The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  One chair was unoccupied. In the other sat a man.

  He rose when Orphan approached. He was a tall, athletic-looking man. Black hair was only just beginning to recede across his forehead. He was dressed in a smart suit, like that of a well-to-do City worker. He was clean-shaven. He came towards Orphan with his hand outstretched, and shook his hand. His handshake was strong and confident. His eyes twinkled. Orphan felt completely lost.

  "Please," the man said, gesturing at the table. "Sit down. Have some tea. I have been looking forward to talking with you." Not waiting for Orphan, he returned to his seat and began pouring tea into the cups. Orphan, not knowing what to do, and feeling a vague sense of unease – or perhaps, he thought, it was disappointment? He couldn't tell what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this – sat down opposite.

  "Milk? Sugar?"

  "Yes, please. Two sugars," Orphan said. His voice felt unreal to him. Maybe, he thought, maybe I never shot Jack. Perhaps I am still lying on the floor of the basement, concussed, and I am merely hallucinating this. I will be glad if it turns out I never shot him. It wasn't like me. He was my friend. Then he wondered, if that was true, what hospital he would go to. Would it be Guy's again? He didn't relish that idea.

  "I am sure you have a lot of questions," the man said, handing him his tea.

  Orphan smelled the tea. It smelled good, an Earl Grey, and when he tasted it warmth spread through his body. "One or two," he said cautiously. Something is wrong, he thought. But I don't know what it is.

  The man nodded as if Orphan's reply confirmed some deep point of conversation. "You are wondering who I am." He smiled. His teeth were white and even. "I am, of course, the Bookman." He laughed and shook his head. "I am one of the Bookmen, rather," he said. "I am afraid you were rather misled to think of us as one person. One mysterious and quite nefarious person, no doubt." He sighed and took a sip from his tea. "I am afraid the reality is quite a bit more mundane. Would you like a biscuit?"

  "No, thank you," Orphan said. His companion shrugged and helped himself to one, which he bit into with relish. "They're very good," he said.

  "I have no doubt on that score," Orphan said. "You were saying?"

  "Ah, straight to business. Quite. You see, Orphan, we are not some monstrous and alien entity – though we like people to think that – but rather, we are simple patriots. Men – and women – who have made it their goal to free our homeland from the shackles of oppression." He looked at Orphan with an earnest, searching gaze. "The oppression of Les Lézards."

  "By killing innocent people?" Orphan said. He was coming back to himself, a little. "By killing Lucy?" Anger flared and he seized it with gratitude, trying to pull himself out of the spreading numbness.

  The man shook his head. His face bore a sad, dignified countenance. "We had no choice," he said. "Though, in the event, we were wrong. Misled."

  "Wrong?" Orphan said. "Wrong?"

  "Yes," the man – the Bookman – agreed. "You see, our target was, of course, the Martian probe. Yet–"

  "Why? Why the probe?" He pushed away his tea. "What harm can it possibly do?"

  "Let me riddle you this, Orphan," the Bookman said. "Where do Les Lézards come from?"

  "I was told they come from an island whose location is kept secret."

  "Come, come," the Bookman said. "You've read Darwin. Surely you realise this idea of parallel evolution, of this other race evolving naturally away from humanity on a small island, surely this idea is preposterous?"

  "I had not given it much thought," Orphan said.

  There was something about the way the man talked, about the way he moved his head…

  Suddenly, it reminded him of the Turk.

  "The truth, Orphan." the man leaned forward, and his eyes looked deep into Orphan's with a gaze both trusting and wise. "A truth many men died to obtain proof of, I should tell you –" and here he lay his hand on the table, as if it were a bible and he a witness at a court of law – "the truth is this: the lizards have no earthly origin."

  Orphan looked into the Bookman's eyes. There was, he thought, a lack in them, an absence he could not quite describe. Something was missing in the man, some subtle part of a man that simply wasn't there. He said, "I see."

  "Do you? Do you, Orphan? Do you comprehend the magnitude of this affront?" The man grasped him by the arm. "They are intruders, invaders, an occupying force from – from beyond. From beyond space. They want nothing else than to rule the whole world – and they are using us, humans, to do this – until the day when they no longer need us…"

  "You sound like Jack," Orphan said distractedly. He turned his face away from the man. He couldn't see the lake from where he sat, it was as if he were sitting in an upturned bowl. Beyond the little square, beyond the streetlamp's light, there was nothing.

  An absence within an absence, he thought. He said, "Jack was my friend."

  "Yes, yes," the man said. "Do try to pay attention."

  "You were going to explain to me about the probe,"

  Orphan said. Was it really an absence? He looked harder. It seemed to him that there was something out there, on the edge of his vision, something vast and powerful moving in the darkness, watching him. "Then you can explain to me about the mistake you made. And then you can give me back Lucy."

  "Look," the Bookman said, his face colouring in anger. "You don't seem to understand what is at stake here. I thought you would be sensible. Us humans need to stick together, to–"

  But Orphan was no longer listening. He stood up, pushing back the chair, and stalked off beyond the streetlamp, into the outlining darkness.

  "Hey, where are you going?" the Bookman shouted after him.

  Orphan turned back. "You're another simulacrum, aren't you?" he said. Then he pulled out the Peacemaker and shot the Bookman in the chest.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Bookman

  Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate

  – Thomas Burnet

  "Bravo," said a voice. It wasn't the man who had spoken. He was lying on the ground on his back, with a hole in his chest. Like Jack, he was bleeding sparks. Lines of light ran underneath his skin and gave him an unhealthy, eerie glow.

  Orphan turned to the darkness and said, "Show yourself."

  The voice sounded amused. "I'd be afraid you'd shoot me too," it said. "You've become awfully proficient with that gun awfully fast." There was a sigh, long and heavy like a wave. "So you have come at last."

  Orphan squinted into the darkness. He felt unnerved. Something was moving there, a shape he could not quite make out, large and malevolent. He said, "Where is Lucy?"

  "Nearby," the voice said, and Orphan felt his heart quicken; he took a deep breath, exhaling the air slowly to try to calm himself. He said, "Release her."

  "So you have come at last," the voice said again, and again, there was the sense of deep amusement coming from it. "Descended to the Underworld to bargain with the lord of death. But what, Orphan, do you have to bargain with?"

  "Show yourself," Orphan said again. He felt suddenly like a small boy, lost, his voice weak and lonely in the immense dark. The Bookman was toying with him.

  The Bookman laughed. Then he said, "I can give you Lucy back. Alive again. Better than alive. But for what price, my young poet? Do you think you can just wander in here like a lost figure of myth and demand your love back?"

  Orphan looked into the darkness and saw only moving shadows. "What do you want from me?" he whispered into the dark.

  "Ah. Good." A movement, and a disturbing sense of something like a giant insect, multi-legged and with too many eyes. "You are seeing reason."

  "Why did you kill her?"

  The voice returned to him from the other side of the square now, and he turned to it. I'm bound to him, he realised. For Lucy I will serve him.

  "I began to tell you, when you killed Mr. Worth," the voice said, sounding surprisingly peevish. "You leave quite a trail in your wake."


  An image of Jack lying on the floor came unbidden into Orphan's mind, and he felt his heart constrict. "Will you…?" he said. "Could you fix him? Jack?"

  "I could," the Bookman said. Moving again. Circling around Orphan, like a hunter who had closed on his prey. "I might. Should I?"

  "He was my friend," Orphan said. As the words left his mouth he thought again of Jack. He had taken him in, at Payne's. He had cared about him. And Orphan had shot him. Suddenly he felt disgusted with himself. And angry.

  "I know," the Bookman said. "Ironic, isn't it? You see, I could bring him back if I chose, but how would Jack react?" The voice sighed, a gust of wind that stroked Orphan's cheek. "He never knew he was a simulacrum."

  The Bookman laughed. In the distance the waves rolled against the shore. On the table undrunk tea sat cooling. On the black-and-white squares a man lay dead.

  Orphan felt tired, old. He sat back in his chair. So Jack really was his friend. "Please," he said. "Bring him back."

  "First Lucy, now Jack?" the Bookman said. "What will you give me?"

  But Orphan had played that game before. Ever since that night by the Thames he had played a riddle-game, his opponents changing but the questions remaining the same. A question for a question, he thought. You will tell me what you want from me when you decide it's time. I know you now. What is it that you want me to do? What is it that you want me to learn? "Who was he?" he asked, pointing to the dead, suited man.

  "Adam Worth," the Bookman said. "Quite an ingenious, ruthless criminal. I assimilated him some years ago, following his theft of the Duchess of Devonshire – ever seen that painting? quite marvellous – from Agnew & Sons. He already had an extremely successful network of criminals working under him – in fact, I believe your friend at Scotland Yard once called him the Caesar of crime." "My friend?" He felt a sudden chill.

  "Come, Orphan," the Bookman said. Moving again. Orphan felt too tired to try to follow him with his eyes. Yet he was aware of the movement. "Let us keep no secrets between us. Even now Inspector Adler is keeping watch over the entrance to Payne's. She's had you under surveillance ever since you left Guy's Hospital. Didn't you know that?" The Bookman laughed, and said, "Of course not. She is very good. She felt – quite rightly, of course – that you could lead her to me. Mistakenly, though, as it turns out – by the time she realises you will not come out and makes her move, she will be able to find nothing."

  The chill he felt spread, numbing him. "What do you mean?"

  The Bookman's answer did not give him cause for relief. "You'll find out."

  "Why?" Orphan said. Real bewilderment made him belligerent. "Why kill Lucy? Why bring me here?" Then the words of the suited man – Adam Worth, he thought – came back to him, and he said, "The Martian probe."

  "Yes," the Bookman said.

  "It keeps coming back to that," Orphan said. "But why? Why destroy it?"

  "Because it was not – is not – a probe," the Bookman said, and his voice was very close now, almost caressing, issuing behind Orphan's shoulder. Orphan sat very still, as if, by his stillness, he could fool the Bookman into moving away. "It is a beacon," the Bookman said.

  His voice was low and soft, whispering directly into Orphan's ear. Something scaly and inhuman touched his shoulder, and he almost jumped.

  "A beacon," the Bookman said. "To be carried into space by the design and engineering of humans, but for a purpose of which they know nothing. Think of it, Orphan," that awful voice said, "think of a great cannon booming, a cloud of smoke, heat torching the ground below as the cannon fires, shooting its cargo into the atmosphere, and beyond. Into the coldness of space. To float alone amongst the stars – isn't that poetic?"

  "Yes," Orphan whispered, paralysed by the Bookman's touch. What was he, he thought, desperately, helplessly – what strange, alien being had trapped him here, to speak to him of poetry?

  "Poetry has its own irony," the Bookman said. "The probe would reach space, but it would not head to Mars, to explore its arid deserts and its false canals. Instead, it will spread out dishes like the opening petals of a flower. And it will begin to broadcast a poem out to the distant stars. In the language of the creatures you, in your ignorance, call Les Lézards. Do you know what message it will carry, Orphan? What poem will make its way into galactic space?"

  He could feel the Bookman behind him, a shadowy presence made solid, made real and threatening beyond anything he had ever imagined. He whispered, "No," and heard his own voice come back to him, not recognisable as his own.

  "It will be a song of surpassing beauty," the Bookman said. "And it will be a poem of summons. It will whisper of the beauty of this world, of Earth, of its blue oceans and green lands, of its abundance of life, its riches, its minerals and fuel and rare metals. A world ready for the taking. A world already half-subdued." Something like a lizard's tongue, yet different, hissed in the air beside his ear, tasting the words. "Come, it would say. Come, our brothers and sisters. We have been lost for a long time, but now we are found. Come to this world we have taken for ourselves, and we could rule it together." The words took on a seductive tone, forcing tendrils into Orphan's mind, conjuring new, disturbing images inside his head. Whether it was his imagination alone, or some influence of the Bookman, he didn't know, but suddenly he was no longer sitting at the table but flying, disembodied, through a space strewn with stars, and below him was a globe, a blue world streaked with the white of clouds and the green of living things. It was beautiful – but then he turned, and he saw the small black body he had last seen, blown apart, in Richmond Park. The probe sailed through space, as small as a pebble, only seen by the occasional glint of light from its side. He turned again, facing away from the Earth, and his breath caught in a mixture of wonder and fear. For amongst the stars rose a fleet, thousands upon thousands of silver discs burning in the rays of the distant suns, coming closer and closer.

  "Invasion," the Bookman whispered in his ear, jolting him back into awareness. His – hand? – tightened on Orphan's shoulder. "When the probe is released, it will sing its song out to the stars. And amongst the stars, Les Lézards' ancient kin will listen. And they will come, Orphan. They will come. And they will take this world for themselves."

  "But it was destroyed," Orphan said. "You destroyed it!"

  "I was misled," the Bookman said. His touch on Orphan's shoulder slackened. His voice took on an aspect of haunting sadness. "The probe in the park was a decoy. The real one is at this very minute making its way by airship to Caliban's Island, where the launch facility is all but complete. It has to be destroyed, Orphan. Do you see?" It seemed the Bookman was almost pleading with him. "This is not about a single human life, however regrettable. The fate of the world itself lies, as they say, in the balance."

  He released Orphan. On a sudden instinct Orphan stood up and turned, looking for the Bookman. He had already retreated back into the shadows. Yet Orphan caught a glimpse of him, as he moved away: he was not human and not lizard, but a giant, caterpillar-like creature, its scaly head adorned with eye-stalks that, even as they were disappearing in the darkness, for one small moment seemed to wink at him. "Destroy the probe," the voice of the Bookman said, growing faint, "and I will return Lucy to you." "Why me?" Orphan said. Pleaded.

  "A pawn does not ask for its player's strategy," the Bookman said. "And I have been playing this particular game for more centuries than you can imagine. You must destroy the probe."

  He felt himself sinking into the Bookman's web. A fly caught in a silk mesh from which there was no escape. Finally, he said, "How?"

  "Will you do it?" the Bookman said. His voice echoed in Orphan's mind, over the black-and-white squares, the miniature board on which he played his game with Orphan.

  And Orphan, a captured pawn, whispered at last – "Yes."

  PART II

  The Odyssey

  NINETEEN

  Across the Channel

  I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea;

&nbs
p; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

  – William Wordsworth, "Lucy"

  It was some time later. The place was France.

  Orphan arrived at Nantes train station in the early hours of the morning. He had crossed the Channel, travelled by train to Paris and from there took the night journey across France. He got to see little of the country. His only reading material along the way had been a newspaper: and the news was not reassuring. One item in particular concerned Orphan:

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