "Yes, well, I don"t think there is any need to remember in quite so much detail. I want you to go to the department of records at the Palais Bourbon and read up the records of votes in the Council of Deputies in which Mayeur was involved. I want to know what he voted for and why over the last five years."
64.Armand started to say something.
"And," Jarre continued hurriedly, "I want to know whether any of the other members of the Council of Deputies have changed their positions since his death."
"In case he was influencing or blackmailing any of them, and they murdered him and then reverted to their real view-points?"
"Or in case a third party killed him to warn others or because he was less corruptible than most, which is perhaps slightly more likely." Jarre sighed. "And be as quick as you can. I expect to put you through your paces this afternoon."
He winced. "Professionally, of course."
The department of records at the Palais Bourbon was sealed to the public, but Chris"s police status got him inside. It smelt of brown paper parcels and librarians" hair-oil.
Jarre"s suggested line of enquiry was a good one and it niggled at Chris that he had not thought of it a day before. It took him a couple of hours to trace the votes in the Council of Deputies through the labyrinthine processes of government but in the process he found himself intrigued, despite his earlier boredom. He also found out some snippets about the Dreyfus case although, mindful of Jarre"s orders, he refused to let himself be diverted. Still, at least he knew now what Dreyfus had done. Treason and the sale of military secrets; no wonder the man was hated.
On arriving back at the Prefecture, Chris noticed that Jarre seemed surprised to see him for some reason despite his explicit instructions. However, he clearly antic.i.p.ated action from his a.s.sistant since the very first thing he did after Chris"s return was to make sure that his deputy could be relied on in a crisis. Chris approved of that. It showed forward planning.
He always tried to think ahead. For instance he used the time he spent doing the two hundred press-ups (one hundred with each hand) to review mentally the material he had gleaned on nineteenth-century Parisian law. As he had 65 suspected, there was a short quiz coming. Chris was just glad Jarre kept off recent history.
After the criminology test there was a trip to the firing range. Chris lost a percentage on the hand-guns until he had figured out how to make allowances for recoil. Most of the ordnance he had used as an Adjudicator was blaster-based or recoil-absorbing. Still, Jarre seemed impressed enough by ninety-seven per cent accuracy. Chris thought that lenient.
The target range was too simple. It did not fire back. It did not even move.
By the end of the day, Chris was feeling that he had made a good all-round showing. The only problem was he could not fathom why Inspector Jarre seemed so down in the mouth.
In the evening mist, the shadowy man whose name - for the moment - was Jean Veber shivered in his coachman"s black and silver livery, and watched his victim over the snorting forms of the dappled horses. The traitor"s offspring was only a shadow through the fog, but Veber had managed to keep the horse and trap padding after him through the backways around the rue de Poissy since Emil had left his rendezvous at the house on the quai St-Bernard.
Now the murder was at hand, it came to Veber to wonder if he could go through with it. It was one thing to live off another"s name; he had been doing that as long as he could remember. That was a minor sin, surely. It was quite another thing to take a life.
He tasted something acrid and unpleasant in the back of his throat. He wondered if they had drugged him in the initiation or if it was the effect of fear.
He could remember so little of the initiation. So little of anything. His mind was blank as the fog. In the clammy mist he felt half-formed, like the unfinished paintings on the wall of the house of the painter whose name he had stolen.
His hands, so large and ruthless as they had always seemed, shook as he prepared to tug on the reins.
Montague"s hissing voice sounded in his ear.
"Kill us this whelp and anything you desire will be yours."
66.The force of half-remembered desires rose up for a moment in his brain like the head of a cobra. He threw the horses into a gallop through the fog.
Across the street Emil Montfalcon threw his head round at the sound of the hoofs. His grey top hat toppled through the night air.
Two years ago, during a visit to Armentieres, he had seen the Calais and Lille Express strike a tramcar, killing five people. He thought of that collision as the horses pounded towards him.
Nearer to him than the horses, as near as his breath and nearer, the Quoth of the lost colony pondered the collision of galaxies.
The Quoth called "Truthseeker" was impressive, the surveyor had to concede that. Still it was young, barely fifty million patterns old, and apart from the period of Shadow that had fallen across the colony thirty million patterns ago, it had no direct experience of the Blight.
Nevertheless it had accomplished much in the brief beginnings of its immortality. It had studied with the Oldest Inhabitants of the lost colony, diligently bending its body to catch the faint, slow reminiscences that gradually spread over their frozen forms. It had traced their history as far back as the memories of the Oldest Speaker. Back over four hundred million pattern-lifetimes to when the cl.u.s.ter in which the colony dwelt had split off from its greater parent, to wander lonely in the desolate voids. Back further, ten thousand billion patterns, to when the Quoth first came to these Cl.u.s.ters, fleeing the catastrophe of their past, and had founded the ma.s.sive domain of Quoth s.p.a.ce. From that vast hub the parent Cl.u.s.ter had been colonized, from which in turn this Cl.u.s.ter had been settled. Somewhere in the cosmos, no doubt, Quoth s.p.a.ce yet existed, lost perhaps forever as the random motions of the Cl.u.s.ters sundered the Quoth one from another. The random motions, and the Blight and the Shadow that came with them.
67.Truthseeker had discounted the fables, the mythology that the freezing memories of the Oldest had added to the events.
Like the surveyors who devoted their time to tracking the other Cl.u.s.ters, and coming if possible to an understanding of the wider cosmos, it was regarded as a hero by the Quoth of the colony.
It helped, of course, that its body was lithely formed, and its planes of communication were broad and expressive.
Waves of thought whipped over Truthseeker"s surface faster than the sensors of its compatriots could decipher them.
Reputedly it had, several times, solved problems that had puzzled Quoth Thinkers since before its ancestors had left Quoth s.p.a.ce, almost a thousand billion pattern-lifetimes before, only to neglect to tell anyone of the solution until a chance pattern or sudden practical application had caused the subject to be raised. Its past was already a legend; its future a puzzle. Even though other t.i.tles were foreseen for it, it carried its birth name "Truthseeker" with quiet dignity. The circ.u.mstances in which it would earn the name "Warleader"
had not yet happened and were only dimly foreseen by those Quoth who could, by creating perceptive organs in the plane of one of their time-like dimensions, perceive likely futures.
By a.n.a.logy with games and certain artistic endeavours the idea of a leader was understandable, but the term "war" was much debated. Perhaps, the surveyor thought, it would be a new form of game.
For the present, the potential Warleader was as respected, as liked, as any Quoth within the Cl.u.s.ter; and that, the surveyor thought ruefully, was the problem.
It was simply so much in demand that those Quoth whose interests lay in surveying and measuring the other Outer Cl.u.s.ters had been forced to wait a hundred thousand pattern-lifetimes for this discussion. Time they could ill afford to lose.
Only Truthseeker had the leverage with the Oldest Inhabitants to persuade them that the Quoth were in imminent danger.
Truthseeker asked when the methods and the results of the surveyors" studies were explained to it.< reasonably="" so.="" we="" surveyors="" have="" been="" studying="" this="" 68="" distant="" cl.u.s.ter="" since="" its="" course="" through="" the="" four="" macrodimensions="" began="" to="" intersect="" that="" of="" ours.="" there="" are="" mathematical="" problems="" with="" modelling="" events="" on="" such="" a="" long="" timescale="" and="" at="" such="" a="" distance,="" but="" it="" is="" practically="" certain="" that="" the="" cl.u.s.ter="" in="" which="" we="" dwell="" will="" be="" disrupted,="" maybe="" even="" stripped="" of="" its="" birthing="" matter,="" by="" collision="" with="" this="" larger="" rogue="" ma.s.s.=""> < approximately="" five="" hundred="" thousand="" pattern-lifetimes.=""> < we="" must="" begin="" at="" once="" to="" build="" great="" engines="" to="" carry="" all="" the="" quoth="" from="" this="" cl.u.s.ter.="" we="" m="" u="" s="" t="" .="" .="" .=""> The patterns blazoned across Truthseeker"s form faltered.
The surveyor started to withdraw from the commonality of s.p.a.ce-time in alarm but it was too late. The Shadow swept over them. It was, perhaps, the worst attack since the Cl.u.s.ter had been settled, certainly the worst in the surveyor"s lifetime.
It strove to rea.s.sert its own ident.i.ty, but the screaming patterns of the Blight drove away its consciousness, drove it down into a h.e.l.l of toil and unreason. Alien images. Feelings of intolerable fear. A pounding pressure to act.
The hoofs of the first horse struck Emil with the sound of iron striking a bag of oatmeal. Blood splashed on the cobbles. His heart paused in its beating.
Elsewhere, in a room empty apart from a man, a chair and a thing out of nightmare, there was the sound of laughter. The cause was the information that mumbled out of the distorted hps of the nightmare that knelt on the floor, as the senses generated within its enlarged cranium reached out into the world, ignoring nothing, reporting everything, understanding nothing.
The man in the chair laughed again. The test had been interesting, and the result was astonishingly humorous. He reached for a list of names and held it close to his eyes. All the people listed were members of the Brotherhood, all were tall men with blue-grey eyes and large white hands. Three names were left: a doctor; a priest; and this novice, Veber. Montague 69 was sure one of the men on the list was the Grandmaster, the masked figure to whom, in theory, he owed allegiance and who, in fact, he intended to kill, finally and for the last time.
He ran his finger under each name in turn. Mirakle was a mere conjuror, a fat fraud with his prehistoric rituals and his garbled chants. Montague had seen real magick in his youth, before the rise of the rationalists. In the Paris chained and tamed by Haussmann"s architecture, by the past triumphs of the Shadow Directory, Mirakle was no threat.
Tomas the priest was a strong possibility, but more inclined to horticulture than conspiracy.
Veber, now. Veber was an anomaly. His painting "The Doll-Maker" had hung in the exhibition for a week before any of his underlings had dared mention it to Montague.
He was still undecided about the fate of the one who had finally told him of it. Perhaps he had been overly strict. Still, it had been insulting. It showed, if Veber"s own notes on the painting were to be believed, a madman. The face of the man was apparently - Montague himself saw no resemblance - Montague"s own.
At first he had been inclined merely to have the painter killed out of hand. Then he had begun to wonder. More and more of the recruits of the True Brotherhood, of his his Brotherhood, were students or artists. It seemed as if the power that flowed from him into his followers lived best in the creative, the innova-tive. Perhaps the forces were intentionally drawing in the minds in which they could best thrive. Perhaps Veber would be a strong ally. Perhaps it was a trap all along; another of the Grandmaster"s switches of ident.i.ty, planned over years to let him continue to command the Brotherhood without ever facing Montague openly. Brotherhood, were students or artists. It seemed as if the power that flowed from him into his followers lived best in the creative, the innova-tive. Perhaps the forces were intentionally drawing in the minds in which they could best thrive. Perhaps Veber would be a strong ally. Perhaps it was a trap all along; another of the Grandmaster"s switches of ident.i.ty, planned over years to let him continue to command the Brotherhood without ever facing Montague openly.
With that in mind Montague had drawn Veber into the Brotherhood. Had set him a harder task than any other initiate. It had been unlikely that the uncannily knowledge-able painter was more than an unusually gifted novice, but it had not hurt to make sure. That he had succeeded in killing one of the Family was astonishing.
Montague reached for a second list, a longer one. A.
70.complex genealogy of linked names. What an inspiration it had been! How better to deal with Veber than to set him against one of the cursed Family? Whoever died, Montague won. The thought was so delicious, so true in every sense, that Montague could not help whispering it in the distorted single ear of his creature, his lips pressed close to the gross convolutions of the tympanic surface that curved up in a spiral over her long mad skull.
"Whoever dies, Montague wins." He laughed again, and again. A pity she could not understand him, but then who could? Emil was dead. It had been a death sorely delayed.
It had been the boy"s physical perfection that had broken his hold on the members of the Brotherhood who had become the Family. He should have died for that, but he had been lucky even as a child. Montague had never discovered who had killed Boucher. Still, better late than never, and it was not as if he had not enough time. His greatest fear these days was that his enemies might die of old age while he was distracted by a sunset or a beautiful concubine. He was stronger than ever. He would always grow stronger. The Family"s theft of the Doll"s House had not weakened him. Still chortling to himself, he coughed a little blood onto the tiled floor where it mixed with the drool of his sensor.
He wondered if she was all right in the damp. Perhaps he would bring her some warm gruel to suck soon; she deserved it. In the meantime she would need more of his power. He pressed her toothless head down into the folds of his robe with a sigh and felt her nuzzle at his flesh.
He did not know if his powers could save him until the horses" hoofs had crushed his ribs and his heart had stopped beating. After that it was obvious.
He was suddenly looking down at his own body from the driver"s seat of the trap. Someone else"s bile welled up in his new throat. His old body looked different from this angle.
Seen from outside it was no more than eighteen; its dark frock-coat and grey trousers stained with blood and night 71 soil; the make-up he used to disguise his abnormal skin cracked and stained on his broken flesh.
As he watched through new eyes, his opera hat was crushed like an eggsh.e.l.l under the hoofs of the still snorting horses. All the things that he had hated in himself, all the peculiarities and oddities that marked him as an outsider, as one of the Family rather than as a Frenchman, were dead and broken in the half-shuttered lights of the cab"s oil lamps.
Perhaps if he had dreamed of this he would have imagined that a dark exultation would fill his veins when all that had cursed him was wiped away, but instead he felt only a great and dizzying hollowness, as if he had ceased to be real.
Somehow he knew he had no time to think, that if he did not master this new body, if he did not grasp its brain and biceps alike and grind his image into it, then he would be overwhelmed by the hollowness around him and die a second death, this time for ever.