The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  Orphan examined him. The dark eyes stared back at him, missing nothing. He felt like an open book, riffled by the Prime Minister as if its contents were merely of passing interest. As if reading his thoughts, Moriarty reached for the book on his desk and picked it up. "Bible Stories for Young Children?" Moriarty said. He opened the book. Orphan looked at it closely, perhaps for the first time. There was something strangely familiar about it, as if he had seen this sort of printing, this sort of binding, before. "The Bookman's book," Moriarty said. "So clever…" He sighed, and kept leafing through the empty pages. "It is hard to run an empire when your masters' grasp of their own technology is virtually non-existent," he said. "I often wished we could have worked together with the Bookman. Yes," he said, smiling into Orphan's surprised face, "I know what he is, what he wants. Les Lézards' servant, and their store of knowledge too. And yet – a revolutionary element, like our own. A dangerous one. It's a shame…" He closed the book, holding it in both hands. "I will have it sent to the technicians for analysis. Perhaps something useful could be gleaned of it yet. Now, as for you, young Orphan…"

  Those were the words he was hoping not to hear. "What will you do with me?" he said.

  The Prime Minister turned the book in his hands. He seemed fascinated by it. And now Orphan knew what it reminded him of – the bibles at Guy's Hospital, the ones in every room that had made Inspector Adler so uncomfortable. "I'm afraid," Moriarty said, "that I won't have any choice but to have you executed–"

  And at that moment the book in Moriarty's hands suddenly glowed, the binding showing a flash of intense radiation, and Moriarty cried out, but the voice was strangled in his throat. Orphan watched, horrified, and the book tumbled from the Prime Minister's hands and fell to the floor. Moriarty slumped on the desk. He was still breathing, just. His hands, and face, were badly burned. And as he fell a section of the wall slid silently open – revealing, to a horrified Orphan, a small control panel, and a curious screen, and the image of the cannon with people like ants moving around its base. Orphan snatched the book from Moriarty's hands and tucked it back in his pocket. He stared at the prone Prime Minister, and then at the control panel, no longer hidden, and at the cannon it was showing, the cannon it was there to control, and he thought, with a sudden, overwhelming uncertainty – what do I do?

  And now he was running, running through tunnels, his sweat burning on his face and getting into his eyes; behind him the pursuers followed, and a shot echoed, a burst of stone hit his face and cut his skin. Away from the stunned or dead Moriarty, away from capture and death, onwards, in a mad frightened rush to get away.

  Orphan ran, slipped, found the ground sloping sharply away from him. He stumbled. The air was hot, clammy and humid like the inside of an engine-room; from somewhere unseen he could once more smell the sea. He was in some sort of duct. He surrendered to the slide, arching his back away from the floor, his body resting on his heels and back, and so, like a child at play, he slid downwards, his speed increasing with each passing moment.

  More shots behind him, but none coming close. Air rushed into his face. The smooth floor offered no resistance, no way to slow down. He thought of hitting something hard and ending up a blot of red against stone walls.

  Don't, he thought.

  Somewhere nearer, the cry of birds. The space he was in expanded, and a light grew ahead. An opening. He went through it–

  He was flying through the air.

  He had the sense of a wide space opening below him. Green and blue, a sense of free-falling, the ground opening below him–

  He crashed into warm water with a huge explosion. His lungs burned. He had the sense of dark, heavy shapes moving below him. He kicked out and broke back to the surface. He looked at where he was. He was in a large pool of water.

  The pool was surrounded by lizards.

  The pursuers hadn't followed him. He knew why. And thought that now he truly was in trouble.

  He was in the Nursery. Around him, lizard young milled on rocks and watched him with curious, unblinking eyes. Every now and then a tongue would dart out and taste the air, and the eyes would blink, slowly and ponderously, and focus back on him. He got the distinct impression they regarded him as a new toy, and were curious as to his application.

  He swam to the edge and hauled himself out, and for a long moment he remained lying on the ground, catching his breath, not daring to move for fear of what would happen. When he rose at last he could see, amidst the lizards, the cowering shapes of human beings. And he thought, My family. The idea was bitter to him.

  He made to move, and the nearest lizard darted at him, and he stopped. The lizard's tongue snaked out and tasted his skin.

  Then, startling Orphan so much that he nearly fell back in the water, the lizard spoke.

  "Ssssss…" it said, and flicked its tail. "Sssservant…" It moved away from him then, losing interest. The others, too, returned gradually to their previous activities. The humans (he did not recognise any of them) cast nervous, fearful glances at him and moved between their charges.

  Orphan accepted the unspoken message.

  Soon, he knew, the soldiers would come for him; and if not them, the lizards themselves might come, to see who it was who dared threaten their get with his presence, and this he feared even more. He remembered the sight of the two lizards fighting each other to the death, back in the King's Arms in Drury Lane. He did not think himself capable of this kind of fight.

  He felt lost then, and almost gave up the fight altogether; when he felt something hard against his hip and, startled for a moment, reached out and realised it was his mother's book. No, he thought. It was the Bookman's, and it made him frightened.

  But he was not like the others of his family, he thought. He, at least, would not fear books. He opened the book, wondering if some of its power remained, if some of the Bookman's artifice was yet in it, but… the book remained empty and old. It did not come alive, and the pages remained stained-yellow and otherwise blank. He leafed through it again, nevertheless, until he reached the end, and the small, fading inscription left there long ago by his mother: Under the Nursery, the mushrooms grow flat.

  How had she managed to escape? In one end of the Nursery he could now hear shouts, and knew the soldiers had come for him. It was almost dark now, and the cannon's payload would be launched soon, the attempt would be made to reach the stars.

  And he would most likely be dead.

  Is that how you want to be remembered? he thought. As a saboteur? He looked around him at the lizard young. Could he take their life in his hands? What would the probe have meant? He was too late asking himself these questions.

  Instead, he ran. He ran away from the soldiers, away from the Nursery, towards the sea. The giant cave he was in opened about him like a fan, the ground sloping gently until the pools of water almost poured down into the sea.

  There are no defences here, he thought. Not this close to the babies. There would be no monstrous worms in the sand, no giant insects to suck out blood. I hope.

  Down by the shore the ceiling abruptly disappeared above his head, and in its stead were stars. He took a deep lungful of night air. It tasted fresh and welcoming, homely almost. It escaped from him then in a shuddered breath and he jumped from the ledge of the cave onto the fine black sand below.

  They were after him, coming, but slowly, hampered by their fear of harming these babies, the most precious in the whole of the empire. But they were coming, and would not be long in catching up to him.

  He wandered off along the beach. He felt suddenly free, his purpose at last fulfilled. He thought of Lucy.

  Before him rose the mushrooms.

  Gigantic, they were nevertheless different to the ones in the caves. Sleek and fleshy, they spread out in concentric circles, a forest of low-lying, flat surfaces suspended on thick shafts.

  Where the mushrooms grow flat… A wild idea took hold of Orphan, and he followed it. Putting the book back in his pocket, he attacked the l
argest of the mushrooms. There was something strange about them…

  The shouts were coming closer – much closer. Then, a gunshot. He ducked, but they were still not quite out of the cave yet, and their aim was bad.

  At last a shaft gave way, and a giant mushroom, free of its earthly bond, glided gracefully away, and landed in the dark waters.

  "Stop!" someone shouted, and there was a volley of fire. Ducking, panting, Orphan ran low and sprang himself onto the floating fungi. He almost laughed, the sensation was so odd; it was like he was once again a child, and this was a giant toy, wobbling this way and that with no control. He spread his legs outwards and began to paddle slowly, as quietly as he could, away from the shore and into the open sea. Water soaked into his clothes but the makeshift raft held him – just.

  Behind him the shouts grew and more shots followed, but they were aimless, and came nowhere near. He continued to paddle, into the dark dark sea, away from the island, and imagined himself growing into a small point, unseen in the unchanging vastness of water. He felt exulted, buoyant – buoyant, he thought, and almost giggled. Like the mushrooms, staying afloat.

  Soon the sounds of the shore grew faint, then faded away. He turned his head but could no longer see the island, could no longer see anything but the dark unchanging water of the sea. I'm lost, he thought, but the thought brought him no pain, only a fierce, unmitigated joy.

  At last, he stopped, and turned and lay on his back, and gazed at the stars. Did he do the right thing? he wondered. He felt free of all decisions, of all consequences. The stars gazed back at him and offered no answers.

  A light.

  Something blinked. A light, growing larger. An eerie glow was cast on the sea before him, and he could see the surface of the water, and in the distance, the outline of the island growing bright. It was not as far as he had thought.

  The cannon!

  He watched as a great ball of fire gathered and grew and flew high in the air, and he tensed lest it failed, lest it died and fell into the sea.

  It flew straight.

  He watched the narrow needle of the cannon, the fire emerging from its rear, grow distant, grow smaller. The shadows around him diminished.

  He was sent on this mission, on this impossible mission, to sabotage that cannon, prevent its cargo from reaching beyond the world. The Bookman, Wyvern: they had wanted him to do it, each for his own reasons and, perhaps, unknown to him, thousands of others had wished he'd done the same. But when he'd had the chance, when he was placed in the position to damage it, to make it fail – he couldn't.

  He did not sabotage the cannon.

  Was he right to make the decision? Now the signal would be sent, and the lizards, the other lizards, would come. Would they come as friends, or enemies? Would there be anyone left to even see the sign? But he thought of the lizard young, and he thought of the lizards crashing into the earth and into the heart of the island, and he thought they were like sailors, stranded on a tropical and alien shore after a terrible storm. Could he deny them their flare, their distress signal? If they had done bad things, if they had deposed kings and made this place their home and their kingdom, they acted no more nor less than humans would. There were arguments, so many arguments, for and against, and he thought of Lucy now and knew that, though she may never now come back to him, she would have understood. When at last it came, he could not do it.

  Waves came, and rocked his raft, but gently, and in the distance he could see an enormous figure rise from the water, and then another, and another. He watched them, unafraid.

  They were whales.

  For a moment, he imagined he could see a woman, rising from the sea between the giant figures. Looking at him.

  Lucy, he thought, and felt happy.

  He closed his eyes. Around him, the singing of the whales rose in an unearthly symphony.

  He drifted on the sea throughout the night and half through the day, growing thirsty beyond belief, but not losing that strange composure, that new peace he had found. He lay flat and tried not to move, and the sun beat on him and his craft sank lower and lower into the water, and he wondered how long it would be before he sank completely.

  It was approaching dusk when he saw the thing in the sky, and for a long moment he just stared at it, the shape making no meaningful connections in his head. It was a round thing, painted gaudy yellow and green, like a circus tent's canopy. Was it a bird?

  Then it came closer, and lower, approaching him like a vast floating whale, and he thought – a balloon! He stared up at it, smiling stupidly, and saw the open cabin, and a head peering out at him, and someone calling his name.

  He waved at the face. It shouted more at him, but he could understand none of it. Then something was thrown from the balloon and hit him, and he was thrown into the water.

  He flailed and took hold of the thing that was thrown. What was it? He looked at the ropes, examined them with his fingers.

  "Bloody get on it, you stupid boy!"

  It was a ladder. A rope-ladder. He laughed. It was so funny, to be floating in the sea alone and see a thing like that. Where had it come from?

  "Quickly, you nincompoop!"

  He felt he had better obey the voice. The face it came from was fat and sweaty and looked angry. He wondered if it had some water for him.

  He pulled himself onto the ladder. Rising from the water was agony. His body was pain. Each step made thinking impossible.

  One step, and two. Three. Four. His hands felt raw and they hurt, but he kept going.

  Five. Six. He almost let go. It would be pleasant to drown in the warm, peaceful waters…

  Seven. Eight.

  "Come on, boy!"

  Nine. Ten. Eleven–

  And suddenly it was over.

  Hands pulled him into the safety of the cabin. He looked down and saw his craft sinking far below.

  "Orphan!"

  "Wha'?"

  He tried to focus on the fat man.

  "It's me!" The fat man fed him water. It ran over Orphan's broken lips and into his mouth, and was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. His eyes focused, and he said, haltingly, "Verne?"

  "I've found you!" the fat man said, and he grinned at Orphan, and almost gathered him into his arms.

  "I…" Orphan said, a short, single word that seemed to him to encompass a whole range of meaning. Then he passed out.

  PART III

  Prometheus Unbound

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Return of the King

  A glucose trap, snap crackle pop

  We crossed the Strand and saw a sign:

  This way to the Egress.

  – L.T., "After the Waste Land"

  Less than twenty-four hours after arriving back in the city, Orphan had been attacked twice, robbed once, and finally thrown in a police cell. It had not been a good day.

  He had returned on a cold, damp day. Thick grey fog, suffused with the stench of burning chemicals, wafted over the water.

  The Nautilus had sailed under the Thames and into the city. It did so in stealth, invisible to all but the whales, who gave it a wide berth as it sailed past them. They did not consider it one of their own.

  The Nautilus, this Nautilus, was not a clipper but a submarine. It had lain hidden below the clipper ship bearing its name until the pirates' attack. Then, with only its captain, his wide-girthed guest and a handful of specially picked men, it had disengaged from the abovewater Nautilus and sank, quietly and without trace, into the depths of the Carib Sea.

  "You left them to die," Orphan had said, aghast. Verne had shrugged apologetically; Captain Dakkar, splendid in a white, starched uniform, merely glowered. "You left me to die."

  "Far from it!" Verne had said. They were sitting in the Nautilus' dining room. Large windows cut into the side of the vehicle showed the dark depths of the sea, and strange, glowing fish that glided past and stared with large, mournful eyes into the sub's interior. "You see, there was a large probability–"


  "Yes?"

  "That capture by Wyvern–"

  "That reptile," Dakkar said. Verne smiled apologetically at Orphan and shrugged as if to say, Well, what can you do. "That capture by Wyvern," he said again, raising his voice, "would lead you to the island."

  "Is that so?"

  "It was a possibility. And possibilities, you know, are what this is all about, Orphan."