Camera Obscura

by Lavie Tidhar

  "They are quiet tonight."

  It was true. She could not hear the voices of the statue. "What do they expect to happen, when we reach Vespuccia?" he said. She tried to speak, to answer him, but no words came. "My silent ghost," he said again, and smiled, and then, as they did once before, his eyes looked beyond her and the smile melted from his face and he pushed at her–

  Startled, she stumbled back, fell over the railings towards the dark sea–

  She woke up with her hair damp against her forehead, her heart hammering in her chest. How could she have fallen asleep? The door to her cabin was ajar. A narrow band of light pierced through into the room. A dark figure standing above her, leaning down…

  She saw a rat man and there were things crawling over his face, and silver-grey swirls moving in his eyes… Her gun arm rose instinctively, the muzzle almost touching the rat man's face. He paid it no attention, and his sick, dead eyes were fastened on hers, and now his hands, hands like claws were reaching for her and she–

  She fired, her arm pumping as the bullets shot out, hitting the man at point-blank range in the face, blood and bits of skull flying everywhere. And now she could hear a cry rising through the ship – a communal, wounded screech that echoed eerily down the corridor, seeming to merge with the groaning of the White Worm.

  Infected, she thought, horrified. She struggled to her feet, her naked toes almost slipping in the pool of blood. They were all infected. The rat man had fallen away from her and was lying on the floor. Half his face was gone. Still, he tried to rise, fingers scrabbling blindly against the floor.

  She fired again, until he settled back and at last wouldn't move again. The silver-grey strands wove in and out of existence across his body, but as movement stopped they, too, were still.

  She had fallen asleep in her clothes. She put on shoes and her coat, one-handed. The smell of the dead man was on her. Another howl, coming closer. They must be all over the ship, she thought.

  And somehow, in there – amidst the fear and confusion – a sense of relief. It's begun. They are coming, at last.

  She had warned the captain. After the incident in the hold, she had run back up to the deck, gone straight to Karnstein.

  "A plague?" the captain said, hacking a cough around the word as if it were a sweet. "What's dead stays dead, Milady."

  "Not any more," she said.

  "Well," the captain said. He was rolling something in his mouth thoughtfully. She decided she really didn't want to know what it was. "We'll be reaching Scab soon enough. She'll know what to do."

  "Who?" she said – shouted – at him.

  "The countess," he said, as if surprised by her ignorance. "So, nothing's changed. Remember to confine yourself to your quarters when cargo–"

  "Is being offloaded, yes," she said. "But the cargo has already offloaded itself!"

  A look of distaste crossed Captain Karnstein's face and he hawked onto the deck. She stared, horrified, at the little glob of silver-grey goo.

  "It's strange," Captain Karnstein said, "but do you know, I've never felt better."

  She watched the little globe stretch itself across the boards of the deck. Slowly, meticulously, it began to draw itself towards her.

  She turned and ran.

  Now she stepped over the still corpse of the rat man. The door, ajar. She reached, pushed it open, stepped into the corridor, gun arm at the ready.

  But where could she go?

  She was trapped in a place worse than any prison – for there was nowhere to go. Her warden was the ocean, and it was everywhere, hemming her in, offering no escape but a watery death.

  Were they all infected? She needed the crew. She did not know how to pilot a ship. She had once piloted a plane – a small, fragile, dangerous thing, but at least the land was always close…

  Here there was no land.

  Trapped.

  Stepping down the corridor, she silently cursed Viktor and the Council. The helplessness of her situation weighed her down. Stop, an inner voice whispered. There is no point in fighting any longer. This is how it ends – at sea, the way it had begun, so long ago.

  Her mother waited for her, beneath the waves.

  She decided to try to reach the upper deck. But when she reached the end of the corridor they were waiting, three of them, rat men in their tatty clothes, and their faces were hungry.

  They were very quiet. She said, "Please–" and raised her human hand before her, the fingers splayed. "You are sick. You need help."

  Their mouths opened in tandem. Their teeth shone wetly. Silver strands like eels crawled across their arms and faces. She took a step back. "What do you want with me?"

  They didn't answer. Together, they took a step towards her, gaining for themselves the ground she had ceded. "Who is piloting the ship?"

  No answer. What did they want with her? Somehow, the infection in the casks must have seeped out, infected the men…

  The statue. It was a mechanism of some sort, she knew that. A device for… she didn't know, exactly. All she knew was that it was spreading.

  As if in response to her thoughts, she felt the alien entity in her eye socket awaken. Her hand rose to her head, pain jolting her. The approaching figures of the rat men were illuminated in a jade-green light, and she could see the entire spread of the infection on them. It was… responding. Responding to the alien shard lodged in her cranium.

  They wanted the fragment of jade.

  From somewhere, far, far away, whispering, insane voices: quantum encoding of data at tertiary levels, chrono-spatial scan proceeding, probe regeneration at full capacity–

  Instinctively she raised her gun arm, fired, rounds of bullets emerging out of the Gatling gun, pounding into her attackers, these walking dead men, sending them back, breaking them.

  She stepped through a storm of smoke and blood, gaining the stairs, running for her life.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Lights

  Captain Karnstein, silhouetted like a bat against the sky. His rat men kneeling on the deck before him, mouths opening and closing without sound. Milady stopped, stood still. "They are coming!" the captain shouted. The silhouette turned, gazed on her without surprise. "Chrono-spatial scan proceeding!"

  "Proceeding…" the rat men echoed in unison.

  "Data-gathering approaching projectional capacity!" Captain Karnstein said.

  "Capacity…" the rat man echoed.

  No one at the helm. No steam rising from the boilers, the sails slack. The wind howled along the deck, and she felt herself shiver. Clouds in the distance, coming closer, a mass of darkness blocking out the stars.

  She pointed, shouted – "There's a storm coming! We need to get the ship moving again!"

  "Checksum error!" the captain said. "Checksum error!"

  "Error…" the rat men murmured. "Error…"

  She approached the captain. Her gun arm was raised, aimed. She felt herself shaking. "Get. The ship. Moving again," she said.

  "The ships are coming," the captain said. "The fleet, the fleet is…" He faltered, fell silent. In the jade-green light of her foreign eye she saw them all, crawling with silver-grey worms. She said, trying to keep her voice steady: "Think of your ship. Would you have it destroyed?"

  "The ship…" the captain whispered. "I have seen the ship… it was enormous, and yet as small as a speck of dust as it sailed amongst the stars…"

  "Don't make me shoot you!"

  His eyes rose, met hers. Was there a plea for help in those silver-grey orbs? The wind howled, making the captain's tattered coat flutter in the dark night like bat's wings. "Karnstein, please!"

  But it was no use. If there had been understanding in his eyes, it died even as she watched, and the captain turned away from her. Lightning illuminated the skies, and an explosion of thunder came almost immediately after. Salt water spray stung her eyes. This is it, she thought. This is how it ends.

  "Get her," Karnstein said.

  Doom came on Lady de Winter like a sett
ling of silk. Her back pressed to the railings, her gun arm raised, uselessly, before her, the band of crazed, infected sailors closing in on her, all seemed to signal an inglorious end.

  And why not? she thought. Her earliest memories were of a ship, and death. It would be a fitting end…

  The rat men's teeth shone in the flash of lightning. Thunder shook the deck. The rat men came for her, slowly, hands reaching out, mouths opened in hungry grins… silver snaked across their bodies, the back of their hands and across their cheeks. A wave hit the hull, spraying her with salt water, and for a moment she lost her footing.

  The impact of the deck winded her. The rat men's hands were grasping for her and she fought them off, life returning as she realised she did not want to die – not here, on the stinking deck of a death ship, in the middle of a dark and hostile ocean. Cities she understood. But she would not die at sea.

  With a scream of rage her gun arm came up and she shot the nearest rat man at point-blank range, the bullets slamming into the man's chest, tearing a hole clear through. For a moment the man was still, and she could see the night sky through his chest, a gathering of stars and a flash of lightning–

  The man fell to the ground. His fingers twitched. His dead eyes opened, blinked slowly. Reaching out, his hand caught her ankle and would not let go.

  Another flash of lightning, and another, and she tried to kick but he wouldn't let her go. She pushed herself up, onehanded, and stomped on his fingers with her artificial leg, hearing the bones in his hand break. Then she was free, and pushing away from the slow-moving sailors, backing away as she tried to make sense of what she'd seen.

  For just a moment, glimpsed in the flash of lightning through the hole in the rat man's chest, she had seen something impossible.

  She kept backing away, but now they were behind her, too, and she knew there was no escape.

  Or only one…

  Salt on her lips, rain and sea water falling down on her face. She raised her head, searching for the shadow in the dark.

  A flash of lightning and–

  There!

  It wasn't possible – was it?

  An enormous dark shape loomed above the ship, growing larger – growing closer, she realised.

  What was it?

  Did she imagine it? A flash of lightning again, the boom of thunder making the deck shudder, waves beating against the hull. In the light of the storm the sailors' faces were a pale sickly white, the silver strands oozing across their skins…

  A city in the sky.

  Towers rose high above the ship. Dark towers etched against the storm. A city moving on the waves–

  She fired but the bullets did little to stop the rat men. And there came Karnstein, his coat flapping around him like the wings of a bat – coming for her.

  Lightning hit close by, and one of the rat men shrieked. She smelled burning flesh, and watched as the man rolled on the deck, the silver strands flaming, melting, oozing off his skin… She blinked rain from her eyes. In the darkness she could no longer see the impossible city.

  No one spoke. The burning rat man was motionless, a puddle of rain steaming around his body. Could electricity kill them? There was so little she knew about the infection. Hands reached for her, grabbed her. They had her gun arm now, and when she fired it was too late, the burst going wide, hitting nothing. She managed to release her arm but they had her by her coat and were grasping for her legs. She had only one chance–

  She took it.

  They were holding her coat when she tore herself out of it and ran for the railings. A flash of lightning again, an immediate corresponding boom of thunder, and the ship heaved, and she saw a dark, silent city rising out of the waves like a scab on the skin of the ocean. Memories of her mother returned, the corpses being hoisted off the deck, into the hungry sea… Still running, she jumped, and a howl rose behind her and was lost to the sound of the waves.

  The water was cold, the impact took her breath away and threatened not to give it up. The waves rose and tried to smash her against the hull. She dived, trying to swim one-handed, knowing it was futile, and that she was going to die.

  Eyes stared at her from the bottomless sea.

  How long could she hold her breath? Desperately, she tried to propel herself away from the ship, away–

  Not eyes. Lights.

  And now she knew she was hallucinating.

  Lights like a cityscape down below the waves…

  And something rising from the depths, something dark and gigantic, ebbing gracefully, ripples forming in the almost flat disc shape, and it was reaching for her… A tentacle as large as a hansom cab swept underneath her. Blind panic took her and she tried to rise, return to the surface, her lungs flaming in pain, but she no longer saw the surface, no longer knew where she was. Her next breath, she knew, would be water. She fought to rise and somehow, she didn't know how, her head burst out of the water and she gulped in air, desperately, and saw through a half-blinded eye the impossible city floating on the dark waves. I can do it, she thought, swim there, I can–

  Something slimy and immensely strong grasped her legs, pulling her down, down beneath the waves, and the dark world disappeared, and she knew she was dying, and she must have been hallucinating again, too, because the last thing she saw was the head of a giant squid rising from the depths, with two giant, well-lit eyes like windows, and standing behind them was a woman, and she was waving.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Scab

  Waking up was like pushing upwards through an undertow, a struggle for breath and light. She had not expected either.

  For a moment she thought she was back in the ocean. Staring down on her from all directions were sea creatures. Two sharks glared at her while a dancing octopus hovered in what seemed like air, staring at her mournfully over its beak. Crustaceans scuttled to and fro on beds of sand, and a giant ray rippled majestically as a swordfish darted above her head.

  Not the sea, she realised, relieved. Aquariums. And she was lying on a dry and rather comfortable bed, and the linen smelled of soap and laundry.

  "You're awake," a voice said. "Good."

  Startled, she looked around her, only then noticing the woman standing quietly beside the shark aquarium. She was a tall, graceful woman with an olive, Mediterranean skin burned darker by the sun, with long black hair tied behind her in a simple knot. There were lines around her eyes, which were a deep and startling blue. "I need you to sign this."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Receipt of cargo," the woman said, sounding a little impatient. She was, Milady realised, the same woman she had seen

  as she was drowning. It was all very peculiar.

  "Here," the woman said, approaching her, putting forward what was evidently the White Worm's cargo manifest, as well as a pen. "Sign here, here, and initial here and here – please."

  "What?"

  "Did you swallow more water than I thought?" the woman said. "Captain Karnstein is temporarily unable to fulfil his function as captain, which makes you, I assume, senior representative for the Council. Therefore, you're liable for the cargo. Therefore, you need to sign it over to me before I can take official possession of it." She glared at Milady. "I am Countess Dellamorte," she said, as if that explained everything.

  "Where… where am I?" Milady said. Above the countess's head, the mournful squid blinked sadly.

  The countess inched her head meaningfully at the cargo manifest. Sighing, Milady signed it, her gun arm clumsy as she tried to hold the paper in place while she put pen to paper. As soon as she was done, Countess Dellamorte snatched it back. "Excellent," she said. "Come."

  Wordlessly, Milady stood up. Her clothes, she saw, were waiting by the bed for her, freshly laundered and ironed. The countess waited as she dressed, then motioned for her to follow.

  They stepped out of the room into a hallway lined with more tanks: all manner of sea creatures slithered, crawled and swam inside. The countess trailed one hand against the glass as she walke
d. At the end of the corridor was an elevator. The doors opened soundlessly, and Milady followed the countess inside. The elevator began to rise.

  When the doors opened, the light was momentarily blinding. Milady blinked, tears forming in her single eye. The jade fragment embedded in her other eye socket was still, for once. As her eye adjusted, however, details began to form around her: first the outline of walls, then the frames of massive windows set on three sides, and then, through the windows…

  Down below her, hemmed in by the sea on all sides, lay the city she had seen in the dark. Yet not a city, she realised: they were standing in a tower that rose out of a giant platform that was, itself, floating, half-submerged in the water of the sea. There were figures down below, and rising towers and large box-like buildings. At the edges of the platform massive cranes rose into the air, and several smaller vessels were moored, bobbing in the water. Shafts, too, she noticed, were driven into the surface of the platform at several places, and she saw elevators descend and rise, and more tiny human figures entering or leaving them. The whole extraordinary structure, a thing of metal and construction, floated serenely on the sea, yet had no part of it, looking a little like–