The Great Game

by Lavie Tidhar

  "We had hoped never to see your like again," the Queen said.

  "Yet you sent out a flare," the observer said.

  The Queen hissed, and her powerful tail beat against the ground. "What would you do with us?" she said. Then, again, she seemed to smile. "But that is not for you to say…"

  "No."

  "You must complete your report."

  "Yes."

  "It is not so easy, is it," the Queen said, "to collect one of us."

  "No," the observer agreed. He looked suddenly ill at ease.

  "Tell me," the Queen said, and there was a strange longing in her voice. "Did it change much? Home?"

  The observer seemed indecisive. "There is only one way to find out," he said at last.

  "Yes," the Queen said.

  No! Lucy wanted to shout. She was still holding the gun but ultimately it was useless–

  The little man-thing, this observer, went around the Queen, carefully. Its knife flashed in the moonlight and Lucy realised it was no knife it all, it was a part of him, it, that thing–

  She had to stop it. She had to try.

  She stood up, she rushed the little man-thing even as the knife moved, and in one fluid movement the observer's blade entered the back of the Queen's head.

  "No!"

  It only lasted a moment, she was still charging him when he removed the knife and the Queen, that old, dignified royal lizard, dropped lifeless to the floor.

  When she slammed against the observer it was like hitting a wall. An electric charge ran through her body and she wanted to scream. She was on the floor beside the Queen; the Queen had bled, briefly, a green acidic blood, and it mixed with Lucy's own.

  She could not fight any more. The observer knelt down beside her. She knew it was wondering. She was ready. She saw the knife flash, waited for it to strike her–

  But then it withdrew. The observer stood up, opened the window. In the moonlight it was impossible to have ever thought of it as human. Slowly its shape changed, it became a silver ball of light.

  Something came crashing through the open door. She raised her eyes. She was not even surprised… the centipede-like creature she knew as the Bookman.

  "Stop him!"

  She would have laughed, if she could. The observer had become a silver sphere of light, spinning. Then it stretched, out of the window, out towards the moon and the stars–

  And was gone, like light, fading.

  "Too late," Lucy whispered. "You're too late."

  "I am always too late," the Bookman said, flatly.

  "Will you kill me now?"

  But the Bookman paid her no mind. It had moved over to the fallen Queen.

  "You hate them, don't you," Lucy said. There was blood in her mouth again. She knew it wouldn't be long, now. It was peaceful, resigning yourself to death, knowing there was nothing else waiting for you after it came…

  "My queen…" the Bookman said. It curled around the reptilian body. "Is she…?"

  "Dead, assassin. She is dead."

  "He did not take everything!" the Bookman said. She saw without disgust or emotion that it, too, had grown a sharp stalk and that it went into the Queen's brain. "There is still… A little of the Queen is left."

  "That's… good." Lucy said. Her eyes were closing.

  "They had outlasted their time," the Bookman said. It was speaking to itself, she thought. It must have been a very lonely creature. She almost felt pity for him, but she could feel nothing, nothing but tiredness…

  "Perhaps a new queen is what we need, for a new era," the Bookman said. "This century in your calendar is coming to an end, and a new century's about to dawn. Perhaps I was wrong… I will serve again. It has been… too long."

  "Good, good," Lucy said. "A cup of tea, how lovely."

  She heard the Bookman laugh, softly. "You will have all the tea in the world," it told her. She felt one of its stalks stroking her, gently. "I had tried to prepare you," it said. "You should not have run away."

  "Milk and two sugars, please, Berlyne," Lucy said. Her eyes were closed. She was floating… It was nice and warm.

  "Hush," the Bookman said. "Sleep now. There will be much work to do."

  The words came from a distance. She ignored them. She was floating on a sea of clouds and they bore her far far away.

  PART XI

  Recursions

  FIFTY-THREE

  Report.

 

  Hmm… interesting.

  Our old colony ship has resurfaced, then.

  I thought the quantum gate technology had been banned millennia ago.

  Affirmative.

  Interesting…

 

  Unstable pocket worlds may pose a problem.

  Affirmative.

  And the humans?

 

  Bipedal, carbon-based… They seem to have strange notions of war.

 

  What do they think, that we'd eat them?

 

  Suggestions?

 

  I don't know about you, but I could do with a holiday.

 

  The pain was unbearable. It pulled her out of sleep, out of hiding, out of the dark. She was being torn apart…

  Then something happened. She was not alone in there. It was as if the world had expanded, and she had–

  She saw–

  She had hatched out of the egg and lay on the rocks, bathing in the sun. Her tongue hissed out, tasting the new air.

  Where was she? she thought in panic.

  She was at school with her governess and her tail beat on the floor, almost angrily, and the governess, a human woman, said, "One day you shall be queen, you know."

  No, Lucy thought, no, this couldn't happen–

  But she remembered, she remembered what it was like to have been–

  She remembered the coronation. Oh how she remembered the coronation. It had been a glorious day, and when the crown was placed on her head she had bowed, for its weight was unexpected.

  She had stood on the palace balcony and they had looked up at her, a sea of humans, and she was their queen. She was Victoria I, Victoria Rex, and her tail beat a rhythm on the balcony and she hissed, and caught a fly…

  Lucy thrashed and moaned in her restraints. "No," she said. "No."

  But the memories flooded her, alien and strange and reptilian. "Stop," she begged.

  Then the flood of memories faltered, and the pain receded and became a distant memory. She felt rather than saw the Bookman, prodding and poking, tearing and joining, and a great fear overwhelmed her and then it, too, was gone.

  Then for the longest time there was nothing but a cool and quiet darkness, and when it was pulled away, at last, it was like a bed sheet being pulled from the furniture in a house that had been abandoned all winter, and now it was spring.

  • • • •

  She stood in the room, before the open window. The moon was on the horizon, sinking low, and the first rays of dawn were coming into being.

  A new day.

  In the distance Big Ben struck the hour.

  She was alone in the room.

  She knew where everything was. She knew this room, and every room in the palace, and the name of every human and lizard who dwelled within.

  She took two steps to the cabinet and pressed a button and it swivelled and the other side was a mirror, as she knew it would be.

  She looked in the mirror, and she saw herself.

  She was a thing out of nightmare. She was human but there were parts of her that were machine. She was reptilian, she was a lizard, but a part of her was human.

  She turned, abruptly.

  No one there.

  No sign of the Bookman.

  What had he done?

  The door to her chambers had been left open. And now a figure appeared in it.

  She knew her.

  Chief Inspector Irene Adler, Scotland Yard.

  A gun in her hand
.

  Saying, "Your Highness."

  Then, "Ma'am?"

  She didn't know what to say to her. She turned her face, looked again at her reflection. She was a composite being, she realised, she was not quite human any more, not quite reptilian, not quite machine…

  Something new.

  And she knew the world was changing.

  And they had to be ready. They had to be prepared.

  Slowly, she turned back to face the inspector.

  "The Queen is dead," she said.

  Adler's pale, drawn face stared back at her. After a moment Adler holstered her gun.

  She bowed her head, briefly.

  "Long live the Queen," Irene Adler said.

  Initiate.

  Transfer.

  Engage.

  Harry saw them.

  They materialised in space, between Earth and Mars. Huge, slowly rotating spheres, they obscured starlight and the sun.

  Night in the Carpathians, and through the observatory's telescope Harry watched the red planet. It was slowly being demolished.

  Floating in space, Harry saw them. He – they – were still on a trajectory to the moon.

  Something detached itself from the giant spheres. It came towards the small army of rockets at fantastic speed. It was the size of a small world.

  Harry Houdini, a voice said in his head. There was a bright flash, like flash-paper set alight, that a magician would use in an act.

  The next thing he knew he was somewhere else. The rockets had gone. He – they – were in a large space. He could breathe. The air was scented, strangely, with coconuts.

  A storm materialised before him. It hovered in the air. "We…" Harry said, and swallowed. "We come in peace." "So do we," the storm said.

  Mars.

  Smith knew it was Mars, without quite knowing how. He'd began knowing things, as though his mind was no longer confined to his skull, as though it had been plugged into some vast superior mind that held aeons of knowledge and was happy to share them.

  They stood on the sand.

  "I'm not dead," he said.

  Then he remembered the observer, its termination. It had abandoned human shape and became pure energy and then it–

  Shot out–

  Into space and there–

  A gateway, and they were–

  Somewhere else.

  The observer gave his report. Their report.

  For they were the report, Smith had come to realise. He and all the others.

  Now he looked around, at the sands of Mars. On the horizon a giant machine was moving, transforming the landscape into a strange and beautiful and alien thing.

  "Smith."

  He turned.

  It was Alice.

  And behind her, they were all there. Mycroft and Byron, a horde of Parisians, the scientist, Viktor, with a bright gleam in his eyes, bewildered palace servants, a small Hmong boy from Siam… He knew them all, now, as well as he knew himself.

  Alice held out her hand to him. She was no longer young and neither was he. He reached for her hand and held it. A great peace came on him then. Together they stood and held hands on the Martian sands.

  About the Author

  Israeli-born writer Lavie Tidhar has been called an "emerging master" by Locus magazine, and has quickly established a name for himself as a short fiction writer of some note. He has travelled widely, living variously in South Africa, the UK, Asia and the remote island-nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, and his work exhibits a strong sense of place and an engagement with the literary Other in all its forms.

  www.lavietidhar.com

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  Another explosive read

  An Angry Robot paperback original 2012

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  Copyright © Lavie Tidhar 2012

  Lavie Tidhar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-0-85766-198-2

  EBook ISBN: 978-0-85766-200-2

  Set in Meridien by THL Design.

  Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.