The Rook: A Novel

by O'Malley, Daniel

  I welcomed him, and he helped me inside while a servant attended to his horse. We were soon settled comfortably by a fire, drinking wine and engaged in the traditional chitchat. I noticed that he seemed distracted throughout the conversation, and I braced myself for his inevitable request for money.

  “Ernst,” he said, looking at me suddenly, “I’ve found a rather remarkable investment opportunity that I think you may be interested in.”

  “Oh?” I asked, trying to sound surprised and (I suspect) failing. He caught my resignation, and his intensity wavered for a moment. He nodded and leaned forward in his chair, casually drawing a belt knife.

  “Yes, I concede that I’ve had some bad luck in business,” he said. “But Cousin, I believe this could redefine our future!” He was excited now, and I sat back in my chair. I hadn’t liked his use of the word our. And I particularly didn’t like the way he was holding the knife.

  “Like that business with the man from Florence?” I asked dryly.

  “No, not like the business with the man from Florence!” he snapped, his cheeks flushing. The business with the Italian had almost lost him his house and had led to his fiancée’s breaking off their engagement.

  “All right, Gerd, I’m sorry,” I said, casting an uneasy look at the knife.

  “This is different,” he said. I began to wonder if he was drunk. Or possibly mad.

  “I believe you,” I said, cautiously reaching down for my own belt knife. My fingers closed around the handle and I drew the blade.

  He smiled. “I’ll show you.”

  And he cut off his own forefinger.

  “Holy Christ!” I exclaimed. Gerd’s eyes were beatific, with an ecstasy that I found almost as unnerving as the blood gushing onto my carpet. I drew in breath to shout for someone—whether to restrain him or clean up the blood, I wasn’t sure—but he held up his unmutilated hand.

  “Wait,” he said calmly and I noticed, with a small thrill of horror, that he was still holding his sliced-off digit. Even more distressing, the severed end of the finger was turning a strange sky blue. I darted a glance at his wound and saw that it was turning the same color.

  I’ll confess that at this point the possibility of satanic possession began to occur to me, and I tightened my grasp on my knife. I was bracing myself to stab the blade into his eye and call for the servants when he brought the severed finger up to his hand. Before my eyes, the blue patches writhed, and I watched tendrils reach out to one another. I heard a faint sucking sound, and then his hand was whole again. He stared at his fingers with rapt fascination as he wiggled them all.

  “Holy Christ,” I repeated softly. He smiled seraphically.

  Needless to say, I was intrigued, if still slightly concerned that my cousin was trafficking with the devil. It occurred to me, however, that if this was not an abomination in the eyes of God that would lead to our eternal damnation, it represented a marvelous business opportunity.

  So it was with an open mind, and a couple of extremely large fellows from my estates as backup, that I accompanied my cousin to his residence, where a handful of grubby men were engaged in some extremely complicated experiments in a barn. They were too socially awkward and uninterested in me to be recruiting agents of the devil. Rather than making any sort of overtures for my soul, they spent several hours explaining to me exactly what their work consisted of. Their earnest descriptions gave me a headache, but their optimism about providing me with a new leg was tremendously exciting.

  I watched as they sliced mice and hounds and horses in half and then proceeded to glue them back together. Gerd was entranced, and my mind raced with the possibilities. We worked out a deal: I agreed to fund their research, and they signed several binding contracts. Then they returned to their work, which we later moved to one of my more remote properties.

  And so it all began.

  Well, that’s fascinating,” said Myfanwy. “And a few centuries later, you’re sitting naked in my chair. The chain of events is obvious.”

  “You know the rest of the history,” said the Belgian coldly. “I have no doubt that the Checquy has it documented thoroughly. Our rise to power, our connection to the government, the attempt at conquest, the forcible dismantling.”

  “Yeah, although after that, things get a little shady. A few hints of your presence in Europe,” she said. “But you were careful.”

  “We were obliged to be,” the Belgian replied ruefully. “So many of our primary resources had been lost. We were stripped of our estates, and we came close to being utterly destroyed. Fortunately, I have always endeavored to be prepared. Positions to fall back to, hidden funds and resources. It took us several decades to build ourselves up to where we had been technologically. Several of our master handwerksmannen had died during the Checquy’s counterstrike. Key experiments were destroyed. Both Gerd and I were forced to watch ourselves be killed. We were wearing new bodies by that time, of course. We sat ten feet from the kings of my country and yours and toasted our own corpses. And then, when the gasps had finished and the blood was cleaned up, we walked past the Court of the Checquy and the elite of two countries and out into the world.

  “We rebuilt, retrained, and continued to innovate. Our research was on a smaller scale, of course. Our wealth was far more modest. We had to be even more secretive. But still, we grew in power. And then… Well, then I’m afraid that’s when the corruption set in.

  “Some of our handwerksmannen are fascinated by the concept of corruption. They have dedicated centuries to weeding it out of the human body, to staying its inevitable progression. They always chatter on about it. The molecular level. Enzymes. Organs. Unfortunately, there was so much focus on the small scale that the larger corruptions were missed. Instability crept in. Priorities became… skewed,” said the Grafter, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Some of us became erratic.”

  “Erratic?” asked Myfanwy. Because you were so completely sane to begin with, she thought. Nothing says normal like invading England on horses with antlers.

  “One of our premier scholars, Jan, developed an alarming penchant for cutting off his own toes. They grew back, of course, but you could hardly have a conversation without having to watch him take off a shoe.”

  “Charming.”

  “I think,” the Belgian mused, “some people simply may not be meant to live so long.”

  “You don’t think it might have been all the genetic messings-about?” asked Myfanwy through a yawn. Tension and fear were fighting a losing battle against exhaustion.

  “Yes, well… no, I don’t like that idea,” he said.

  “No, of course not. How many bodies have you had?”

  “You lose count after a while,” the Grafter replied. “I have sometimes thought that we may attract the wrong people. My cousin has a troubleshooter, a young man named Van Syoc. He is a monster, with disturbing habits.”

  Yeah, like tearing the faces off prostitutes, thought Myfanwy. She thought about telling him that Van Syoc was dead but decided against it.

  “In any case,” said the naked man, “I became concerned—”

  “About the toe thing?”

  “Well, no, not so much the toe thing.”

  “You weren’t concerned about the toes?” asked Myfanwy, mentally kicking herself for prolonging the conversation.

  “No, it wasn’t really doing him any harm,” he said dismissively. “It was not even interfering with his work. What concerned me about the toes was that it was a new habit—he had gone several hundred years without doing it. Now it was compulsive.”

  “Uh-huh.” As long as it didn’t interfere with his work.

  “Yes, but I am digressing. I had noticed some alarming trends. Communiqués were bypassing me. Gerd had become more secretive and was suddenly much more engaged in the details of our international efforts. Previously, he had been content just to oversee the workshops. He has always been keen to enjoy the luxuries in life,” the Belgian said, sighing.

  Absolu
tely, thought Myfanwy sourly. A stretch limousine, a shiny fish tank.

  “He had always been excitable, but now he became fixated on our projects in Britain. I became suspicious, but I did not wish to confront him directly. Not without more evidence. So I arranged to have his geheimschrijver detained one evening, when my cousin was at the theater.”

  “His geheimschrijver?” asked Myfanwy.

  “Uh, it is his ‘secret writer’—secretary,” said the Belgian. “I acquired him and had some of my subordinates infiltrate his memory.” Myfanwy tensed, thinking of the youth who had been doing a little memory infiltration of his own that evening.

  “Guys with scales?” she asked tightly.

  “Hm? Oh, no—I know what you are thinking, but those models are only useful for people with standard, unaugmented brains. No, our support staff is augmented to act as communicators—telephones. They tap directly into the phone network through their minds, hacking into the system. We speak to them as if they were the person on the other end of the line, and the words are transferred. When the person we are calling speaks into their telephone, our secretary repeats their words in their voice. It is practically instantaneous, and completely untraceable.”

  Which explains why Li’l Pawn Alan’s compatriots couldn’t track the calls, she thought bitterly. I suppose they can’t do faxes—after all, where would they insert them?

  “I watched as they subdued him, insinuated various implements, and downloaded transcriptions. I found, to my intense disappointment, that Gerd had been in contact with our plants in the Checquy, preparing them for a putsch. I must say that one of the double agents in your Court particularly welcomes the prospect of a violent revolution. It is quite unwholesome,” he said.

  “Frankly,” continued the Grafter, “this was a tremendous blow. I had headed their acquisition and indoctrination. It had been my strategy from the beginning. I had personally overseen the establishment of Camp Caius and the development and placement of our fungal weapon of mass destruction. Oh, yes,” he said as Myfanwy raised an eyebrow, “it is quite a terrifying little entity. It subjugates human beings and can engulf vast areas once activated.”

  “With an eye toward marrying our two organizations?” asked Myfanwy dryly. Up until that moment, she had allowed herself to relax. Part of it was weariness, but the Belgian was so pleasant about everything that she’d… well, she hadn’t quite forgotten that he was naked and a centuries-old enemy, but she had ceased to hold those facts in the front of her mind. Now his casual mention of the fungus cult in Bath brought back to her the terror of that day. And the dismissive way that he spoke of hacking someone’s memory made her shudder.

  “Rook Thomas, you must remember that in the eyes of the Broederschap, the Checquy is not a benevolent force. It is the adversary that smashed our efforts and forced our destruction. I was obliged to watch as my homes were razed and my friends killed. My corpse was burned and the ashes were dumped in the ocean. It was only through exceptionally cunning sleight of body that I managed to survive. I will not blush when I tell you that when we emerged from that ordeal, making overtures of peace to the Checquy was not high on our agenda. Indeed, our initial goal was to conceal our existence from you, and then to set about inflicting as much pain as we could.”

  “So what happened?” asked Myfanwy.

  “It is curious how the passing of lifetimes will change a man,” mused the Belgian. “For some, apparently, it brings on a compulsion to cut off one’s toes. As for me, I found myself forgiving the Checquy. My spite came to seem petty, and as I watched your organization expand and improve, I realized that it represented as good a governing body as could exist in such circumstances. It had flaws, of course, and was subject to the vagaries of humanity, but its goals were noble. I came to hope that we could meet without resentment. Over the years, I broached the subject to my cousin, and over time he grew amenable. I continued the process of infiltration and establishing collaborators in the Checquy. I did not do this because I wished to harm you but because the Checquy are still wary of us, and I wanted them to see that it was in their best interests to join with us.”

  “By making a threat?” asked Myfanwy.

  “By demonstrating a position of mutual advantage,” said the Belgian diplomatically. “Or perhaps, showing you the stick and the carrot. If we reveal ourselves, and the Checquy decides it cannot countenance our continued existence… well, we have no intention of dying.”

  “Ah.” Myfanwy nodded.

  “Recently it became clear that my cousin had become disillusioned with my ideas. He thought our preparations should be used to cripple, rather than…” He trailed off, and shook his head wryly.

  “Yes?”

  “Rather than to graft.”

  Myfanwy gave a wan smile.

  “He was basing more and more of his choices on personal enmities. A few months ago I learned that the subjects at Camp Caius were selected because their ancestors had been Checquy soldiers at the Isle of Wight. It was petty, and made the operation far more vulnerable than it needed to be. I had a hunch such small revenge was just the tip of the iceberg. And so,” continued the Belgian, “I made arrangements to keep my cousin busy for several weeks and had myself transported to see you in order to broker some sort of treaty.”

  “And you picked the old ‘ship a heart to the other party and then grow yourself a new body’ trick, eh?” asked Myfanwy.

  “Uh, yes,” said the Grafter.

  “This was the only way you could figure out to get in contact with me?” said Myfanwy. “It never occurred to you to pull the old ‘pick up the phone’ trick? Or, and here’s just a completely random idea, couldn’t you have abducted me from a nightclub?”

  “Do you think you would have been inclined to accept any proposals I put to you under those circumstances?” asked von Suchtlen mildly.

  No, admitted Myfanwy to herself, remembering the rage she’d felt in the skinless Belgian’s car.

  “And besides, the heart was the only way for me to leave the facilities undetected. My cousin was becoming paranoid—justifiably, I’ll admit, since I did arrange for his assistant to be interrogated. Phone lines were tapped, and I couldn’t risk having my assistant interrogated, so I couldn’t place any calls through him. In fact, the entrances and exits to my laboratories were being watched. I found, much to my dismay, that I was almost a prisoner. I could not go anywhere without my cousin’s being aware of it.” The Belgian sighed, and his face darkened as he contemplated the situation. “I left the heart box in the mail-out tray. It was sent to a mail-forwarding service, which forwarded it to a courier, who delivered it to you.”

  “I’m sorry, but how did you send a box containing your own heart?” asked Myfanwy. She was getting one of those M. C. Escher–style headaches.

  “You want to know how it works?” asked the Belgian, brightening visibly. “It is quite fascinating, really. Very new technology. Experimental.” He took a breath, and Myfanwy cut him off, desperate to forestall a further lecture.

  “I’m sure it’s amazing, but I don’t need the technical details right now.”

  “Of course,” said the Belgian, and she thought he looked a little embarrassed. “I am sorry, the… is it nerds? The nerds can be a little contagious. In any case, you take a sample to grow the heart, and the body that grows from that heart will have all the memories you had at the time.”

  “So there could be two of you wandering around?” said Myfanwy, her head spinning.

  “No, the sampling is thorough, stripping various vital components. The original body begins to break down an hour after the sample. It sticks around just long enough to pack the sample in the box and then undress and go into the shower. Then the remains liquefy. The sample will have grown into a heart by the time it is delivered, and then will pause for a while before regenerating into an entire person in a couple of weeks. It can even be dissected and will still regrow itself.” He looked at her proudly and she nodded. It sounded gross, but she tho
ught she understood.

  “The person it grows into can select a couple of abilities to be reborn with,” he continued expansively. “Nothing like the capabilities we can provide via surgery, of course. And there are some risks involved.”

  “Oh?” said Myfanwy.

  “Some of the early subjects were known to abruptly melt into a sort of slurry. But we had mostly ironed that kink out, and it was a risk I was willing to take. My cousin had been told I would be sequestering myself in my quarters, and he has always recognized my occasional need for contemplation and strategic planning, so he left me to my solitude. Even if he broke down my door, he would not find a body. Thus,” said the Belgian, “we are free to hammer out the details of our merger. I can present it to my cousin as a fait accompli. If Gerd is unable to cope with it, then I am certain the combined forces of Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen and His Majesty’s Hidden Soldiers of the Checquy will be able to subdue him and whatever forces he can muster.” The Belgian sat back with a satisfied smile.

  “Yes, well,” said Myfanwy, “it all sounds delightful, but I am afraid I have some bad news for you. To begin with, your experimental new heart technology still has a few bugs. It hasn’t been weeks in the growing, it’s been months. And whatever project you arranged to tie up your cousin’s attention, um, it didn’t work…” Myfanwy gave him a quick précis of his cousin’s recent activities.

  “… and so it appears that your cousin is dead—killed in the assault,” finished Myfanwy awkwardly.

  “Dead,” repeated the Belgian dully. He had slumped back in the chair and looked a bit shell-shocked. Myfanwy shifted in her uncomfortable seat and wondered if she should offer her condolences. Maybe the official condolences of the Checquy? she thought. But she concluded that any sympathies she expressed would be grossly and obviously insincere. She allowed herself to take a good look at the man sitting in front of her. He seemed to be in his midthirties and had the physique of someone who worked out regularly. He had been completely hairless when she walked in the room, but during the course of their conversation, stubble had appeared on his scalp.