series 01 04 Abattoir in the Aether

by L. Joseph Shosty

  The bandages had been removed from his face and hands, revealing a madman’s caricature of a human. His hands were gnarled and twisted, though still very capable of use, but now they looked like the roots of some old, stunted tree. His skin was pasty, and no hair at all grew on his body. Yet, it was his face that was most affected. Nathanial had seen curiosities and exhibitions in his time in London. One such place had a house filled with mirrors that would distort a person’s image, much to everyone’s dismay and delight. Van den Bosch looked like a man who had stood in front of one such mirror and had it alter his appearance permanently as a result. It resembled wax that had been allowed to grow soft, only to have it pulled, squashed, and smeared in the most chaotic way. Despite himself, Nathanial could not help but feel pity. Van den Bosch no doubt lived in terrible pain.

  “Come to look upon horror one more time, have you?” van den Bosch asked. His voice was no longer booming, nor threatening, just tired and raspy.

  “I thought we might speak again.”

  “You’ve got everything from me, Stone. What else is there?”

  “The truth, perhaps?”

  Eyes rolled to glare at Nathanial. There was such terrible hate in them. “You’re a babe, crying in the dark,” he said. “I could tell you the stars were lighthouses manned by far-off ancient fishermen, and you would believe me. What do you know of truth?”

  “Tell me about Torquilstone. Or Le Boeuf.”

  This time there were no splutterings, no howls of fury, or paranoid proclamations. Van den Bosch gave a cold, hard smile instead. “He’s the Devil, but you’ll learn that soon enough. Not today, and perhaps not even tomorrow, but one day he’ll come for you. When he does, he will destroy you. Oh, you’re just his sort, let me tell you. He likes to toy with fools like you. Like Thaddeus.”

  “What did he do to Professor Wren?”

  “Everything. You’ll never believe me, I’m sure, but Thaddeus Wren was my friend. Certainly, we were rivals, and we argued constantly. A better man, though, you would never find. There were rumours about him, of course, indecent things said behind his back. And when it was said he had killed his wife, most believed those rumours confirmed. Only I knew better. I knew it was Guillaume Le Boeuf. Knew it in my very soul. If you can dream of an atrocity, his heart is black enough to carry it out.”

  The news rocked Nathanial back on his heels. “What happened?” he asked.

  Van den Bosch did not seem to hear him. Instead, he continued with his disjointed narrative. “The worst betrayal of all was that I never knew. Never knew the truth. How could I, after all? Every paper at university, every printed word in his career, all of it. All a sham. I had thought the man a genius, but he had been a shadow. Oh, perhaps he had possessed some talent, but the real talent…”

  “Was Le Boeuf.”

  A horrible light lit van den Bosch’s eyes. Nathanial thought the man would become apoplectic, the way he had earlier, when Nathanial had first interviewed him, but he wrestled control of his emotions, and uttered his answer in pained whispers. “Damn him. Everything. Everything here is tainted with his filth!”

  Van den Bosch’s voice trailed off, and he looked away, toward the opposite wall.

  “That’s why you did it,” Nathanial said. “The accident in the lab. You fought there, didn’t you? You discovered the truth, and you became so enraged you attacked Professor Wren.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then the accident happened, only it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Yes!”

  “Your hatred of Le Boeuf made you kill your only friend, and then, when you had regained your senses, you decided you would have your revenge. You would force Le Boeuf to come forward to save his creations, and you would destroy him, wipe out all trace of him, and your friend’s legacy would be intact.”

  Tears rolled down the awful, ruined face. “Yes.”

  Nathanial grabbed van den Bosch’s hand and held. He squeezed the ruined fingers until his own hand ached. “Then let me help you. I can still find him, perhaps capture him, and then he can stand trial for what he’s done.”

  “No jury would ever convict him. He’s ‘done’ nothing. That is his finest and most insidious game.” A grunt and a heave, and Doctor van den Bosch turned over on his side. “I wish to sleep, now.”

  Nathanial would not relent. He grabbed at van den Bosch again, only this time he was rebuffed. “Tell me how to fix the stabilisers,” he pleaded. “Let me at least save this place.”

  There was a long silence, then a simple word. “Why?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “The Hidden Prison”

  1.

  Her mouth was dry, and she had soiled herself, but she was alive. That much she knew. There was no possible way at all for death to hurt so. Annabelle lay in darkness, total darkness, as it were, trussed up like a hog, her injured arm throbbing with a red ache. The back of her head similarly pounded from the blow she had taken. Her scalp felt tight and strange, probably from dried blood. A front tooth was also chipped, a reflex gnashing no doubt when the blow came. Annabelle spat in an un-lady like fashion.

  “Hello?” she called. There was no answer. She had not expected one.

  She wriggled her fingers. She still had feeling in her hands, which meant one of two things, either she had not been tied up long, or the bonds were not tight. She tried them. There was room to move.

  When the Chiricahua had first taken her to their camp, they had tied her outside the lodge of their chief. They bound her hands and feet with strips of deer leather and left her there. Under the summer sun, she soon grew thirsty. Food and water were left for her, several feet away, but in her condition she could not reach it. After a while, someone would come along and collect the food and water, and it was given to another, usually an elder, one of the infirm, or a child. She cried herself to sleep for two nights in frustration, and when she could take no more of what she believed was their cruel tricks, Annabelle struggled out of her bonds. She struggled until her wrists bled, and the slickness of the blood gave her the advantage she needed. When she was free, a woman ambled over with a bowl of dried venison and mesquite beans. Annabelle ate, and she was given as much water as she could drink.

  That was how they taught you so you would never forget. Escaping from bonds like this was second nature to her, now.

  “Hello?” she called out again, and again, there was no answer.

  She tried to sit up, but found she could not, at least not without some help. Instead, she tried rolling about, testing the limits of her cage. She did not roll far before her face struck something hard and rough. She winced as the material bit into her cheek. It stung enough that she was sure she had drawn blood. She squirmed back and rolled over so she could feel the surface with her hand. Wood.

  A more thorough inspection told her she was in a medium-sized room, probably some random supply closet. She was surrounded by wooden crates, there to muffle the sounds of her cries, if need be. Whoever her captor might be, he planned to keep her here.

  Annabelle was starting to sweat, having rolled about and struggled to sit for as long as she had. The stink of her was terrible. It was plausible, then, that she had been here a while. As thirsty as she was, the fact she had been left to sit in her own filth, and the dried blood on the back of her head, supported this.

  What if I’ve been left here to die? But no, that didn’t make sense. If they had wanted her dead, she would never have woken. She would have been pushed out an airlock, or had her throat slashed.

  Something in her counselled patience. Her captor would return soon, and she would learn what was in store for her. Knowing something of her predicament would tell her also what she needed to escape. In the meantime, she had to keep her mind sharp, and when the moment arrived, she needed to remember every detail she could, about her captor’s identity, her predicament, everything. More importantly, she had to remain calm. As dangers went, even if she had been left to die in this room, it was not the worst
she had ever seen.

  If anything, she was worried for Nathanial. Did he know she was missing? If he did, he was no doubt worried for her safety. With the bomber still on the loose, that placed him in considerable danger, as he would no doubt look for her.

  “Hello?”

  This time, a door panel slid open. The thin beam of a bulls-eye lantern played off the crates, sweeping across her face and blinding her.

  “Hello?” she called again.

  “Ah, you’re awake.”

  And just like that, Annabelle recognised the voice.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “New Horrors”

  1.

  The viewport in Sunward Observation, despite its description, looked out into the aether. It was named such because the station was angled at thirty-two degrees, with Sunward being the side pointing slightly toward the system’s centre; vestiges of the sun’s corona could just be seen from the corner. Here, the lighting was better than other parts of the station. A worker could see the man next to him and could discern his facial features without straining eyes to do so. A minimum number of oil lamps were employed, for workers could perform most of their duties without them.

  A great brass telescope, twice the height of an average man, and with a twelve-foot base, crowded the view, much as the similar one did in Starward Observation. One day, it would train its eye on either Earth or Mars, where it would receive communications from one of the orbiting heliograph stations, only to relay that information to the other. For now, it was fixed to a point into the inky blackness of the aether, peering hard at what was out there.

  Nathanial stood beneath the telescope, staring out the port, the cup of hot tea all but forgotten in his hand. One no longer needed a telescope to see the aether vortex. One had but to wait for some kind of matter, a small piece of an errant asteroid, airlock refuse from Peregrine, or whatever else might be in the vicinity to pass its outer edge, and the vortex destroyed whatever matter passed too close. Larger pieces were torn apart with such violence that energy was actually released, energy which looked like purplish flashes of lightning. In these flashes one could catch a glimpse of the vortex, wavering before the eyes like a mirage.

  “Bloody hell,” Fullbright said. He stood at station on the telescope, hunched over slightly, one eye squinted as he stared at the vortex through the lens. He cranked the x-axis wheel, and the telescope swivelled on its base, turning to the right, smoothly and quietly. “What a monster, eh? Really my first glimpse of the bastard,” he said. “Doctor van den Bosch forbade everyone from looking at it once it was found. The logic of this, I’m sure, was to quell panic. I can’t say I disagree with him. Damn thing covers the horizon.”

  “Have you ever seen one so large?” Nathanial asked.

  “Well, I’m hardly a connoisseur of aetheric anomalies, but I’ve also talked at length with men who have seen their share. I don’t recall any of them mentioning one of this size.” Then, Fullbright added grimly. “Or this bloody violent.”

  “It does take one aback,” Nathanial said. The words were coming out of his mouth with hardly any thought to them. He was making conversation only, purely out of habit. His father would be proud, after all, to see him master polite conversation to the degree that he no longer had to think to say the words that his party expected to hear. Such a skill would have made him a fine clergyman.

  Fullbright hopped down from his perch. “Tell me you have some sort of idea,” he said. “We need a solution, or we’re in the same boat as before: too many people, not enough room on the cutters.”

  “We’ve slightly less now than we had, thanks to Hague.”

  Fullbright made an alarmed gesture. “Enough of that,” he hissed. “Have you heard the grumblings? There are some particularly loud voices that would have the little scoundrel tossed out an airlock for ordering those shootings, and the men who fired those carbines following at his boot heels.”

  “I understand, and I only speak in jest.” Nathanial remembered the cup and took a drink of lukewarm tea. It was weak and overly sweet. “At any rate, I haven’t any solutions to the stabiliser problem.”

  “Come now!” Fullbright whispered. “You’ve got to put your full energies behind it, Stone. We’re at the edge of a disaster here, I don’t have to tell you. Right now, each man believes he’s one of the Chosen who will get a berth off this station. Soon, each will start to see himself dying in this place, his world engulfed in hellfire, and when that happens, we’re likely to see another coup, only this time, you and I will find ourselves being deposed, and who knows whether they’ll decide to do it with or without bloodshed.”

  “I cannot create something out of nothing,” Nathanial said. “I have ruled out every possibility within this station, and all attempts at coaxing an answer out of Doctor van den Bosch have failed.”

  “What about Hague?”

  “I’ve not consulted with him. Do you think he would be amenable?”

  “If we let him know the men are lusting after his blood, he might be willing to let slip some secret to which he’s privy in exchange for our continued protection.”

  Nathanial was appalled. “What a monstrous idea,” he said. “No, I won’t be any party to that sort of heavy-handed thuggery. More than enough of that has been visited on this staff already, by both Hague and van den Bosch. If we’re to have any sort of moral high ground, we mustn’t stoop to their level of discourse.”

  “Stoop?” Fullbright laughed so loud the men at their stations stopped to look. “We don’t have the luxury of the moral high ground, Stone. If we fail to save this station, men will die, and millions of British pounds will have been spent for nothing. When we return to England, our very careers will be in tatters. Think of that!”

  Nathanial sighed. “I have, but my decision remains. I’ll speak to him if you think it will do any good, but I will not resort to your proposed methods.”

  Just then, Dolan entered. He stood at the entrance, looking about, until Nathanial waved him over. Fullbright rolled his eyes in disgust when he saw the man and decided he had more pressing matters elsewhere.

  “Any news, then?” Nathanial asked.

  Dolan gave a rueful shaking of the head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “We’ve completed a search of Hell, as a matter of fact, and we’ve found no trace of Annabelle. We even had our men search the cutters.” The Irishman gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry, Stone. She’s simply not here.”

  “There is one other option.”

  Dolan’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. “I’d be interested to hear it.”

  “The air ducts. I deduced from the questions she asked of me recently that she was looking for evidence of our bomber. She wanted to know if the station had any secret rooms, and I―” Nathanial stopped.

  Dolan cocked his head to the side, blond hair obscuring one side of his face. “Is something the matter?”

  “No! No. Check the air ducts.”

  Dolan stared for a moment. “You really can’t be serious. Stone, I can’t have my men crawling between the walls like a pack of blessed rats. They’re stretched thin as is. Now, I myself enjoyed Annabelle’s company, but we must let this go.”

  “Just Heaven, Dolan. Please.”

  The Irishman sighed. “I’ll have a few men give search, but if we uncover nothing, this is the end, do you hear?”

  Nathanial nodded, and looked back out the window. Something large crashed into the vortex. A semi-brilliant burst of purplish lightning arced across its horizon. Nathanial caught for a moment what appeared to be a smiling motion within the storm, rather like watching a water spout or a whirlpool in the ocean.

  Dolan returned to the previous matter, and his voice was full of sympathy. “The time is coming, you know,” he said. “They’ll want to finalise the names for the memorial.”

  “Fullbright’s already mentioned it.”

  “There’s something else he may not have told you. We’r
e to give you another cycle-and-a-half, and then we declare a time for the evacuation.”

  “Why? Why not do as originally planned, and call for the evacuation at the memorial’s end?”

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re not just memorialising the dead anymore. Oh, no. It’s gone much further than that. We’re memorialising the living, too. The ones who are to stay behind. Once the call for evacuation is made, we’ll have the reckoning. The men who are to stay will be known by the memorial service and given a place of honour. Imagine that,” he said with a bleak smile, “being able to give a eulogy at your own funeral.” He shook his head. “It’s a horror.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Torquilstone”

  1.

  The wall panel in Professor Wren’s lab slid aside, revealing a room beyond. Harsh light poured from it, and there was a strange buzzing feeling in Nathanial’s ears.

  “My God, Stone, you were right,” Fullbright said. “A secret room! I would have never guessed, not in my wildest imaginings.”

  “Something in my conversation with Dolan made me think of it,” Nathanial replied. “Jasperse had said, when we came here the first time, that the room seemed smaller than he would have imagined. I did not think of it then, but he was right. So, I checked the plans just before I told you about it, and the answer was there. The laboratory is smaller by half, than it is listed on the blueprints. I cannot say with certainty, but I would wager that if you measured the other rooms on this block, they, too, are of a different measurement than the ones shown here.”

  “Damned sly, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, it also means a different set of blueprints were provided to van den Bosch, allowing the ruse to continue.”

  “But toward what ends?”

  Nathanial held out a hand, indicating they should enter. “That’s what we’re here to see.”