The Bookman

by Lavie Tidhar

  The figure under the blanket stared at him, dark face wreathed in shadows. Eyes blinked. Then the face emerged further, coming into the dim light, and said, "You!"

  And Orphan reeled back and was aware of the pounding of blood in his head, and grabbed the bars of the cell to stay upright. He stared at the face.

  The face was his own.

  "What?" Orphan said, and "Who–?"

  "You," the figure said again, and rose, and came close to the bars separating them from each other. "You utter bastard."

  Orphan stared at him in mute shock. His own face stared back at him. His own body – and he looked at the other's thumb and saw that it was whole.

  His own body. His own face. But – different, somehow. A deep weariness seemed etched into that face, all youthfulness gone from it. It was dirty, covered with grime, and in the eyes there was a bafflement, the stare receding from anger to a sort of vacant, dull gaze.

  "What are you?" he said, whispered, and then again, a shout that echoed in that still, dark place: "What are you!"

  "I am Orphan. I am the orphan." The other – the other him – sat down on the bed in the other cell. They were like mirror-images: Orphan sat down too. "I am born of no mother or father. I am like Eve, made from Adam's rib. Adam's thumb." He giggled. "I am the messenger. I am the translator. I am the words that lie inside the binding and wait to be awakened. I am you. You stole me from myself."

  He sounded crazy.

  "I don't understand," Orphan said, but then the image of the Binder, crazy spider creature on his hideaway island, returned to him, and the Binder's words. "This will hurt," the Binder had said. And then he chopped off Orphan's thumb. Take it down to the growing vats.

  Aramis, saying, Will it work? The Binder – Perhaps. For a little while.

  "He made a copy of me?"

  The other him laughed, whooped, rose from the bed and banged on the bars, startling Orphan. "I am the King of England!" he shouted. "And I am returned, bow to me!"

  "You know?"

  "I know all." And then the storm passed and the other Orphan sat down again, and Orphan saw how pale he was beneath the dirt. The eyes looked at him, weary, tired, lost. "I can hear it. It speaks to me. I can't shut it up!"

  "What happened to you?" Orphan said.

  "You," the other said. "You happened. You took my life from me. I should be King! I thought you might have died on that island. I hoped you did. I guess you – we're – just too lucky." And he laughed again, a sound like crying. "How did you get back?"

  "By submarine," Orphan said. "The – the Nautilus – it was a submarine under the clipper."

  "A submarine. It must have been comfortable."

  "Not very."

  "You had food, drink?"

  "I almost died on that island!" Somehow, the other made him feel guilty.

  "Better had you died."

  "How… how did you come to be here?"

  The other laughed. "He sent me," he said. "He pulled me out of the vat, naked, covered in slime. He was in my brain. I could hear the drums beat, and I could understand them. They spoke, a web of sound, of meaning, woven over that entire island. And he was in my head, showing me who I was. William son of Mary, future King of England. And then he took it away from me and gave me nothing." He lay down, curled into a ball. "He made me into a tool," Orphan heard him say. "A tool like he once was…"

  Could it be possible? The Binder had somehow made a copy of him? And then he thought – why not? Was that not what the Bookman, too, did? "What happened then?" he asked. He tried to hold in the feelings the other aroused in him: guilt, inexplicable but true, and a sort of compassion, as if one was faced with a younger brother, and could not ease his suffering.

  "He put me in an airship. It piloted itself. I don't know how. I had some food. He gave me that at least. Salted fish, some vegetables and bread, fresh water. I ate sparingly, relieved myself over the sea when I needed to. The food wasn't enough. The water ran out before I sighted land."

  "But you made it!"

  The other laughed again. He did not move from the bed. "Yes," he said. "At last I landed, starved and dehydrated. On the coast of the Irish Sea. How I got there I don't know. I had pretty much lost all direction by then." He coughed, which took a while, then continued. "I made my way south, but slowly. The roads are not safe any more, but I managed. Perhaps no one saw fit to rob me." He sighed, a long and tired sound. "It was only when I got into the city that my luck changed. I was set on by a group of lizard boys – did you see them? They appear to be everywhere now, running in gangs, terrorising the streets. I was beaten up, and when the police arrived I was the one to be arrested. Maybe they thought it was for my own good. These cells might be the safest place in the city right now. And all the while it spoke to me, it is speaking to me, whispering, though I can no longer hear the drums."

  "It? What is it?"

  And he thought – the Translation?

  "It looks like an egg," the other said, sounding surprised. "I don't know why. I thought it would be a book. It is only small, and very pretty. The colours… I can see them even in the dark."

  The Translation. But he didn't even understand what it was. A story, told him by Byron in a smoky pub. A legend, an article of faith for those who had nothing else. Could it be real? And what did it do?

  "Do you have it still?" he said. There was no answer. "Do you have the egg?"

  "It is with me, always. I can hear it, awake or asleep."

  "Show me."

  Silence.

  "Show me!"

  The other rose. He came close to the bars again. His eyes stared into Orphan's. "It isn't yours," he said.

  "Show me."

  The other reached into his clothes. When his hand emerged, it held a pouch, which he loosed and upended.

  A small, smooth round object fell into his palm.

  Orphan looked at it. It was made of a green metal, eerily lit, and seemed almost to absorb light, so that for a moment the cells were even darker. It seemed to pulse slowly in the other's hand, like a heart plucked out of a body still beating.

  Somehow, it seemed to be whispering to him, like the distant echoes of drums, speaking in a mechanical language that weaved and merged and changed with each beat, and he found himself entranced by it, lost in the circles and lines of the beat, reaching for a meaning that was waiting for him, on the cusp of understanding…

  "It speaks to me," the other said. "I can hear them. All of them. The dead… they live still, in the Bookman's dark domain. They never leave me in peace!"

  Orphan stared at him. Almost, he could hear voices, whispering in his ear, growing louder. He said, "What do you mean?"

  The other giggled, a sudden, startling sound. "I can show you," he said.

  "Show me what?"

  "Not what," the other said. "Who." He held the Translation tightly in his hand. "You can bring them back, for a short time. Like ghosts. They like to talk. Always talk!"

  "Lucy?" Orphan whispered, but the other shook his head. "No."

  "What do you mean?" He was shouting. The other shook his head. "I don't know. But I can show you." He was like a child with a toy, jealous of it and yet wanting to display it, to show it off. "Here."

  The other moved his hand. The egg glowed. The other giggled. "He is my friend," he said–

  A figure materialised in the cell, slowly, like motes of dust assembling into a shape as light plays on them. It had a face that Orphan knew. And it smiled. Its eyes were blind.

  "Orphan," Gilgamesh said. "I see you've been busy."

  He had Gilgamesh's face, Gilgamesh's unseeing eyes, yet his voice was ethereal, without substance. It seemed to float around Orphan's ears, to trace patterns of coloured light in the air between them.

  "You're dead," Orphan said, and Gilgamesh smiled, and nodded. "Am I hallucinating?"

  "You're asking me?"

  There was gentle amusement in the question. Orphan realised its futility. He said, "What is happening to me?"<
br />
  "This egg," Gilgamesh said. "This Translation. I once heard stories… I think it can communicate with the Bookman's machines, somehow. There are so many of us here, Orphan… so many souls in a bottle, with no senses, no body, nothing but the patterns of what we once were. He doesn't know, yet. You must be careful."

  So many… Lucy, Orphan thought. But Gilgamesh, as if reading his mind, shook his head. "She is not in here."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't know. Maybe she is stored separately. Maybe she was given a body again."

  Orphan thought back. He had seen Lucy before… There was a boat. It was just after he had met Mycroft. He stood, alone, on the embankment, when it came sailing out of the mist, a single person sitting in the prow, and his breath slammed into his lungs and froze his thoughts into small hard diamonds.

  The person in the boat was Lucy. She was dressed in a fine white dress that seemed to form a part of the fog, and she sat in an unnatural calm as the boat sailed without anyone to steer it, coming close to the bank of the river, close enough for Orphan to almost reach a hand and touch her. Almost.

  "Maybe," Gilgamesh said, his voice soft, "she has been erased."

  Orphan felt the words like pinpricks of pain in his chest. "No," he said. And again. "No."

  "Are you coming for her?" Gilgamesh said.

  "For all of you," Orphan said, and his old friend chuckled. "You're a good boy, Orphan."

  "What happened to you?" Orphan said. And he thought back to the empty space under the bridge, and to Gilgamesh's last message for him, in a bottle bobbing on the water, and he thought, I needed you.

  "I know you did," Gilgamesh said, again knowing his thoughts. "I wish I could have been there for you, Orphan. William. For both of you, now." He said the second name hesitantly, as if unsure of the way it should be pronounced. Orphan looked at him, saw the tired tilt of his face, the lines that had been there for centuries. "William," the other whispered, as if tasting the word on his tongue.

  "Your mother would have been so proud of you…" Gilgamesh said.

  Orphan sat down. Across the bars the other copied his movement. "Tell me about her," Orphan said, and the other spoke with the same voice, saying the same words. "Tell me about Mary."

  Gilgamesh sighed. It was a long, painful sound like a shard of broken glass. But he did not object. "Very well," he said.

  I knew your father first (so Gilgamesh began). I have never told you this. I've never told you many things. He was a native Vespuccian, a proud man from the Great Sioux Nation who had discovered in himself one day an inexplicable passion for the sea. His name was Kangee, which means "raven'. He was not a large man, but he moved gracefully on board ship even in the roughest weather, though he always seemed a little lost on land.

  I was working in the docks at that time, rolling barrels of wine on the Isle of Dogs. Many times we'd drill a narrow hole in the barrel and drink from the rich, exotic wines, without the owners knowing or our employers caring. It was almost a tax they had to pay. I knew the docks well, by touch and smell if not by sight, and I liked the work. It was as close to the sea as I could come.

  Though I was the Bookman's creature he left me more or less alone. No doubt he had more use for me just as I was, a harmless blind man on the docks, unnoticed by most, yet hearing all of what passed. Every so often he went into my mind, and got from it what information I had gathered. What use he put it to I didn't know. The Bookman's plans have always been far-reaching and opaque.

  It was a good life… I met Kangee in the Ship's Bell, a lively, crowded pub I sometimes frequented. It was always busy with sailors from a hundred different ports: from far-away Zululand and China and the Carib Sea, from the great ports of Europe and from Vespuccia itself, a hundred languages were spoken simultaneously at any one time. I remember the spiced rum…

  How we became friends?

  I sometimes traded stories for drinks. He had just come off a ship, had money to spare, and was interested in my stories of his homeland which, he said, must have changed greatly since I had been there. He had an interest in history – a quiet, intelligent man, who would have harmed no one. I told him my stories, he bought me drinks. Then, from his silence, I drew out his own story, and began buying the drinks myself. By the end of the night we were friends.

  I never told him about the island, of course. I couldn't. I wish I had…

  I remember the night he brought your mother to meet me. He had met her – he didn't say, exactly. She was drifting at sea, floating on the strangest raft he had ever seen, and by the time they had rescued her she was close to dying. He didn't tell me the coordinates, nor the nature of the raft, but I guessed. Not at first, but later.

  Mary was lovely. It's the only way I can describe her. Like Kangee, she was quiet but, like him, she had a wild streak in her. She was new to the city. She had come on Kangee's ship and was intoxicated by this world, which it seemed she had never even known existed. They were so happy together…

  Of course, I did not know at the time that Mary was wanted. She seemed wary – though not afraid – of the lizards, avoiding any public royal events to which the other citizens would flock. She and Kangee moved into a small house in Limehouse – always the first port for new immigrants, and a good place in which to lie low, too. For a while, everything was perfect. When the baby was born, she called him William. His father gave him his second name, which was Chaska, meaning "first-born son".

  I was his godfather. Your godfather, Orphan. You were not always an orphan.

  But then the man came.

  How they found her I do not know. They must have gone through the harbour logs and located the ship that had found her at sea. It was not too difficult. Kangee came to me a month after the birth of the baby. His old captain had been found dead in an alleyway, the victim of an apparent mugging.

  It was not uncommon. The city was rougher then.

  But then there was the man.

  He came asking questions, a young, not-unhandsome man, very self-composed, very friendly.

  Kangee feared him more than he did any other man. Though he did not know the man, he recognised in him all the qualities of a hunter. In later life the man became known for his hunting of big game. You may have heard of him, Orphan.

  His name was Sebastian Moran. Yes. "Tiger Jack" Moran. So you have heard of him. I am not surprised. At that time he was a young man, barely out of Oxford, but as a hunter he was already ambitious: he went for the biggest prey there is.

  Kangee came to me for advice. Tiger Jack was slowly stalking Mary and him, circling around, but had not yet revealed himself directly. What should he do? Kangee asked me. It was clear Les Lézards were after Mary. She was a danger to them, at best a liability. She threatened their safety.

  Run, I said. Leave the city. Go to France, or better yet, go back to Vespuccia. Go as far as you can go, away from the empire altogether. Then they might let you live in peace.

  Kangee found it difficult to run. But, for the sake of the baby, he agreed. He would return to the Great Sioux Nation, where they would be safe. I procured false papers for them, at great expense, and Kangee secretly booked passage on one of the then-new steamer ships to Vespuccia. Everything was ready.

  Orphan, I have never told this to anyone. I have never been able to. When I had a body, it was built with certain prohibitions. I could not speak of Caliban's Island, of my travels with Vespucci, nor of the Bookman beyond banal generalities. Only once, on the cusp of death, and now, with the help of that strange device of yours, that egg that is a hub, a bridge that allows me to speak to you, however briefly, from the storage vaults of the Bookman's domain, can I be free.

  Yet I am afraid to tell you what happened.

  It was a cold night, and the winter winds cut like bayonets through cloth. We were at the docks. Kangee and Mary and you, William Chaska, a baby. You were a happy baby. I remember that.

  I was saying brief goodbyes. It was hard – I had grown attached to all o
f you, but you in particular, Orphan. It was not my intention…

  There was nothing I could have done. Do you understand?

  Kangee held you as he and Mary went onto the deck. I waited on the quay, and waved.

  I didn't even hear the shot.

  I heard Kangee scream. I heard the splash of water that was Mary, falling into the sea, dead before she hit it. It was the first time in my life that I was glad of not being able to see.

  Across from us, in the top floor of the East India Company's warehouse, Tiger Jack was packing away his rifle. He had done his job.

  Kangee came down with you in his arms. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. He was a broken man. How? he said. How could he know? Only the three of us knew of the plan. How did Tiger Jack know to wait when he did, where he did?