The Constantine Affliction

by Tim Pratt

  “Love? You speak of love, at a time like this?”

  “What better time? The death of an individual is often the death of love. The victim’s love dies with her, and while those who love the victim might experience no diminishment of their own feelings, all reciprocity is lost.” Adams was quite capable of paying attention to surgical matters and musing philosophically at the same time. Doing only two things at once was almost too easy. “I know it is hard to credit, as I stand here with my sharp knives and my leather apron, but everything I do, I do for love. I seek only the true connection between two beings, individuals who understand one another utterly and instantly—who are as one mind, in two bodies.”

  “Well,” Halladay said, apparently glad of the distraction from Adam’s gruesome work. “I’m not sure that’s the ideal I’d strive toward, myself. That whole commingling and being as one flesh sort of thing, it’s not to my taste. I’d prefer a lover who pushed against my expectations, I think—who surprised me constantly, in delightful ways. You see, in my dabblings in the criminal world, I see a lot of things I expect to see, the same petty motivations for the same sad crimes, the same sordid acts played out again and again for the same foolish reasons. But a woman who could surprise me, a mystery I could not unravel—that would be a woman worth loving. I knew a girl when I was at school, her name was Adelaide, daughter of a family friend, and she had that effect on me. Alas, she died, oh, more than ten years ago now. But I would say, yes, I believe in love.”

  “Hmm. This eternal state of congenial surprise—is that the sort of relationship you have with Lady Pembroke?” Adam asked.

  Pimm hesitated only a fraction before saying, “Oh, yes, of course,” but it was enough of a pause for Adam to know he was lying. So even the rich, the handsome, the intelligent, the ones blessed by all things in life, could fail to find their heart’s desire. Adam found that fact simultaneously depressing and heartening.

  Once the top of the skull was cut through, he lifted away the cap of bone, gently pulling, tearing loose the slimy connective tissue between gray matter and white skull.

  The detective finally turned away. Just as it was becoming interesting. How disappointing.

  “We are nearly done.” Adam set the skull cap aside and took up one of his knives. “I have only to sever the optic nerves, the pituitary gland, the third and fourth cranial nerves, a few other connections…” He trailed off, absorbed in the work, almost forgetting the detective’s presence. Soon he reached in, carefully slipped his fingers around the spongy brain matter, and lifted the organ free. The sound of a brain lifting away from its container is unlike anything else, and the noise sparkled like golden fireflies.

  “Now, the true test.” Adam carried the brain to his work table, where the vessel of fluid awaited. He attached tubing to the spine, and pressed metal probes trailing wires into sections of the frontal lobe. Once he was satisfied that the connections were tight, he immersed the brain into the nutrient fluid, his oxygen-rich blood substitute. Adam threaded the wires running from the brain through small holes in a circular steel plate. He placed the steel plate carefully, so that it entirely covered the top of the jar, then picked up a rubber-lined lid, which he screwed down tight around the plate.

  Halliday was watching again, and had even approached the worktable. “That looks like an oversized Kilner jar.”

  “It is similar, though I hope to preserve a human mind, not pickled cucumbers or peach preserves.”

  “The brain floats,” Halliday said. “That… surprises me, somehow. I’d think it would be heavier.”

  “Adult human brains tend to weigh a bit over three pounds. But the weight is irrelevant—density is the issue, and my artificial blood is denser than gray matter.” Adam connected the wires that emerged from the brain to a complex metal and brass apparatus that took up about a foot square of table space and resembled a half-melted pipe organ. “This is my artificial voice machine. I have canisters of air under pressure, which blow through a series of baffles, flaps, tubes—well. The engineering is rather complex, but it may give this poor girl back her voice. I’ve never heard this machine make a sound other than a dog’s howl, though it renders that accurately enough.” Adam checked and double-checked all the connections, strangely reluctant to activate the magnets and try the final test. If he succeeded, it would be a great triumph, the sort of accomplishment Adam’s creator could have only dreamed about, and never attained. But if he failed… it would be, after all, just another failure, added to a long ledger of the same.

  But one could only delay so long before it looked like a delay. Adam flicked a switch, activating the electromagnets arrayed around the jar, which would stimulate the brain, though not to control it, this time—merely to stir it back into life.

  He picked up a conical brass tube, like an old woman’s ear-horn… which it was, more or less, though now it was wired into a brain bobbing in the dense fluid of a jar. Adam paused and looked at the detective. “Do you know her name?”

  “Margaret.” The detective stared at the brain in the jar as if he could not believe such a thing could possibly be addressed by name.

  Adam cleared his throat, held the speaking horn to his mouth, and said, “Margaret? Can you hear me?”

  A sound like a long sigh emerged from the speaking apparatus, and Halliday gasped. Adam did not; the sound was not actually a sigh, but old air being flushed from the system.

  The sound that emerged next was toneless, but entirely understandable: “Yes? Where am I, sir? Why is it so very dark here?”

  “Merciful God in heaven,” Halliday said.

  “Merciful God may keep his heaven,” Adam replied. “We men have work enough to keep us occupied on Earth.”

  Pimm found Mr. Adams’s company profoundly unsettling, but the man was certainly a genius. Could even Sir Bertram have accomplished such a thing? To allow one to hear a voice from beyond the grave? The woman was dead, yet Pimm could hear her voice—or a voice, that seemed to emanate from her mind. As a detective, he should remain suspicious and skeptical, and it was possible this was some elaborate ruse on the part of Mr. Adams, but what would such trickery accomplish? In a world where a sickness could change one’s sex, where strange lights lit the night sky and eternal alchemical fires burned in Whitechapel, where lightning could be bottled and used to run an omnibus, where a man could peer through a lens into a drop of water and discover a teeming world of tiny savage organisms living and dying and vying for life, who was Pimm to doubt a brain could be made to speak?

  The priests wouldn’t like this sort of thing, of course. The woman’s soul had surely departed, after all, when her body died, so what was speaking now? Obviously not her immortal essence, which had gone on to its final reward. Perhaps this was something like an echo, then, or a voice recording of the sort one could make on wax cylinders with a moving stylus, or… Leave it to the metaphysicians, he decided. Pimm had more worldly concerned. “May I?” He held out his hand for the speaking-horn.

  Mr. Adams raised a finger. “Let me explain a few things to the woman first, lest we alarm her.” He put the tube to his lips. “Margaret. I am a doctor. You were attacked. Do you remember?”

  “I… yes.” The voice was eerie, not really masculine or feminine—as if the wind blowing through the branches of a tree began speaking words.

  “You were terribly injured, my dear. Do not be afraid. You may yet be saved.”

  Pimm raised an eyebrow, but Adams was immersed in his task. It was kinder, in a way, to tell the girl she was only hurt—but in another way, it was terribly cruel.

  “Have I been blinded, sir? And… I can’t seem to feel my arms or legs.”

  “Your eyesight may also be restored in time,” Adams said. “As for the lack of sensation, we have high hopes on that score as well. May I ask… are you frightened?”

  Stupid question, Pimm thought. Of course she was—

  “No.” The voice did not hesitate. “As strange as that may seem, I am not afra
id.”

  Adams covered the mouthpiece and turned his head toward Pimm. “Interesting. I have theorized that, if removed from the glandular system, the brain might feel fear less intensely. When the body’s myriad systems are not sending messages of fear, after all—”

  “May I question her, sir?” Pimm said. “While the memories are fresh?”

  The mask on Adams’s face made it impossible to read his expression, but Pimm thought he was annoyed. He spoke into the tube. “Margaret. A detective is here to speak with you. He is investigating the terrible crime perpetrated against you. His name is Pembroke Halliday—”

  “Lord Pembroke, the toff detective? I have heard of him.”

  “How wonderful.” Adam passed the horn to Pimm.

  How peculiar, Pimm thought, and then put the mouthpiece close to his lips. “I am terribly sorry this happened to you, Miss. I will do everything in my power to apprehend the, ah, assailant. Do you think you could provide a description? His height, build, hair color, eye color, distinguishing features—scars, birthmarks, facial peculiarities? Anything at all would help.”

  A long pause, followed by another susurration of air. “I could describe him, sir, certainly, if you wish. I have seen him many times, after all, and know his face well. But would it be more helpful if I simply told you his name?”

  Despite the gruesome circumstances, Pimm couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, Margaret. That would be most helpful indeed.”

  What Follows

  Because she was afraid Lord Pembroke might recognize her, and because this particular part of the city wasn’t particularly welcoming to women (unless they were women of a particular sort), Ellie donned her disguise again. Mr. James had, reluctantly, agreed to let her keep the clothing and other accouterments for a few days, and had provided her with a small tin of spirit gum to help affix her mustache. She had dressed in her rooms, a small apartment on the ground floor of an establishment near the Charter House inhabited exclusively by unmarried professional women and their widowed landlady. Once dressed in her guise as Mr. Smythe, she’d hurried from her room and out the front door, hoping none of the neighbors would happen to look then and see a strange man emerging from the premises—something like that would occasion a great deal of shocked talk, and a visit from the landlady; perhaps even an eviction for whichever tenant she deemed most likely to consort with strange men.

  Once Ellie had made it around the corner without any sound of alarm, she walked with more confidence until she was able to catch one of the omnibuses. She swung up onto the cart, delighted at the ease of motion that came with wearing trousers. The omnibus trundled along its predetermined route, with a young-looking driver by the brake who seemed terrified by the very machine he commanded. She got as close to the proper neighborhood as the omnibus would take her, and walked the rest of the way.

  Her garb was rather too posh for this part of the city, and she drew a few dark looks from workingmen on the street, but she had no other options when it came to male attire, and anyway, it was hardly unheard of for more professional men to seek illicit pleasures in such parts of the city. She prowled along the streets, smelling the reek of the river, avoiding the throngs trying to sell wares to those who could scarcely afford them, and peering into the smeared windows of taverns as she passed. As the sun began to go down, and there were more shadows for her to hide among, she began to feel less watched and more secure.

  Her colleague Barnard at the Argus had told her that Abel Value’s undisputed territory covered a significant swath of Alsatia, which was no surprise. It seemed reasonable to Ellie that, if someone was killing Value’s employees, they must be doing it here—and, in that case, Lord Pembroke was probably here somewhere as well, keeping an eye on things, hoping to catch the killer in the act. Ellie would happily interview him once he concluded his business, but she hadn’t become a reporter to take dictation. She wanted to be on the ground, in the thick of things. Cooper had often cautioned her—“See the story, don’t be the story”—and she recognized the wisdom in that. She just wanted to see the story from the closest possible vantage.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t see much of interest. Several women propositioned her, which at least spoke to the efficacy of her disguise, and she always politely declined without getting too close. If Mr. Value had men watching the street, they were good at blending in with all the other men, the ones staggering out of taverns, or lounging in shadows watching the ones who staggered with speculative eyes. Of murder or Lord Pembroke, there was no sign.

  The hour grew later, the air grew colder, and the terrible strange lights overhead waved and rippled like unnatural ribbons. Ellie was hungry, thirsty, and her feet hurt in the men’s shoes that didn’t quite fit. She resolved to go home and sleep—she needed to finish writing up her article on the visit to the clockwork comfort house in the morning—when a piercing whistle tore through the air. A few people looked up, frowned, and then went about their business, but to Ellie, the noise had the quality of a signal. She started walking, as nonchalantly as possible, toward the sound of the whistle, but after three bursts it didn’t sound again, and she was unable to pinpoint the location of its origin. After a moment’s hesitation, she started down a narrow alley crowded with splintered crates, the sweet smell of rotten fruit emanating from a pile of refuse. A man rushed down the alley toward her, almost but not quite running. Ellie noted his fine coat—it seemed to be bright green, a rather daring shade, but in the dimness it was hard to tell—and his anxious face. The man pushed past her without slowing down, almost knocking her into a crate, and Ellie caught a distinct whiff of something chemical as he went by. She hesitated. Would she be better off following the running man, or going to investigate what he was running from?

  Shouting voices echoed from the direction of the running man’s origin. Knowing how shortly this alley entered a maze of streets, and deciding the running man was likely already lost among them, Ellie crept toward the other voices. She peered around the corner, just briefly, but long enough to glimpse a body on the cobblestones, and Lord Pembroke crouched over the still form, listening for a heartbeat, and two other men deep in serious conversation.

  A chill gripped Ellie’s heart, far colder than the clammy air wafting in from the river. The man who’d rushed past her was the murderer. She had no doubt. Would she be able to recognize him again, if the police called on her to do so? She’d barely registered his face, just a pale smear beneath a top hat—he’d been clean-shaven, and his cheeks pockmarked, but beyond that, she would have been hard pressed to come up with any identifying characteristics, though something about him had been faintly familiar. She hesitated over whether to step forward and let Lord Pembroke know she was there. Explaining her garb would be embarrassing at the very least, but she had a duty to see that justice was done, and if she could help apprehend the killer, she would. Then again, the men Lord Pembroke was with were likely Value’s employees—hardened criminals!—and they might not appreciate a witness to their involvement with Lord Pembroke. As embarrassing as it would be for Lord Pembroke to have his name linked with a criminal like Value, wouldn’t it also damage Value’s reputation to be a known associate of the great detective?

  Ellie expected Lord Pembroke to send for the police, and considered waiting until an officer arrived before stepping forward, but to her surprise, the detective and the big brute lifted the dead woman between them, the third man hovering about unhelpfully, and began to carry her north, her toes dragging on the ground as they proceeded in the general direction of the devastation that had been Whitechapel.

  Now this was interesting. Were they attempting to cover up the crime? If so, why? Or was the woman only injured? She certainly appeared dead, but she might simply have fainted, or been rendered unconscious by a blow to the head. Ellie decided to follow them at a discreet distance.

  As if she could possibly do anything else. Walk away, now, without knowing the particulars of the situation? She could no more do that than she could spr
out wings and fly. Elllie had an excess of curiosity. That quality had caused her trouble, over the years, but not as often as it had shown her wonders and delights.

  After a few blocks, the large man barked at the smaller one, who shrugged and hurried off in another direction. Ellie kept following the others, and after a long walk through twisting alleys, they reached a truly atrocious neighborhood, not so much dangerous as abandoned by most sensible folk in the city—sagging warehouses that hadn’t been used to store anything in years, broken-roofed houses inhabited by desperate people willing to risk living so close to ruined Whitechapel if it meant a measure of shelter. Lord Pembroke paused by the front door to a particularly narrow house squeezed between two warehouses, then conferred with his companion. They continued on, rounding a corner farther down the street and disappearing from view. Ellie followed as discreetly as she could, though she was aware of eyes watching her from a little knot of children sitting on the steps of crumbling brick structure across the street. She pressed herself against a warehouse wall, crept forward, then peered around the corner just in time to see Pimm, his large associate, and the presumably dead woman vanish into what looked like a cellar door. The entrance was guarded by another man, dressed in rags, but presumably in either Lord Pembroke or Value’s employ. Were they hiding the body? The basement of a building this close to Whitechapel was a good enough place to do so, but to what end?