“So, tell me about this Cairn,” I said as we turned down the passage leading to my quarters.
“First, you tell me what that is . . .”
Something was crawling down the middle of the passageway toward us. Something that looked like a lizard under the uncertain light of the intermittent fluorescents—or maybe a very large spider. Except that it was hunchbacked and, for either, it had the wrong number of legs.
“Aw no,” I said as we drove nearer. “No, no, no! Who thinks up this crap?”
“More importantly,” Spook observed as she eased the tram to a stop, “who is able to make this sort of thing work?”
A severed hand crawled into the illuminated spill from the headlights. The lump on its “back” contained an eyeball that rolled around and blinked as the stronger light dazzled it.
“Ohmigod!” Deirdre stuck her head between ours. “It’s Cousin Itt!”
Spook turned to her, wide-eyed: “It belongs to your cousin?”
“Noooo.” It was a scary voice and echoed around the confines of the tunnel, disguising its source for a moment. Then I realized it was behind me: Carol the Vampire had spoken his third word of the evening. “It iss character from Addams Family, yah? Only you mean Ting. Co-sin Eet iss all hairy mit liddle hat.”
“Oh.” Spook looked back at the hand which appeared to be looking back at us. “Wasn’t that a movie?”
Deirdre shook her head. “TV show.”
“Noooo. Vas cartoons in New Yorker magazine.”
I sat there and considered screaming but I wasn’t sure whether it was because of the “thing” in front of me or the conversation all around me.
Chapter Twelve
His teeth are terrible round about. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another, they stick together that they cannot be sundered. By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him. The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved. His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves. The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble. Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear. Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear . . .
I sat straight up in bed, eyes wide and staring into the darkness.
The dream was bad enough. That it came with new installments every time I slept made it worse: the demon continued to plow through the ocean like a torpedo with teeth and claws and spines. But with subtitles from the Book of Job it was assuming apocalyptic proportions.
It was coming for me, moving purposefully. Without sleep. Without rest. Without pause.
But what awakened me, what chilled my already tepid blood and pulled my eyelids wide in the darkness of my bedchamber, was the touch of the hand upon my foot!
It had escaped Darcy Blenik’s custody and crawled through miles of air ducts to enter my quarters and attack me in my bed.
I felt it creeping past my ankle and over my shin like a slow and crafty spider. It hesitated upon my knee as if plotting its final trajectory. Would it go for my throat? Attempt to gouge my eyes out? I braced myself for its attack . . .
“Oh, you’re awake.” The voice was vaguely familiar and sounded vaguely disappointed.
A rectangle of light opened in the darkness. Deirdre stood in the doorway, framed by lamplight from the room beyond. “Chris, Kurt wants you to—oh. Is this a bad time?”
Carmella Le Fanu was stretched out on the bed beside me, her hand on my knee. She appeared to be naked. I blinked, adjusting to the glare from the doorway. She was still naked.
“Ms. Le Fanu,” I said slowly, “you and your brother have already had your appointment with me.”
“That was business,” she said with a slow smile.
“And this is pleasure, right?” Deirdre had her fists on her hips and I got the impression that I would have been better off if it had been the severed hand upon my knee, poised to strike.
In the dim light Carmella’s smile was reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat’s. “It is understood that the Doman will be taking consorts soon.”
“And you’re auditioning, right?”
“Let’s just say that I am doing some research.”
“How do we know you aren’t another assassin, come to kill him in his sleep?”
“Because, for one thing,” Suki’s voice answered, “she’s not carrying any weapons. And, for another, I wouldn’t allow it.”
We all looked toward the far corner of the room where the voice came from. Suki sat in a chair, still wrapped in shadows, but finally visible. She held a slightly curved katana across her thighs. It was still sheathed but two inches of the blade were drawn, reflecting the light so that it momentarily dazzled Carmella.
I turned back to Deirdre. “You were saying something about Kurt?”
“He wants to see you as soon as you’re up.”
“I’m up.”
“What about my research?” Carmella wanted to know.
I reached down and patted her on the head. “I’ll arrange for some handouts to be distributed at a later date. Now, everyone out. Shoo. I want to shower and get dressed.”
Carmella smiled and sat up. She was working extra hard on her projecting. “Wash your back?”
“Security protocols would require that one of us be present at all times,” Deirdre answered.
Carmella’s smile grew. “That could be fun . . .”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Suki said.
* * *
Kurt, himself, came to chauffeur me through the tunnels to the demesne’s lab facilities. As he steered the tram through a bewildering maze of tunnels, I asked what we knew tonight that we didn’t know this morning.
“Not enough,” he grumped, driving with his shoulders hunched. “There’s nothing on the security video of your appointment with the woman who put us all to sleep.”
“Does that, in itself, tell us anything?”
“No. It’s not really so unusual. Many of us exert a peculiar effect upon electromagnetic media.”
“Do we know where she is now?”
He shook his head. “It is as if she came and went like the wind, itself.”
“Everyone knows it’s ‘Wendy.’”
He looked at me blankly.
“And Wendy has stormy eyes,” I tried, “that flash at the sound of lies . . .”
The look intensified.
“Never mind. How about the toy soldiers?”
“Also gone.” He held up his hand. “And please do not quote meaningless poetry to me; I have a headache.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving, then. They say most accidents occur within twenty-five miles of the crypt.”
He grunted. “You sound awfully chipper for a man who was nearly assassinated last night.”
“What? Yuler? He was just the warm-up act. Carmella Le Fanu made a run at me this evening.”
“What?” The tram screeched to a halt. “She tried to kill you?”
“Worse. She was trying to sleep with me.”
“Oh.” He started to smile. “This is maybe a good thing. If you take Carmella as one of your consorts—”
“Yuler’s less intimidating. Did
you finish your examination of the boxes?”
He started the tram again. “Yes.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“There was nothing inside?”
“No evidence of explosives or booby traps were found. The chests have not been opened, yet.”
“Why not?”
“You are the Doman. We require your permission to open your personal gifts—even if we do suspect they are potentially dangerous.”
“You could have awakened me.”
His shoulders hunched a little higher. “Security spent hours examining the chests. I was not about to have you awakened in the middle of the day to open some presents. I need you sharp, tonight.”
Deirdre, who was sitting in the back with Suki, cleared her throat and spoke for the first time. “Um, a moment ago you said ‘are’ potentially dangerous.”
“What?”
“You said the gifts are potentially dangerous. Don’t you mean were?”
“The absence of evidence denoting danger,” Suki observed, “does not guarantee that danger does not exist.”
Deidre bristled a bit. “Well, big duh!”
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure that you understood the context—”
“I understand a lot more than you think.”
“What does that mean?”
“Yes,” said Kurt, “what does that mean?”
“I think it means somebody is cranky and needs a nap,” I said, rubbing my temple where a migraine was starting to wake up.
“If anyone needs a nap, it’s Miss Pussy Gabor. She’s the one who was apparently up all night.”
Kurt glanced at me for a translation.
“Guard duty,” I said.
“I’m not the one who’s cranky,” Suki replied.
“Speaking of cranky,” I said, speaking a little louder than necessary, “I’m sensing a diminishment of enthusiasm on your part, as well, Kurt. Are you sorry I made the trip?”
“You cannot remain as Doman—you will not even survive—unless you deal decisively with your enemies.” His first words were hesitant but the rest turned into a verbal stampede. “So far, you have reinforced your reputation for being soft and indecisive. You cannot rule the clans unless your enemies fear you and your allies believe you to be strong!”
I stared ahead, half-expecting another disparate body part to creep into the headlights of the tram. “So, what do you suggest? Round up some enemies and make an example of them? Do you have a list, Kurt? Whom do you want me to kill?”
He scowled as we turned a corner and coasted to a stop beside a steel door. “A great deal of difficulty could be avoided if you eliminated this Cairn.”
“Yeah? Well, who is he? What does he look like? Where does he live? How do I find him?”
His hunched shoulders drooped. “I don’t know.”
Great. If I wanted to keep my job as top monster in the fang factory, I had to do battle with an invisible man.
And I wasn’t all that crazy about my job to begin with.
Maybe just crazy . . .
* * *
The laboratory facilities in New York were far beyond the resources that the Seattle demesne boasted. Perhaps I should have sent Theresa’s head here, when I had the chance. But I trusted Doctors Mooncloud and Burton while I was less sure of the East Coast’s cast of characters.
The hand scuttled around the inside of a Plexiglas tank like a pink, hyperactive lizard. Its single eye cast wildly about until it fixed on me. Then it moved toward me as far as the clear walls would permit. It began scratching at the barrier with a single-minded patience that was more unnerving than its own grotesque appearance.
“Why does it do that?” I asked.
The question, to my mind, was largely rhetorical: I didn’t really expect an answer. Spook provided one anyway. “It’s programmed to,” she said, slipping a series of X-rays into a row of clips on a backlit panel.
“See? Here are the CPU and memory modules.” She tapped a dark, shadow array nestled between the back of the hand and the hump of the eyeball in a series of exposures. “Power source. Servos and a secondary endoskeleton,” she indicated a series of jointed lines parallel to the natural bones and joints, “enhance and provide backup for the primary system of bones, nerves, and musculature. It’s a simple robot in a flesh-and-blood glove, using an organic camera in place of a metal-and-plastic sensor.”
“How does it stay alive without a working circulatory system?” I asked. “Why isn’t it decomposing like any other severed hand?” I thought of Theresa’s rotting limbs.
Spook pointed to a lump near the wrist on the X-ray. “I think this is a miniature pump and it’s circulating the blood past this membrane that’s grafted over the stump. I suspect the artificial skin is a permeable membrane like those developed by the Navy. It allows oxygen to enter the bloodstream through an adjacent vascular system. Still, even hypothesizing the implantation of protein seeds for fuel and nanobots for cellular maintenance and repair, this is not a viable organism. It is not designed for extended operation and is probably starting to break down even now. The hardware could have been fabricated and programmed to find you at any time. The surgical implantation, however, most likely took place within the past two to three days—just before it was brought here and released in the tunnels.”
“And what was it programmed to do?” I wondered. “Kill me?”
“I don’t think so,” Kurt answered from a lab stool. “Assuming it’s Pipt—”
“Oh, it’s Mr. Ozfest, all right!” I walked around the translucent box while the five-fingered cyborg scrabbled to keep pace with my movement. “Who else could come up with something like this? It’s not as sophisticated as the Frankenvamp but I don’t know of anyone else capable of this kind of bioengineering.” I looked at him. “Unless there really is a Doctor Frankenstein . . .”
Kurt held up a hand. “Please, Christopher. I believe the phrase you Americans use is ‘get real.’”
I looked at the centuries-old vampire. “Yeah. Sure. What a silly idea.” I looked at the other silly idea doing five-fingered pushups in the Plexiglas tank. “Did the Countess ever dabble in this sort of thing when she was mapping the human genome?”
“Not to my knowledge. It was mostly cells, bacteria, and viruses. Very little in the way of surgical procedures and those seemed pretty straightforward. This . . .” His face went blank—wrestled with an unfamiliar emotion—and composed itself again so quickly and smoothly that I almost missed it. “ . . . this is more like something I once saw in a Bavarian hospital . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Yes?” I wasn’t inclined to let the moment pass. “Tell me.”
He shook his head and his voice was gruffer than usual. “It was more than seventy years ago, halfway around the world. The living may call us monsters but they still write romantic novels about the vampire. No one writes romances about the Nazis and their medical experiments. Butchers invoking the Dark Arts to create a race of supermen—ptah! Those who haven’t forgotten, know better. Those who are too young to remember . . .” He shook his head again. “There are many times and places in my long existence that I would as soon not recall to memory. The Nazi madness is something the world should not forget . . .” His voice trailed off and he stared at a distant, dark memory before whispering, “ . . . but would also do better not to remember too well.”
He got up and went over to the tank, opening the lid. “Anyway, what I was starting to say is that someone capable of creating this”—he caught the hand with his own and lifted it out—“could certainly create something deadlier to send after you.”
“Like the Frankenvamp?”
“That creature makes my point. It was apparently sent to draw your blood, not destroy the repository of your flesh. If this Pipt values your blood, he certainly would not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” He carried the hand over to a counter and switched on an ultraviolet lamp.
“So,” I po
ndered, “if Tall, Dark, and Destructive failed to retrieve my precious bodily fluids, what did he expect to accomplish with the hand job, here?”
Darcy, walking over to the lab’s entrance, snickered softly. She flipped the light switch and the room went dark except for the ghostly purple illumination of the UV lamp.
“He’s trying to lure you to come to him.”
“But I don’t know where he is.”
“You do now.” He held the hand beneath the violet bulb, turning it palm up. Glowing lines appeared amid the whorls and creases of the hand’s palm: a contour map, tattooed in phosphorescent ink, visible only in the black light’s peculiar wavelength.
“Where is that?”
Spook spoke. “I’ve scanned a photo of the pattern into the computer and we’re running a cartographical search now, hoping for a match. Blowing up the photo reveals elevation numbers narrowing our search to mountainous regions around the world.” She held up an antique skeleton key. It had been sewn onto the back of the hand with a couple of stitches, found when we captured it. “But we’re hoping for some additional clues.”
“So,” I asked, “can I open the chests, now?”
“You? No,” Kurt answered dourly. “One of my people will do it while you observe from the next room.”
A humanoid shape appeared in the doorway beyond. It wore yards of heavy padding, monstrous gloves, and a gas mask. Spook handed it the key and we moved to a monitor showing the two chests behind a blast wall, surrounded by sandbags.
“As Uncle probably told you,” she said, as the muffled security guy shuffled into the camera’s view, “we found no evidence of booby-trapping. No trace elements of explosive compounds. But both caskets are opaque to X-rays. And the locks don’t appear to have any kind of a tumbler system that would interface with a key, either.”
“So you did try to open them?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I would not open either one without you present, Domo Cséjthe. I did, however, use a fiber-optic scope to examine the interior of the lock. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Habeas Corpses - The Halflife Trilogy Book III Page 21
