The Constantine Affliction

by Tim Pratt

  “Whatever are you doing?” Oswald demanded.

  “I wouldn’t put it past Freddy to hurl hot tea into my face in an attempt to escape,” Carrington said.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Winnie admitted. “Not to help us escape, of course, that’s obviously ridiculous, but just for my own amusement.” She reached through the bars and poured tea for herself, Ellie, and Pimm, while Oswald tapped his walking stick impatiently—some property of its odd metallic composition made it ring unpleasantly against the floor.

  “Carrington,” the eminent scientist snapped. “Take tea to our other prisoner, and stay with him. He’s a bit overwrought. You should calm him down.”

  “Of course, master.” Carrington bowed so obsequiously it seemed an obvious mockery, then disappeared into the shadows again.

  “I suppose it never occurred to you,” Pimm said, after taking a sip of his tea, “to use your intellect to find new ways to feed the starving?”

  “What do you mean? Farming? That is hardly one of my interests, Lord Pembroke. Moreover, a smaller population makes it easier to track variables in my experiments. I am disappointed in this reaction, I must say. Mr. Value comprehended the obvious wisdom of my arguments immediately, and Mr. Adams shared my interest in exploring the full range of human potential. You are a journalist, Miss Skyler—surely you value truth above all else? Let us tear away the shroud of nature’s mysteries, then. Let us lay the truths of the world bare.”

  “If you advocate truth in all things, then you won’t mind me quoting you in my paper?” she said.

  Oswald chuckled. “Newspapers. Yes. You are an insightful writer, Miss Skyler, and that insight is wasted on your readers. I could stand in a field and expound on the principles of pneumatic chemistry to a herd of bleating sheep, but that act would neither aid me, nor enrich the sheep. The same must be said for telling the truth to the inhabitants of this city. They would not understand. They would try to stop me. But, certainly, print what you like… when you have your freedom. Which, of course, is entirely at my discretion. Even if you succeeded in smearing my good name, I would likely weather the storm. I have influential friends.”

  “Ah, yes,” Pimm said. “You sit at the right hand of the Queen.”

  “Rather closer than that, old boy.” Oswald winked, and Ellie shuddered. “My experiments—the ones people actually appreciate, the development of the alchemical lamps and magnetic field manipulators to improve health, and so on—were enough to bring me to Her Majesty’s attention, so that my name was not entirely unknown to her. She was still quite fond of her husband Prince Albert in those days, and when he miraculously survived his fever—thanks to some of my own advances in germ theory, though I let Pasteur take all the credit, as the original insight was his own—her interest in me grew into friendship and affection. Unfortunately, in the wake of his illness, the Queen’s devotion to Prince Albert only grew. I understand that almost losing someone you love makes you appreciate them more.”

  Ellie thought of Pimm being carried into the warehouse unconscious, how she’d assumed he was dead, and how her heart had transformed into shards of glass in her chest at that moment. Oswald was mad, but he was not always wrong.

  “He poisoned the prince, incidentally,” Pimm said. “I gather he’s building up to that revelation, but really, this lecture could go on all night. It’s not always true that criminals secretly long to confess, but the criminals that consider themselves clever do like to hold forth.”

  Oswald smiled thinly. “You are an industrious detective, Lord Pembroke. I would worry about your allegations, if I believed I had left any evidence of wrongdoing behind. Yes, I infected the prince with my Great Transformer. Initially I hoped he would die in the change, but in retrospect, it is better that he simply transformed. Even given evidence of his adultery, his death might have brought on too much emotion in the Queen—at the very least, she would have been compelled to go into mourning, which is quite a tedious affair all around. Fortunately, the prince lived, and became a woman, ugly and horse-faced. The Queen will not let his name be mentioned in her presence. His declarations of innocence, though true, were of course disbelieved. The whole endeavor was quite neatly arranged, and I was there to comfort Her Majesty in her time of trouble. We have been incredibly close ever since.”

  “Oh?” Pimm said. “Is that why you poisoned her with the Affliction and locked her in a cage?”

  Oswald scowled as Winnie and Ellie gasped. “I’d wondered whether or not you had ascertained the identity of my other guest. I thought it wise to gas you unconscious as soon as I discovered your presence. Perhaps I should have asked.”

  “You have the Queen imprisoned here?” Winnie said.

  “He’d be the king, now, I suppose,” Oswald said. “Or does he remain the queen regardless? I’m sure there’s an answer in some book of courtly protocol somewhere, but I don’t care—he still calls himself my ‘Queen,’ for whatever his opinion is worth. The transformation was regrettable but necessary. I’m afraid that even when I exercised my full influence, marshaled my best arguments, and entreated the Queen as a friend, she proved… intractable… when it came to assisting me in my latest grand design. I’d had hopes for controlling her mind, but when that line of inquiry proved fruitless, I turned to another approach.”

  “How does turning her into a man help you?” Ellie demanded.

  “The clockwork courtesans,” Pimm said. “He made a mechanical double for the Queen. An imitation.”

  Oswald bared his teeth. “You know more than I expected, Lord Pembroke. Wherever do you get your information?”

  “Like Miss Skye, I am not at liberty to divulge my sources,” Pimm said.

  “But she could use you as a source, I suppose,” Oswald said. “And print all this in her newspaper, intended as a slanderous character assassination—”

  “You mean libelous.” Ellie could not resist the chance to puncture this pompous ass’s self-congratulatory tone. “False charges in writing are libel—false charges when spoken are slander.” She gave him a gentle smile. “It is a common mistake. And, of course, none of these charges are false.”

  “I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject of libel,” Oswald said, and he did bow, in a very courtly way. If Ellie had annoyed him, he didn’t show it. “I admire your precision when it comes to language, Miss Skyler, and apologize for my own shortcomings. So, yes—you could print libelous nonsense. But why take that course? Why try to destroy me, when you could aid me in my great work instead? Everything I have prepared for is in readiness, now. This country is on the cusp of greatness.”

  Oswald stepped closer to the cage. “We have come now to the point of decision. I am a reasonable man. I will offer you two paths of action: you may remain imprisoned for the next few days or weeks, or you may join me in my great work.”

  “What great work is that, again?” Pimm said. “I’m afraid you’ve been rather vague on that point.”

  “Ah, but you find my lecture interminable enough as it is. Wouldn’t you agree that I’ve rattled on enough already? Suffice to say my new project makes my past experiments seem pedestrian and unambitious. My great work will help me bring the population of this planet down to a manageable level, and furnish me with a perfect experimental chamber to create an ideal society. Agree to join me, and, after certain tests of loyalty have been passed, I will happily share all my plans with you.”

  “What would our compensation be?” Ellie said.

  Pimm started to say something—or to swear, possibly—but went silent when Oswald chuckled. “I will give you whatever you want, Miss Skye. And, yes, once my experiment is concluded, such an outrageous promise will be in my power to fulfill—I could give you your own country to rule, if you wished it. So tell me. What do you desire?”

  “I… Only to pursue the truth, and to write, and to have a happy life.”

  “Hmm. That is simple enough, though a bit vague. We’ll have to nail down the particulars later. Wini
fred?”

  “Give me back my life,” Winnie said. “Make it so you never inflicted this disease upon me.”

  “A difficult problem, but not impossible,” Oswald said. “I could perhaps reverse your condition, at least. After surviving the Great Transformer, one develops an immunity to the disease, but I could create a new strain, I suppose…”

  “Oh, piss off,” Winnie said wearily.

  Oswald sighed. “What about you, Lord Pembroke? What do you want most in this world?”

  “Another drink, generally,” Pimm said. “You have nothing to offer me, sir.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone wants something. Value wanted wealth and power, and I provided them—he is a child, essentially, though a very cunning child, and he does love his toys. Mr. Adams wanted… well, love, actually. Soppy romantic notions were a peculiar blind spot in his otherwise highly-developed worldview. I tried to help him find the perfect love he sought, but I fear he never did. Everyone has a price, my friends, and I am a man with a profoundly full purse. Just let me know what I need to pay.” He turned away.

  “There is a third option,” Pimm said.

  “Eh?” Oswald was consulting a pocketwatch, and suddenly paying them very little attention.

  “You said we could join you, or we could remain imprisoned, but there’s something else we could do. We could oppose you.”

  “Ah.” He snapped the watch shut and put it away. “Yes, I suppose you could, assuming you could escape. Though that option might just as well be reformulated as, ‘We could die, for no particular reason.’ If you wish to die, do let me know. It can be arranged with trivial ease. But I have hope for you all. To have learned as much about my plans as you did demonstrates impressive intellectual development. I have uses for people of your talents. Don’t waste your abilities on a silly grudge. There are more important things in the heavens and Earth.” He yawned. “I must prepare for the Exposition tonight. The great work begins. Do you wish to assist me, or remain trapped?”

  “Of course we’ll help you,” Winnie said. “Your argument has swayed me completely.”

  “Indeed,” Ellie said. “I look forward to helping disseminate your insights to the masses.”

  “Naturally. We are entirely devoted to your cause. Only let us out—” and here Pimm smiled, showing all his teeth—“and we will be pleased to show you the full extent of that devotion.”

  “You all disappoint me terribly,” Oswald said, and seemed as saddened as any parent who sees his children behave in a dangerous and stupid fashion. “But perhaps some time in captivity will alter your viewpoints. Forgive me. I have preparations to make. I trust you will excuse my rudeness if I depart? I’ll be sure to visit you in future days, as time allows—though I expect I will be quite busy after tonight. Society won’t reorder itself, you know.” He gave them a little bow, turned smartly on his heel, and marched off into the darkness.

  They watched him disappear. “We really should leave soon,” Pimm said. “I think we’ve stayed here quite long enough, and there’s the other prisoner to think about.”

  “You want to free the Queen?” Winnie said.

  “Do you propose that we leave her in a cage here?” Pimm said.

  “A fair point.”

  “Now, Winifred, darling—”

  “Oh, call me Freddy,” she said. “Carrington already told Ellie the truth about me.”

  For the first time since she’d known him, Ellie saw Pimm look totally at a loss, his mouth agape. He glanced sidelong at Ellie. “Ah… you know? About… her?”

  “I do,” she said. “And I can see the fear on your face. But I have no intention of making a sensational story out of your marriage. I consider Winnie a friend, and have only the utmost respect for you. I do not feel compelled to divulge every secret I uncover, Pimm—it is enough for me, sometimes, to discover the truth for myself alone. Nor am I troubled by the revelation on its own terms. Winnie may have begun life as a man, but that makes no difference—her soul is still the same.”

  “That’s a relief,” Pimm said. “Though it’s rare to hear anyone attribute the possession of a soul to my wife. All right, then, Freddy—how quickly can you get us out of this cage?”

  “Ten minutes,” Winnie said. “Perhaps five, if you can prevent yourself from prattling at me while I work.”

  “Let’s hope I can get Big Ben awake in that time,” Pimm said, looking at his snoring comrade doubtfully.

  “You mean to say you can circumvent the lock?” Ellie said.

  “Of course,” Winnie said. “The lock on this cage is meant to keep lions captive, not creatures with thumbs and cunning small tools.” She reached up to her hair and began pulling out fine wires and rods, to Ellie’s astonishment.

  “You’ve got lockpicks in your hair?”

  “A woman needs a hobby,” Winnie said. “And you never know when you might find a nice lock to practice on.”

  “But why didn’t you free us before?”

  “Carrington was sitting there watching, mainly,” Winnie said. “We didn’t have time then, but for now, they seem to have left us unguarded. And I was curious to see whether they would capture Pimm or not. I made a small wager with myself, and in consequence, I now owe myself a sovereign.”

  “And she accuses me of prattling,” Pimm said.

  “Silence,” Winnie commanded, and knelt by the cage door to commence her work.

  Love Life

  This was to be the culmination of his long life’s work, and while Adam was annoyed to rely so heavily on the advancements of the loathsome Bertram Oswald, the end result would surely be satisfying enough to overcome his distaste.

  The automaton on the table had been modified considerably from its original design. Oswald had consulted with Adam about the anatomy of his mechanical women early on—little did Adam know then how the success of the clockwork courtesans would lead to his own brush with death—and there were several partially-complete models stored around the laboratory. Adam had combined the best features of those mechanical women into a single harmonious form.

  The parallel with the way Adam himself had been constructed, stitched together from pieces of corpses, was not lost on him, but while Adam was a patchwork creature of skewed proportions and inelegant seams, the clockwork body he’d created for his true love was perfection—mostly because Oswald was a great believer in uniformity and interchangeability of parts, while natural human bodies showed an astonishing range of variation even within the parameters of ostensibly “normal” physiognomy.

  The heads of Oswald’s standard models didn’t contain much other than tubing for suction and speech—and rudimentary speech at that—plus some gears to run the eyes and facial muscles. With some rearrangement, there was ample room in the mechanical skull for a human brain. Connecting that brain in such a way that it could control the mechanical body was a rather different question, but in a way, it was a problem Adam had already solved: the delicate spiderweb of wires he used to transform ravenous flesh-eating corpses into docile submissives could be altered to act as an interface between mind and machine, without the magnetic mind-manipulators. This resurrection would have a mind of her own.

  Adam carefully removed Margaret’s brain from its vat, disconnecting the leads, and placed it in the open skull of the clockwork courtesan on his table. He carefully attached the tubes that would circulate his artificial blood around the brain, keeping it fed and oxygenated, then attached the metal spiderweb that would allow her control of her body. These eyes were better than human eyes, capable of seeing spectrums invisible to ordinary mortals, and the hearing and senses of smell were likewise advanced. While the sense of taste was non-existent, he could address that problem in the future. Adam and his beloved could embark on a life of eternal self-improvement, literally making one another better people.

  If Adam had known how to do so, he would have given Margaret his own synesthesia, to let her taste the cross-connections in the sensory universe—but without dissecting his own
brain, he wouldn’t know how to replicate the effect. Still, being able to see magnetic fields and into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums would help her understand something of his own unusual perceptions.

  Mutual understanding was very important, in love.

  For he did love her, and as he worked on integrating her living brain into her clockwork body, peace and happiness suffused his entire being. Since bringing her brain to life, he had spent hours speaking with Margaret, and she was a funny, quick, witty woman, driven to a life of prostitution by desperate circumstance rather than stupidity or low character. For her part, Margaret was delighted by Adam’s company, and understandably grateful for his efforts to restore her to a normal life. Oh, he hadn’t been entirely honest with her about her circumstances or his plans, but he’d told her that she’d been attacked, her body damaged terribly, and that he had a bold plan to give her back her sight and other lost senses, and to make her stronger and more beautiful than ever before.

  And now was the time.

  He stood back to survey her body. She was dressed in a simple linen shift, which Adam had sewn himself. (He was an excellent tailor, with cloth as well as flesh.) Her face was peaceful and composed, her lips succulent, her cheeks eternally touched with a fetching hint of blush, the lashes of her closed eyes long and lovely. And her body… well. Oswald knew his work well, and Adam had improved upon it. She was perfect, a statue of a goddess, brought to a semblance of life—and with a real human brain, possessed by a real human mind, brought to true life.

  “Arise,” Adam murmured, and triggered the device in his hand that activated the spiderweb in her brain.

  Margaret gasped, drawing a deep breath—not strictly necessary for life, but it did remarkable things to her bosom—and sat up, opening her eyes. She did not look much at all as she had in life, apart from the red hair and the cream complexion, but she was in every respect more lovely than before, and the animation of her soul in the body made it even more astonishingly lovely.