by Lavie Tidhar
This was something else, a different sort of future, a future of metal and glass, a future of rockets. High above, in those towers, lights moved and bobbed and he realised people – workers – were moving up there, in those impossible heights, still working at this late hour on the construction.
"This?" Fagin said. "It's just a building, innit."
But it wasn't just a building, Harry thought. And now that he watched, as they came closer and details resolved themselves, the place came into focus. He could see bullet-shaped elevators rising and falling along the sides of the slim, needlelike, rocket-like towers, as if they were breathing and the tubes moving alongside them were the air they breathed. He could see a massive cone rise into the air, flat at the top, and it seemed like a cone of water, with water travelling along its side – as if the builders were making a pool of water up there, in the air, for the future residents of those towers to frolic by, as if they were by the sea.
A place for airships to dock – that, too, he noticed, just as he saw the figures crawling along the side of the buildings – not human, or rather, things that resembled humans, if a human wore a thick exoskeleton of metal, like a knight's armour, around himself. Like armoured ants they crawled over the walls, building.
"They come from the Gobelin factory," Fagin said. "The Shaw brothers' place, in Paris. They used to make Daguerre looms there, back in the day. It was a natural progression for them to start making… well, these."
"What are they?"
"Human-machine hybrids," Fagin said. "It's all the rage, really."
A shiver went down Harry's spine. For it occurred to him that, though he himself looked human, and sounded human, it was quite evident, from the Bookman's words, that he was not, strictly speaking, human any more.
He, too, was a sort of machine, a simulacra of a Harry Houdini, an Erich Weiss who had been born, to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss and to Cecelia Weiss, née Steiner, in Budapest, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the year eighteen seventyfour, and who had died, aged nineteen, at the hands of a mugger, in the White City, at the World's Vespuccian Exposition, in the city called Chicago or Shikaakwa.
That Erich Weiss – that Houdini – was gone forever. He, Harry, was but a copy.
Yet perhaps it gave him advantages. He had not considered it before, but could not the Bookman have shaped his new body, have modified it in some subtle ways – could he not have made him faster, stronger – smarter?
In fairness, he did not feel any different. He felt like he was himself, the same old Erich, with the same ambitions, same thoughts.
What if there were other hims walking around? He thought back on what that strange man, Carter, his recruiter into the Bookman's service, had said. Of what the Bookman had told him…
"Will you not require me still?" Carter had said, and the Bookman had laughed. "Why, I have another one of you in storage already," he had said. "Just in case I need you, and you're not around."
Harry shivered again. The night felt suddenly cold. "Look," Fagin said, startling him. He pointed at the tall, graceful buildings. "See those lights?"
There were, indeed, lights burning behind windows in the uncompleted buildings. "People already live there?" Harry said, surprised.
"It's all the rage," Fagin said.
They had come to the base of the place. A fence humming with a strange power he had seen before, in the White City.
Electricity.
"He's here?"
"Star City," Fagin said.
"Is that what they call it?"
"I told you, china," Fagin said. "It's just a building."
"It's amazing."
"It's a disgrace. It disfigures the face of the city."
"It looks like… like the future."
"Not my kind of future," Fagin said, and his face twisted in an ugly and unexpected expression of anger.
"I think it's amazing."
"So you said."
"But what are we doing here?"
As he spoke he saw two small figures detach themselves from the shadows and come towards them. Two more children, dressed in rags. "Well?" Fagin demanded.
"He's still inside," the one girl said.
"With his missus," the second, a boy, said.
"Harker?" Harry said.
"Harker," Fagin confirmed. "And, as it turns out, his fiancée."
Somehow that rang false to Harry. Could his quarry, the possible cause of his double's death, be just some person, some insignificant clerk, about to be married? He had half-envisioned some fearsome, secret assassin, a man of international intrigue. Most shadow agents never married. It was too dangerous for them.
"What is her name?"
"Wilhelmina," Fagin said. "Miss Wilhelmina Murray, of Star City Mansions. Would you like to know what else I've found out?"
"Yes."
"And the money?"
Harry had money. Not wishing to argue with this person, nor seeing the point of it, he removed a small sheaf of Vespuccian notes from a hidden pocket and handed them to Fagin, who smiled horribly and made the money disappear.
"Very well," he said. "Very well indeed." He coughed, clearing his throat, and spat the phlegm on the ground.
"The Mina Murray Dossier," Fagin said. His eyes took on a faraway look. Harry looked at him in suspicion.
Could Fagin be other than he appeared? Could he himself be a shadow operative, working for someone like the lizard's secret service, the Bureau?
Name: Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray.
Age: twenty-one.
Parents: deceased.
Family: none.
Engaged to: Jonathan Harker, Solicitor.
Employed by: Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation.
Role: unknown.
Residence: Star City Mansions, South Bank, London.
"That's all you found out?" Harry said.
Fagin said: "It was hard to find even that much. Same with Harker, for that matter. It's as if…" and he hesitated.
Harry looked up, at the Star City.
"It's as if what?" he said, absent-mindedly.
"It's as if anyone working for Dombey and Son becomes a shadow," Fagin said, reluctantly.
Harry was looking up, at the needle-like towers, the climbing mecha-humans, the airship docking and that graceful column of suspended water. The moonlight fell down on Star City Mansions, illuminated the thin filaments of silk-spun bridges criss-crossing between the towers, while behind the windows of the occupied apartments shone the white, bright light of electricity. The present, with its dirty streets, its steam machines, its coal dust and gaslight, seemed to have no presence here, an illusion fading in the bright electric light.
This was the future, one future, and Harry drank it in.
"You can't have shades without light," he said.
THIRTY-TWO
When you die it is like a light going off. In death there is nothing. Life is an improbability, the brief flare of a match in a dark world. Houdini didn't want to die.
Not again.
He had made a terrible mistake. It was very dark, though it wasn't cold.
This is what happened…
They had waited outside Star City Mansions and, presently, two figures, seen in silhouette, came out of the grand entrance to the as-yet-uncompleted buildings.
Harry tensed. Fagin, beside him, was motionless. The boy, Oliver, had disappeared somewhere, on an errand for his master.
"Harker, and Murray," Fagin said – whispered – the words ebbing away like fog in the night.
A strange sense of déjà vu had overtaken Harry. As though he had been standing here before, waiting for this man to come out, as if, somehow, he could recall what the other Houdini had done, could sample his memories, remotely, second-hand, like an echo. He was tense, his heart beat fast, though outwardly he was calm. He waited. The two figures hugged, there in the darkness, then separated, one going back into the building, the other coming out, onto the road of the South Bank. The sound of Ha
rker's feet filled the night. It was very quiet there, suddenly, no one passing, no late revellers; even the whales were silent. Fagin melted into the shadows. Harry watched the man Harker go past them, not seeing them. There was nothing remarkable about the man. He waited. Harker walked past. Harry, after a moment, followed.
The night focused, thinned. Harry's entire world became the path he followed, behind that man he didn't know, whose name, only, was left him by his own dead self.
Harker was going towards Waterloo Station and the fog thickened here, and the gas lamps were yellow dogs' eyes in the fog. Harry followed and the immense edifice of the station rose before him but Harker did not go up the stone stairs into the station. He went down a side alley – and Harry followed. His footsteps echoed in the night and Harker stopped, suddenly, and turned. They were alone there, in that dark place, with only the yellow gaslight illuminating their faces, and Harker's was very white.
He stared. Harry stood there, watching him. Two men, facing each other, not speaking. Harker raised a shaking hand and pointed it at Harry.
"You!" he said.
Harry said, "Do you know me?"
Every inch of him wanting to scream at the man, to shake him. To ask what had happened.
"I told you I can't!" Harker said. "You shouldn't be here." His face was devoid of blood. His pupils were dilated. He said, "You can't be here. How… They told me you were–"
He bit his lip to silence himself.
"That I was dead?"
Harker nodded.
"I need to know," Harry said. "What–"
But Harker was shaking his head, frantic now, fear etched into his face like a tattoo. "No," he said. "No. They will find you. They warned me. They are probably watching, even now. Get away from me!"
Harry had taken a step towards him. That was enough to startle Harker. He turned and ran.
Harry followed.
Running through the fog, whale song rising like a funeral dirge far away, from the Thames. The only sounds their echoing footsteps, Harker leading, Harry following his quarry, all thought, all caution gone.
Connections made: the former him had made contact with this Harker, perhaps confided in him. Harker had a key to the answer. Something his company did, something of great secrecy and significance. He had to know – had to know why he had been killed, what secret his death had protected.
Running, his breath fogging in the air, a great silence as if snow was falling, as if sound was being sucked out of the world, as if they were the only two people in it–
But they weren't.
Later, in the dark, Harry remembered it with fleeting, truncated fragments of recall:
The screech of wheels, the bellow of steam–
Harker's pale face, turning towards him–
His mouth opening in a silent scream–
A vast, black vehicle, a steam-powered baruch-landau, smashing into the man–
Harker's body flying through the air–
Black-clad men streaming out of the vehicle–
More of them appearing out of the shadows, surrounding the area–
Harker's body lying against a wall, head at an unnatural angle, legs broken beneath him–
Harry, too, might have screamed, he couldn't later be sure–
Arms grabbing him, too many to fight against, though he tried–
A truncheon rising in the air–
Someone kicked his legs out from under him and then the truncheon descended–
The back of his head erupting in pain, it bloomed like a dark flower and he felt himself go limp.
"Tap him again," someone said, a long way off. He tried to struggle but couldn't move, couldn't open his eyes. Something connected with the back of his head again and he couldn't even scream, which may have been a mercy. All thought fled and Harry Houdini escaped into the darkness and the cool absence of pain that it offered.
He came to gradually. His head pounded in waves that made him dizzy, sick. Bile in his throat, he fought not to gag. The back of his head felt swollen, painful. He tried to move his hands and couldn't.
Tied up?
A voice, gravely and deep. "Alas, no, Mr Houdini. We are well aware by now of your skill with knots and ropes and, I dare say, other modes of confinement."
He opened his eyes. Blinked. Realised he could not move at all, nothing but his head.
What had they done to him?
"I have taken the liberty," the voice said, as though, once again, reading his mind, "to have you… sedated. It is an unfortunate necessity, but I suspect even you, Mr Houdini, would find it impossible to escape the confines of chemistry." The voice coughed. Harry's eyes tried to adjust to the dim half-light of the room he found himself in. He could not yet see the speaker. Behind a vast desk, a large silhouette, but that was all.
"It is a special concoction my people have managed to steal, some while back, from the Quiet Council's research facility," the voice said, complacently.
"Who… are you?" Harry said. His lips felt numb. It was hard to speak, to see.
"My name is Dombey," the voice said. The shadow behind the desk moved, then settled back. "Paul Dombey."
"But who… are you?" Harry said, and the man laughed.
"I am the general manager of Dombey and Son," he said.
Harry shook his head, or tried to. This wasn't helping. Was the man toying with him? Flashes of memory – Harker's pale face, the black baruch-landau, Harker's broken body flying through the air–
He swallowed bile, tried again. "Who… do you work for?"
But it was not Harry's place to ask questions. It was his place to answer them. He was the captive. The privilege of knowledge was not his to take. The shadow stirred behind the desk.
"You are far more interesting than you first appeared, Mr Houdini," it said. It chuckled good-naturedly. "Oh, you had us fooled, when you first showed up! A green, inexperienced agent of the Cabinet Noir, that was easy enough to establish. Blundering about, asking questions in all the wrong places… Vespuccians!" The voice chuckled again. "You have so little style, you are like half-civilised barbarians bumbling about! Do you know, I enjoyed watching your feeble efforts. Who do I work for? You will find out in due course, Mr Houdini. We are the guardians, if you like. We watch. We watch the Bureau, and the Quiet Council, and the Shaolin. We watch the world powers, and we try to stir the world onto the course it should have taken long ago. And you!" The shadow moved forward and, for just a moment, a vast, pasty face revealed itself in the half-light, and if he could Harry would have cried out. Half-machine it was, one eye mechanical while the other, a liquid blue, glared at him with benevolent amusement. Half the face, when it turned, was open, the skin missing, and inside it, rather than blood and bones, were tiny clockwork parts, moving silently. The man grinned, revealing teeth of metal and ivory. "When you became too much of a nuisance," he said, as pleasantly as before, "and found what you thought was a weak spot, our own Mr Harker, I had no choice. As much as it pained me, Mr Houdini, I had to… let you go."
"You ordered me killed?"
"We knew you were to meet an agent at the docks last night. What we did not know, could not know – was that the agent was you!"
Harry said nothing. The truth was that he had not expected to encounter himself either.
"So now," the voice said, settling back, that hideous face disappearing from view, "you have aroused our interest, Mr Houdini!"
"Is that… Is that a good thing?" Harry said.
"It depends," the voice allowed, generously, "on which side of this desk you sit on."
"I… see."
"Do not worry! This is a great opportunity, for us as well as for you. I assume you are an agent of that elusive Bookman? One hears so much, yet truly knows so little… Come, my dear, join me."
The last was not, clearly, aimed at Harry. He turned his head as much as he could. Light footsteps sounded, and to Harry's amazement a beautiful young woman entered the circle of light cast from above.
<
br /> "Come, my dear. Say hello to our guest," Mr Dombey said.
"Hello," the girl said. She smiled, revealing white teeth.
"Who…?"
"But my dear Mr Houdini!" Mr Dombey said. "This is Wilhelmina Murray."
Harry tried to swallow, couldn't. "Harker's… fiancée?"
"One of my best agents," Mr Dombey said, with evident pride. Mina Murray smiled pleasantly at Harry.
Harry whispered: "Please… help me."
Mina Murray laughed. "Why would I do that?" she said.
