by Lavie Tidhar
To go into space–
Harry Houdini sitting at the controls, the rocket piercing clouds, Transylvania disappearing below as the world grew, expanded–
An explosion somewhere to the right, another rocket consumed in furious flames, another mental scream echoing down the shared mind connection of the Houdini network–
But the others kept going, even as burning molten debris rained down on the mountains, where a forest fire came alive–
Down below bears ambled away, troop carriers drove down the mountain dirt paths with water tanks, while up there–
Up there where the air grew thin, and one could see, for the first time in human history, one could see the curve of the world, could see the truth in what the pre-lizardine, Greek philosophers had already known, that the world was a globe–
And Harry's breath caught in his throat as he watched continents, oceans, merging and forming like a beautiful unique map, alive with colour–
And beyond it, as the air thinned, the module heated up, the rocket pushing faster and faster and higher and higher, until–
"Stage two," the metallic voice said.
Charles Babbage in his life-support cloud, in the observation deck, Ground Control, Harry beside him–
"Initiate," Babbage said.
There was a terrible tearing sound–
A grinding as metal separated from metal, up there on the edge of space (but the sound was only internal, outside the air had gone and sound no longer travelled, out there, beyond the thin metal walls, was the vacuum)–
Harry screaming as the separation of rocket and module did not go as planned, and a hole was punched into the metal and air escaped out into vacuum and Harry's voice was sucked away as he flew out, into space, and died, seeing stars–
But the others separated and it must have been a marvellous sight, from the telescopes down on Earth, if anyone was watching – a fleet of rockets entering stage two, the rockets dropping away and the fragile modules separating from them and continuing onwards on the generated momentum, higher until they escaped the Earth's gravity well–
Some circling the Earth while others pushed on, beyond Earth orbit, having reached escape velocity and Harry looked out, Harry looked out into space and he saw the stars, he saw the Earth down below, a fragile beautiful blue and white globe, spinning…
And the words of an ancient prayer his father the rabbi used to say rose in Harry's mind, the ancient Hebrew words: Baruch ata adonai, elohenu melech ha'olam, boreh meorei ha'esh – blessed are thou, God, creator of the flames–
As the world beyond the module shifted and flared, the thousands upon thousands of stars, like sand upon the shore, so many, he had never imagined there were so many, and Earth shrank behind, became an insignificant speck of dust, of sand, in a vast mysterious unknowable universe when–
The world shifted, and changed, and the star field blurred, suddenly and unexpectedly–
Beyond the moon's orbit, somewhere out there, between Earth and Mars–
A great blurring, a hazing, as though something enormous, something as large as a world had materialised, in space, its outline blocking out the stars–
But that was impossible, Harry thought, and the tiny little modules hung out there, in space, as pretty and useless as Christmas tree decorations, and Harry sighed, a great exhalation of air taking with it all tension, and fear, and leaving behind it only a great childish wonder–
PART X
Victoria Falls
FORTY-NINE
There was blood. That was the thing she couldn't understand, lying there. The blood. The ground was wet and sticky. There had been a lot of pain but now it came and went, in waves, and in between it felt quite peaceful, like rest, or a summer's day, or a dose of opium.
She couldn't figure out where the blood had come from. Was it hers? Everything was confused, a jumble of images without the proper sound, like at a puppet show where the voices came a moment too late, once the puppets had already moved on the stage.
There had been a gun battle…
It had been a war of shadows, the moon cast down shadows and her men engaged the attackers, the ones who had ambushed Stoker, and she had said, "Kill them," and she was not going to leave any alive, save maybe for one, for interrogation. But she had wanted their blood.
It had been a mistake, she saw now. She had been unprofessional, had lost her detachment in the battle.
She was being moved. Shadows flickering at the edge of vision, the rustling of leaves, the ground wet… There was mud on her, and the thick cloying smell of the blood. Where were they taking her?
Who?
Flashes of memory like exploding grenades.
Bodies collapsing into mud. It was raining. There had been rainbows flashing through moonlight and rain, a rare sight – she had seen such a thing only once before, at the great falls they called Mosi o Tunya, the ones Livingstone had named after the Queen.
Victoria Falls.
The spray of water rose into the air, permeating the atmosphere, and through it the sun cast a multitude of rainbows… and at night, she had stood on top of the wet slimy rocks above the falls and watched the moonlight do the same, silver rainbows appearing magically in the air, everywhere, startling and mysterious…
"Kill them."
She was not sure, now, what they were fighting for. For Stoker's diary, perhaps. For the document he had died for.
Only she had the feeling it had all been a feint, that Babbage had meant to let his scribe escape, so they would know–
Rockets, a secret army, Babbage's mad plan, in that remote valley in Transylvania–
"The Queen," she said – tried to – the words could barely leave her throat. "Have to tell… the Queen."
Mycroft was dead. They were all dead. Her men lay on the ground of Richmond Park and their blood soaked into the mud and fed the roots of trees whose names she didn't know. Only she was alive.
The attackers had not been entirely human.
That must have been it.
They had… modifications. They were like the things she had read about in a classified dossier, about the work done in France, at the Gobelin factory. Man-machine hybrids, designed for battle, half-powered by engines, metal replacing flesh–
She had fired three shots into a man's chest and watched him laugh…
She blinked. Her lips tasted salty. Blood. There was blood. She thought she would never be free of the blood.
"Please," she whispered. "Tell–"
Her throat felt blocked. She tried to speak and couldn't.
Then the pain came back and she wanted to scream, it ate its way inside her, it was a rat gnawing on raw nerves. The pain came in a wave that rose higher and higher and it was going to drown her, it was going to–
Then it passed, once again, and she was lying there (on the stretcher?), breathing heavily, covered in sweat, and her mouth was full of blood (did she bite her tongue?).
Where were they taking her?
Memories like exploding grenades… the men moving silently, the bark of guns, the bright flame of a flare rising high, casting the scene in a momentary flash, revealing the wounded and the dead… she had killed two and badly wounded a third when she felt the impact against her shoulder, throwing her back, onto the ground–
She had never heard the shot.
Someone screamed. Perhaps it had been her. Another flare went up and now it revealed a different scene, the soldiers were not where they should be–
There had been a–
There had been a–
In the stretcher she bit her lips and sobbed. Stoker's diary still in her inside pocket, hidden, kept safe – how many hits had she taken? She would die, soon, she felt. Knew.
There had been a–
It had come out of nowhere. Out of the ground or the trees she couldn't, afterwards, tell. A monster. It moved jerkily, it had a long body, it looked like a giant centipede, it had feelers rising out of its snouted head, it was hard to
gain an accurate picture of it, it had pincers and they–
It had gone berserk, slashing, ripping – it had lifted one soldier high in the air and tore it apart, just like that, and threw the remains down, and roared–
The sound was insane, it froze her blood, or so it felt, like ice pumping down into her veins, like she was afloat on an iceberg, like that time in Mount Erebus, during that awful, year-long expedition…
The creature was targeting her people and the opposition equally; it howled and gibbered and the men ran, they tried to escape, the modified and the plain, the quick and the–
They died, they all died, and she had reached for her gun, with her one good hand she had tried to fire, but the bullets did nothing to the creature–
She had seen it before, of course. Once before, an impossibility, made manifest: at the cellars of the Lizardine Museum, talking to Fogg.
The Bookman.
It killed, it killed without mercy or joy, and when it was done the tranquil landscape of Richmond Park was a ruined battlefield, and blood soaked into the dark ground, the blood, she lay in a pool of blood and waited for the creature to finish her off…
Instead hands lifted her, held her when she tried to fight, carried her away.
She looked up, and saw the stars.
FIFTY
She was moving again. She didn't know how. It felt like moving through a warm, glucose sea. Colours kept shifting. Sounds had a weird echo and lasted too long…
Bureau training had her injected with drugs over a period of time, building up immunity. It had helped…
"What is your name?"
"Lucy. Lucy Westenra."
"What is your name?"
"Lucy! Lucy…"
"Good." The voice chuckled. "Good."
The questions kept coming. "Where were you born? What was the colour of your mother's eyes? Tell us about Lord Godalming."
"I don't know Lord Godalming."
"What is your relationship with Jonathan Harker?"
"What is this about?" she said, or tried to. She tried to move her head and couldn't. There was a bright light and she couldn't see beyond it. Only shadows, moving…
"Blood," she said. "There was a lot of blood."
"Forget about the blood," the voice said, impatient for once.
But she couldn't.
They had loaded her onto a vehicle, a baruch-landau, at one of the park's gates, she didn't know which. Just as she didn't know where they'd taken her…
Somewhere in the city. She had tried to count the minutes, the turns of the vehicle, tried to listen to the sounds outside, identify any familiar smells or signs–
Was that Big Ben, chiming? Had they crossed the river?
She could be at the Lizardine Museum, or at the Bureau itself, for all she knew. Fogg was the Bookman's accomplice.
Why had they kept her alive? What did they want with her?
"Try to move your arm," the voice said. She moved – something. The voice said, "Good. Good."
The Queen, Lucy thought. She had to get to the Queen, Victoria had to be told, had to be warned of the danger – Mycroft's last orders, and she had the key, she could go–
"What are you doing to me?" she said.
"Fixing you," the voice said, complacently.
She felt drugged. Calm, all of a sudden. Almost euphoric. She knew what they were doing, suddenly. Keeping her on ice, keeping her docile – for what, she didn't know.
But she couldn't tolerate it happening.
She opened her eyes. Beyond the bright lights shadows were moving. She was not, she realised, tied down to the table. Merely drugged. She took a deep breath and let it out, slowly, trying to control her heart beat. Tried to move her fingers, one at a time. It took effort.
But the drugs were not as strong as they must have thought they were.
"What are you doing, Lucy?" the voice said.
She said, "Help me to–"
She began to shake, and the hands reached out for her–
She moved against the body that was there. Hands grabbed her and she let them, putting her weight to it–
The man staggered back, still holding her, lifting her from the table where she lay–
The body's own adrenaline shooting through her, dispelling some of the clouds in her head, and she jerked upright as the man fell–
"What? Stop her!"
Parts of her weren't working very well. She moved sluggishly, there were patches on her body that hadn't been there before but she had no time to look at them closely–
Impressions, only. Metal replacing skin. They were doing to her what they did at the Gobelin factory. Mechanising her. But it could be to her advantage, too–
She slammed her fist into the head of a woman in a lab coat and heard a curious metallic sound as the woman dropped. Someone came at her with a syringe and she ducked and broke his arm and kicked him between the legs and he fell, whimpering. She looked for clothes.
Her old ones were on a chair, but they were useless. They'd been stripped off her and were matted in blood and what she suspected was someone else's brains.
In the event she took what she could from the three people on the floor and equipped herself with surgical blades to replace her lost guns, and then she was out of the door, expecting to be stopped at any moment–
Someone at the end of the corridor, and her knife was airborne before he'd even turned–
He dropped, and she was running, even though the walls seemed to move as though they were breathing, and there was a high-pitched scream in her ears – she knelt down beside the fallen guard and retrieved the knife and now she had a gun, too.
And now she knew where she was…
Zephyrin's lab, deep under Pall Mall, at the lowest level of the Bureau…
Shouts behind her. They were coming–
She was on the disused underground platform, the way up would be blocked to her–
Fogg had control of the Bureau now–
Gunshots behind her–
She jumped.
Running along the trucks, into the dark tunnel mouth and beyond. Ghosts made faces at her, the air felt viscous, her steps were uncertain. Nevertheless–
She was alive and armed. She couldn't ask for much more than that.
She surprised herself by laughing. Maybe it was the drugs, but she suddenly felt good.
She had to warn the Queen, she thought.
She had to make it out of the tunnels, and to the palace.
There were footsteps behind her. She was out of breath and her body felt like it had been pummelled in the ring by Mendoza, the bare-knuckle boxer. She had seen him once, fighting "Gentleman" John Jackson for the championship.
Or perhaps it had been a simulacra built by the Babbage Company. She could no longer remember. She turned around, knife ready – a gun would be dangerous to use here, in a confined space.
"Westenra, wait!"
"Berlyne?"
She did not lower the knife. He appeared, a shadow at first. "It's all going so wrong," he said, in despair. "Mycroft trusted me to keep it going, but I can't do it, Westenra. Mycroft is dead, Smith is missing, the French broke in and stole the device and killed Zephyrin, and now Fogg's in charge and I've been side-tracked, there is no coming or going without Fogg's approval, he'd brought his own people in…"
"Did you know they were holding me?"
"I had a feeling something was going down. I went to investigate – they tried to stop me." Berlyne shrugged. As he came closer she saw his hands were bloodied. "I went through the training at Ham too, you know," he said, almost apologetically. It made her smile.
"How do we get out of here?" she said.
Berlyne said, "The tunnel joins the active underground network a little farther on. But where can we go?"
"I need to reach the palace," Lucy said.
Berlyne fell into step beside her. She had resumed walking, she realised. She trusted him. But could she?
Well, she figured, you
had to trust someone, sooner or later. Berlyne was her last link with the past. Mycroft was dead: they were the only ones left.
"There's a line," Berlyne said.
"What?"
