The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  "Where?" Orphan said. He felt a sudden, desperate desire to leave the Hall. Its damp, dark interior, filled with the smells of human sweat and the manure of its trapped animals and the relentless gaze of the massed crowds, left him with a mixture of feelings, a sanctimonious (if heart-felt) pity vying with a cerebral excitement (for he, too, like the rest of the crowd, was thrilled by the grotesques). I am no different to anyone here, he thought. And – It's why this place is so successful.

  "Come with me," Jo Jo the Dog-Faced Boy said again, and tugged on Orphan's sleeve. "There is someone what wants to meet you."

  He walked off. Orphan, after a short hesitation, followed. I left my will at the door, he thought. This place is like a prison; if it's a museum, it is one that houses only human misery.

  But it was not quite true. For, as he followed Jo Jo out of the central hall and through a long, narrow corridor, he began to notice an exhibition of curious devices lining their path. The corridor branched into small, alcove-like rooms, dimly lit like the rest of the Hall, and there were fewer and fewer people venturing this way; for here there were no animals and no human curiosities, but only machines.

  In a room to the left of him he saw a mechanical menagerie, birds in the plumage of gold and silver leaves, who moved in slow jerks and called in rusted voices. They sat on the branches of a machine made to look like a tree, its chest cut open to display a series of cogs and wheels. Steam rose out of small vents in the branches, and the birds twittered and fluttered their wings each time there was a belch of steam, which came about every ten seconds.

  In another room he saw several people gathered around a naked female torso that stood on top of a dais, as still as a statue, until, as to the beat of an unseen clock, she jerked her hands and turned in a circle, then subsided again into mechanical slumber.

  "It's a very sad thing," Jo Jo commented while they walked. "These machines were once the apex of scientific achievement. Even five, ten years ago, I'm told, people flocked in their thousands to see them and marvel." He had the same wild-frontier accent as Tom, Orphan thought. "But now – look at them. Lost, lonely, discarded like used toys. If it wasn't for Mr. Maskelyne taking pity on them they would have soon found themselves on the rubbish heap – or worse."

  That last was said with an ominous whisper. "Why?" Orphan said. "What would happen to them?"

  They had left the corridor and entered another, then turned again, and again. It's a maze, he thought, as Jo Jo led him. Soon he could not remember which way they had come. Was it left-left-right, or was it left-rightleft? The dark corridors were now empty of people, and the rooms they passed were unlit and smelled of dust and disuse.

  "The Babbage Company, that's what would happen to them," Jo Jo said darkly. "Old Charlie Company's been trying to buy these automatons for years." He barked a laugh. "For their archives. For the benefit of the scientific community. Ha. They can't wait to cut these guys open and dissect them." He looked over his shoulder at Orphan. "'Cause they didn't build them, see? So they have to know."

  "Know what?"

  He was getting thoroughly disorientated by the walk. The corridors never seemed to end – he was beginning to suspect they were simply walking in circles.

  Jo Jo stopped, turned, and tapped his own head with a hairy finger. "Know how they work. Know if they think. 'Cause if they do, china – then how can they do it without old Charlie's engines? We're here."

  They stood in the middle of a corridor identical to all the ones before. Jo Jo ran his hand along the wall, pressed something invisible – and a section of the wall smoothly detached itself from the rest of the surrounding structure and swung open, revealing a small dark room hidden beyond.

  Jo Jo motioned with his hand for Orphan to enter. He saw Orphan's bemused expression and his face softened, and those great soulful eyes blinked. "If you need me – bark." He laughed. "Don't worry, mate. You're expected."

  Orphan looked into the dark room. Was it a trap? It was possible – but even then, was that not what he had wanted? Perhaps it was the Bookman inside there, ready to reveal himself at last. Or perhaps…

  He took a deep breath. Tom said he could trust Jo Jo, and he, in his turn, trusted Tom.

  So…

  He stepped into the dark room, and the door swung shut behind him without a sound.

  FOURTEEN

  The Mechanical Turk

  Let us not say that every machine or every animal perishes altogether or assumes another form after death, for we know absolutely nothing about the subject. On the other hand, to assert that an immortal machine is a chimera or a logical fiction, is to reason as absurdly as caterpillars would reason if, seeing the cast-off skins of their fellow caterpillars, they should bitterly deplore the fate of their species, which to them would seem to come to nothing.

  – Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L'Homme Machine

  The room was dark and warm. There was a dry, not unpleasant smell in the air, as of a cupboard that had been left closed for a long period of time, containing gently fading clothes and the dying scent of lavender. Orphan stood still and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. There was no movement, no sound in the room but for his own breathing.

  He took a cautious step forward.

  "Play with me," a voice said. It had a scratchy, echoey quality, as of an old Edison record.

  Orphan, keeping silent, took another step forward.

  Light, flickering and low, came into existence before him. It emanated from a series of small electrical bulbs set in a half-ring around a square wooden table with a chessboard laid in its middle. A figure was sitting on the other side of the chess table. It was the Turk.

  The machine looked remarkably like a man. Only the upper half of the body could be seen, and Orphan had the distinct, uncomfortable notion that that was all there was to the Turk; that, had he looked behind the table, there would be nothing there. The Turk's face was ivory-white, as unchanging as a statue's. A long, thin moustache emerged from its upper lip and curved down. On the Turk's head was a turban, and a heavy fur coat covered its body. The coat looked old; it was moth-eaten. The Turk's hands rested on the table. They were pale, the fingers long and slender. One of his hands held a long-stemmed pipe which disappeared into a side drawer as Orphan watched.

  An empty chair waited on the side of the table opposite the Turk.

  "Please," the voice said. "Sit down." There was a short, mechanical chuckle. "I have been waiting for you for some time."

  The Turk's mouth did not move. The voice seemed to emerge from somewhere around his midriff.

  "Please, sit."

  He sat in the chair. It was high-backed and once grand, but now the paint was peeling and the cushions had been eaten away by insects. When he sat, he was at eye level with the Turk. The chess pieces were arranged on the board. He sat on the side of white.

  "Play with me. Please."

  Though the tone of the voice never varied there was something almost desperate, a lonely quality to the voice. Orphan surveyed the board. The pieces had once been lovingly crafted, he thought. But now they were chipped, the white king was missing half its crown, and the pawns looked battered and scarred like ageing mercenaries.

  On a whim, he moved a white pawn two squares. "E2 to E4," he said.

  The Turk gave another wheezing chuckle. "A good opening," he said. "It frees your queen, and your bishop, and gives you early domination of the centre. Very good."

  The Turk's right hand moved jerkily across the board. "E7 to E5."

  The two pawns faced each other across the board.

  "Queen to F3," Orphan said. Somehow, the game was important. He said, "What do the automatons want?"

  "Knight to C6," the Turk announced. The artificial eyes blinked at Orphan. "The right to exist. Freedom."

  "But you are machines," Orphan said, and the Turk's head turned in a slow odd shake, left to right to left.

  "So are you," it said.

  "Bishop to C4," Orphan said. "Byron said something
similar to me. But you are constructs. Created by human hands."

  The Turk's response was a loud snort. Then, "Knight to F6."

  The thought suddenly occurred to him and made him uncomfortable. How old was the Turk? The one simulacrum he had met, Lord Byron's, was manufactured by the Babbage Company. It was a recent construct, the product of an entire scientific age… He said, "Weren't you?"

  "Play," the Turk said.

  Orphan looked at the board. "Knight to E2."

  "Bishop to C5," the Turk said, his pale slender hand moving almost languidly across the board. Then, "What do you know of Jacques de Vaucanson?"

  "A2 to A3," Orphan said, moving his leftmost pawn. "Was he a poet?"

  The Turk did laugh now, a full-throated, lasing sound full of scratches and distant echoes. "D7 to D6."

  No piece had yet been taken.

  "Who was he?" Orphan said.

  "Play."

  Orphan examined the board. The space between his king and rook was now empty. He said, "Castling," and moved the king and rook so that his king was now safe behind a row of pawns.

  The Turk nodded its head. "Ah, Rochieren," he said. "Very good. Bishop to G4."

  The black bishop now threatened the white queen. Orphan didn't pay it attention. He said, "Vaucanson?"

  "Let me tell you a story," the Turk said. "Which is relevant, perhaps, to your quest." The machine's eyes looked at Orphan's. They were like a blind man's eyes, void of depth, white and unseeing. "You came here for help, no?"

  "I'm looking for the Bookman," Orphan said. Now that the words left his mouth they seemed to hang in the air for a moment, unburdened by weight. The Bookman. I am coming, he wanted to say. And the image of Lucy rose in his mind, clear as if she were standing beside him, so vivid that he almost turned and reached for her.

  The bulbs seemed to dim, their feeble light fading.

  "The Bookman…" the Turk said. "That great invisible Machiavelli." Again, that chuckle. "Do you think I can help you find him?"

  "Do you think I can win this game?" Orphan asked in return, coming back to himself. He motioned at the still chess pieces.

  "It's unlikely," the Turk said. Then, "I take your meaning."

  "So you can help me?"

  "Let me tell you a story. But first, play."

  "Queen to D3." Orphan moved his queen away from the bishop's threat.

  "Knight to H5." The Turk's hand fluttered and settled on the table. The lights behind it grew and dimmed. "Back when France had kings," he said, "a secret project was initiated by Louis the Fourteenth, and carried out by the greatest automaton-maker the world had yet seen. Jacques de Vaucanson." The Turk sighed, as if remembering a painful past, and his hand fluttered away from the table, pointing at a gloomy corner of the room. "That is one of his early constructions," he said.

  Lights winked into being above a small display table. Orphan looked, and saw a duck squatting on the table.

  "Do have a look," the Turk said. "There are some seeds beside it."

  Orphan rose. The duck, of course, was a mechanical duck, and though it might once have been lively it now looked like the rest of these forgotten mechanical curiosities, worn down by the passing of the years. The duck looked up at him, and its beak opened and closed weakly.

  "Feed it."

  There was, indeed, a small store of seeds beside the table. He took some in his hand and put his open palm before the duck's beak. The duck pecked at them without overdue enthusiasm. The seeds disappeared inside it.

  "Watch," the Turk said. "It is marvellous."

  Orphan watched. For a while, nothing seemed to be happening. Then, with a soft "poop" sound, the duck raised its behind and delicately deposited a small smear of excrement on the table.

  "Bravo!" the Turk cried. "Do you know, Voltaire once said that, without Vaucanson's duck, there would be nothing to remind us of the glory that was France?" His head shook sadly, and he said, "Gone now, of course. They are all gone, and only I remain…"

  Orphan, unable to decide if he was amused or disgusted, returned to his chair.

  He reached for the board and found a piece. "Pawn to H3," Orphan said.

  "Bishop takes E2," the Turk said, his hand moved, and Orphan's white knight was no longer on the board. "Do pay attention."

  "Queen takes E2," Orphan said, removing in his turn the Turk's bishop. "You were saying?"

  "Knight to F4," the Turk said, unperturbed. His knight was now threatening Orphan's queen. "So, what did you think of the duck?"

  The lights above the duck's display dimmed and disappeared. "Interesting," Orphan said.

  The Turk sighed. "Once it was the grandest attraction!" he said. "Even now… even now people come to see the duck. To marvel at its ingenuity."

  "Queen to E1," Orphan said, rescuing the queen. He stared at the board for a long moment. "What was Vaucanson's project?"

  "Knight to D4," the Turk said. The black knight stood now between the white bishop and pawn. "Louis was sick. Already, in his time, France was in decline as the power of les rosbifs' unholy lizards grew. And so, as you may have already gathered for yourself, wherever there is opposition to Les Lézards, a certain shadowy presence makes itself known…"

  "The Bookman," Orphan whispered. And he thought, always, it is the Bookman. Wherever he turned, the Bookman had been and gone, leaving only a ghostly outline in its wake.

  "Perhaps that is so," the Turk said. "I have lived for many years, but even I do not understand the exact circumstances. The Bookman almost never deals directly. I only suspect his influence. Play."

  "Bishop to B3."

  "Knight takes H3," the Turk said, removing Orphan's pawn. "Check."

  "Tell me what you have to tell me!" Orphan said. Anger made him raise his hand as if he intended to wipe clear the pieces off the table.

  The Turk only stared at him, as mute as a doll.

  "King to H2," Orphan said at last.

  The Turk chuckled. "Good, good. You truly fascinate me, Orphan. You may only be a pawn, at the moment – but what you may yet turn into!"

  "The project?"

  "Of course." The hand moved again. "Queen to H4. You see, Louis, a dying man, was deeply, intensely interested in life. What, after all, was life? If man is a machine, could he not then build a machine to simulate life? To live life?"

  "Vaucanson set out to build a simulacrum," Orphan said.

  "Correct! Very good!"

  Absent-mindedly, Orphan moved. "G2 to G3."

  His pawn now threatened the Turk's queen.

  "Pawns are such fascinating pieces, too…" the Turk said. "So small, almost insignificant, and yet – they can depose kings. Don't you find that interesting? Knight to F3."

  And now the Turk was threatening Orphan's queen.

  "Did he succeed?"

  "Perhaps," the Turk said, "in another time… if the lizards had not appeared… if the Bookman had not existed… Perhaps in that time he had failed. A fanciful notion, but the longer I exist – the longer I live? – I think a lot about the might-have-beens, the what-ifs. About the little places in history where one tiny, minute change can lead to a new and unimaginable future. It's like chess. So many permutations, so many possibilities, probabilities, choices, cross-roads… I think a lot about the future, our future. And I see uncertainty." It stopped, then sighed, the same, repeating sound, each scratch and dim echo a repeat of the last one. There was something desperate and lonely in his voice when he spoke again. "Please, play."

  "King to G2," Orphan said. His king moved, now threatening both the Turk's knights. He was in a purely defensive position. None of his pieces had managed to progress across the board. The Turk had brought the battle entirely to Orphan's side. "Damn."

  "Knight takes E1," the Turk said, removing Orphan's queen with his long, deft fingers. "Check."

  "Damn," Orphan said again. The Turk merely stared at him.

  "Rook takes E1," Orphan said at last, removing the Turk's knight from the table.

  "Qu
een to G4," the Turk said. Now there was only a pawn separating the Turk's queen and Orphan's king.

  "D2 to D3," Orphan said, moving a pawn. "So Vaucanson succeeded."

  "Bishop takes F2," the Turk said, taking Orphan's pawn. The bishop now stood next to the white king and threatened Orphan's rook.

  "He built a simulacrum."

  "You insist on reducing probabilities to certainties," the Turk murmured, making no sense to Orphan. "But fine, yes. Roughly speaking."

  "Rook to H1," Orphan said.