Soren pushed the door open and led them inside the tavern. The boisterous noises and laughter were a stark contrast with the reality outside; and the fact that mountains full of denial were behind both was evident by how few gave Soren and Norel a second look.
“Over there,” Norel said, pointing to a trap door in the floor, positioned between four round tables, all of which had men drinking at them. A few women—who’d abandoned their femininity long ago, and so didn’t unsettle Victorian sensibilities too much by mixing with the men even here—were in attendance, looking like they could wrestle any man to the ground looking to get fresh with them or give them lip. Not all of them were hags; some were quite fetching, in a “I hunt werewolves by night” kind of way. In fact, the latter variety were only now showing up at the bar. Now that night was giving way to day and those they hunted had long retreated.
Soren stooped down, his new friend still attached, and picked up the trapdoor by the finger latch. One of the customers chose then to speak up, after finishing the last of his mead. His nose was bulbous and red from the drinking—his cheeks, and the center of his forehead no less so. The older man couldn’t have been drinking as heavy as this his whole life, or he’d never have made it this long. “One of these days I’m going to go snooping around down there,” the old man said.
“If you want to let the wolves out,” Norel replied. “They recognize my smell. Any they don’t recognize, well….”
“You have trained werewolves down there?” Mead Swiller swallowed hard. “That’s a first.”
Another drunk customer—with Madelung disease, the lower half of his face hanging down like a beard—reached over and pulled off Soren’s hood as Soren was halfway down the ladder, Norel descending ahead of him, saying, “Let’s take a look at you.” Soren craned his head to him to show him the other side of his face. “Whoa. Never mind, pal. Appreciate the courtesy of the hood.” He pulled up the hood for Soren, who continued his descent. Never mind the irony of the inveterate drunkard’s lack of compassion.
Once further down the ladder, Soren let the trapdoor drop above them.
Their feet finally touching solid ground again, Soren realized Norel’s lab was what Soren had expected, for the most part. Sixteen foot ceilings, the basement walls lined with cobblestone. On one wall was a double-door-slanted entrance for moving large items in and out from street level. The basement had obviously been the storeroom for the barkeep once upon a time, until Norel’s deal—whatever it was—made him rethink the arrangement.
Norel’s vintage tech was period-appropriate, which was to say everything had a distinct steampunk feel; violating that protocol would have drawn a lot more unwanted attention than stealing away with a few bodies in the dead of night.
The standout features that caught Soren by surprise included the amount of smoke in the air, for one. Soren coughed to clear his lungs.
“Sorry,” Norel said. “One of the side effects of my gene cocktail is it makes my skin hypersensitive. Can’t stand to have any clothes on me at all. In case someone does come down here, I have the fog to cover me until I can throw a robe on. Clothed or not, it helps mute the shock of my person.” Norel shed the coat, which Soren now noted was lined with an almost frictionless material, to keep the wool off Norel’s sensitive skin, and to soothe his exterior. Soren should have picked up on that detail earlier. But the beast wasn’t as sharp as he was. And it was allowing him access to the mindchip—though clearly not all of the mindchip, for it would have noted the fabric immediately. Norel’s robe was not period-appropriate, unless he was one hell of a scientist to cook up that fabric lining in his lab down here, well ahead of its time. From all the bubbling potions and chemistry experiments underway, however, the idea that the material was his own creation remained a distinct possibility. Some of those chemical reactions were providing the smoke in the atmosphere, which Soren’s sensitive nose informed him was more fog than smoke, despite the chemical irritants in the air. But Soren digressed—
The real point of note was that his communications nanites were already communicating too well for Soren’s tastes, if they were giving the beast this kind of control of his mindchip. That had never been the intent. What the hell was going on inside him?
Norel appeared out of the fog to hand him a six ounce bottle with an eye dropper for a cap, before disappearing back into the fog again. Personally, Soren found the peek-a-boo game even more startling than regarding Norel in all his nakedness. He didn’t strike Soren as particularly gruesome; if anything, he had a very plain face with a perennially vague expression that was all too easy to read most anything into, from psychopathic serial killer to mindless dweeb to the perennial peace of a Zen master. But it was a very big shaved head on top of a frail torso and limbs that belonged to a far smaller man. Outside, the trench coat had gone far to cover the incongruity. He could have passed as a “Grey” in the Aliens Are Among Us district, uptown; all the more, considering the sickly pallor of the skin. It was possible the AAAU sector was his former abode, before he got tired playing alien. The eyes weren’t nearly big enough or black enough for a Grey, of course, but he could have had those surgically altered to facilitate his move across town.
Norel materialized out of the fog again, as jarringly as before, this time with his formula in hand in the form of so much paperwork. Soren folded it up and tucked it in a pocket on his robe without really looking at it. “Thanks,” he said.
“How exactly do you expect that to help you?” Norel took a closer look at the tiny “crabs” crawling over the mound on Soren’s face, and then undid his robe to survey the rest of him. “Oh, I see. You want to give the fleshy part of you a fighting chance. Christ, I’ve never seen nano this primitive. And you scold me for being too period-appropriate. If you were looking for a cheat, I’d say you were more than justified going with more modern-day nano.”
“Long story,” Soren said.
A brass automaton hobbled toward Soren, emerging out of the fog to startle him. It had a cup of tea in its hand, but had spilled most of the tea owing to the lack of smoothness in its gait. Soren smiled. “Thank you,” he said, taking the cup. The automaton bowed before him obsequiously, then disappeared into the fog again, squeaking with every move. Like its master, it had a head far too big for its frail body, though Soren suspected that had less to do with a mock homage to the master, and more to do with trying to fit a Von Neuman machine inside its head. Though in truth, much of that calculating prowess was likely distributed between the head and its backpack, which was rather huge, like an astronaut might wear. And a perforated scroll running through the backpack suggested the automaton was simply going through scripted moves.
“You let that thing operate on you?” Soren said. “It couldn’t even keep from spilling the tea.”
Norel smiled. “That was another automaton. Though your point is well taken. The surgery was a bit of a hatchet job. But as I say, I heal well.”
Norel passed his hand over Soren’s naked chest, again more as scientist than lover. “You’ve lingered, and I don’t think it’s to make love to me. The beast must have its reasons, but what?”
“Maybe you have more answers for me.”
“What ails you, my friend?”
“The nano inside me…. It’s inscribed with cabbalistic shapes… ancient magic. I was traveling to a wizard in Chinatown who might know what to make of them when I ran into you.”
Norel was nodding. “Yes, yes, makes sense, they’d be the ones with answers. Still, you have to ask how the designs could actually work their magic on you simply by being inscribed on the nanites.” He picked one of the “crabs” off of Soren and examined it under a magnifier he put up to his eye. Then he returned the crustacean to the heap on Soren’s face. “I suspect the edges of the cabbalistic patterns catalyze reactions, forcing protein molecules to bend in a certain way, thus releasing enzymes within you that catalyze still further reactions. What those next reactions are may have a lot to do with the shapes y
ou’re meditating on at the time or…. Well, I don’t really know. A particular brainwave pattern triggered by the meditation perhaps that they’re keyed to. You might do better with a biofeedback machine than a Chinese wizard specializing in ancient magic. Still, if anyone could tell you….”
Soren’s eyes had gone vacant pondering Norel’s words. They sharpened as he pulled himself back into the moment and grunted at Norel. “Your theory is more scientifically sound than anything I can come up with. Thank you, my friend. But I must leave you now.”
“Yes, of course. I won’t try and detain you. The beast would snap my neck as soon as look at me. And he’s a lot stronger than I am.”
“That’s not who I am.”
“But I’m afraid it is, my friend.” Norel gestured to his nose again. “Your feral pheromones have spiked through the roof. This mask of humanity you’re wearing, it’s not who you are anymore. When it’s ripped off often enough, you’ll begin to see that for yourself; and how you’re being duped by this thing inside you.”
Soren was already fighting an urge to squash Norel’s oversized head with a punch clear through to the back of his skull. The lingering impression of the truth in Norel’s words stayed with him as he fled the room, before the urge to do Norel harm overcame him. Soren climbed every rung of the ladder as if a man possessed; and indeed he was.
Once he was standing by the trap door to the basement he glanced around at the bar. There was dead silence. And held breaths. And the werewolf-hunter femme fatales scattered throughout the bar were smirking and winking. He realized then he was still naked. He shouted downstairs. “Throw me my….” He caught the robe to the face before he could finish the sentence. Donned it. One of the drunks capsized from his chair for the last time. Soren checked his pulse, then dragged him over to the hole in the floor and threw him down. “Here, fresh meat for your wolves!” The remark, uttered in a belligerent, raised voice, earned a few gasps for its callousness, and a few looks of admiration from the femme fatales. Soren kicked the hatch closed with his foot, and strode out the saloon doors.
Outside, the wintery world was continuing to exact its toll. Several kids had stuck their tongues out at a pole on a dare. The children were now frozen solid. Their lives forfeited on account of a familiar youth’s game. A few of the children had survived though. Just their tongues hung against the pole. That took courage in kids so young.
Soren was numb to the sight; and the others he couldn’t help but notice on his way to the wall separating Shelley’s London from Chinatown.
Some drunks were playing pin the tail on the donkey with another frozen victim that had died standing and no doubt shivering in fright after being surrounded by the creatures of the night, who departed at the morning sun, too late for them to eat him, but not soon enough to save the man. The mask of horror on the frozen man, and his defensive posture, of course, told the tale. He was a right proper gentleman, this man who’d frozen to death waiting for the wolves to leave him alone, from his fine attire and handspun suit, and his top hat to his well-cropped bushy moustache, none of which did much to chase away his ordinariness—nothing like that mask of horror he was sporting now, anyway. As for the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game’s contestants—more half-drunk men, not kids—they certainly cast Soren’s newfound callousness in a good light.
Another Frankenstein’s monster that dawn had saved sat with his back against a wall, his severed legs collected up in front of him. He was frustrated trying to stick his severed arm back on with his one good arm. “A little help, friend?”
This Frankenstein monster looked more like a heavy metal rock and roller late for his costume ball, between the white makeup, the “dignified” scarring up one side of his scalp, and the obvious wig, possibly meant to be ripped off at the right ‘ta-da’ moment with a roar, in order to send the meddlesome taunting youths running.
Soren lased the ends of the left arm and the torso the amputee Frankenstein monster was trying to join back together, letting his own eyes glow orange first as a hint at what was coming. Once the ends were no longer frozen, they annealed. The still-down-two-limbs Frankenstein monster held out both the legs for him next, then cleared a path to his stumps. Once both regions were lased, he reattached the body parts. His own remarkable mending abilities would be able to do the rest. “Thanks, friend. If you can drag me to that fire over there, I should finish healing up just fine.”
Soren realized that Norel must have been free with handing out his gift to his kind. This guy wasn’t smart enough to invent back-from-the-brink science this good. Soren could smell it on him, the scientific mediocrity. But he was a hell of a thespian though. Weird how the different aptitudes had their own smells; something he’d never noticed before. He dragged this version of a Frankenstein’s monster over to the latest bonfire local residents were using to warm themselves. Soren lingered just long enough for him to warm himself to where he could fight off anyone meaning him harm, and then Soren was on his way; left to wonder what for the charity for his own kind when no one else’s suffering seemed to strike a nerve.
On the surface, the answer seemed straightforward enough; they were like him. But the true reason might be more profound than that. Perhaps the cabbalistic mandalas were leading him to favor supernaturals over normals.
Soren continued to think through the problem as he ambled through more tableaus of senseless suffering wrought by one Victor Truman. No small debt had been accrued to humanity in such a short time by that guy. But for now, Soren was grateful to be numb to the suffering, so he had room inside his head to think. Think past the tableau of the woman and her child clinging to her shoulders, coming down the fire escape, fleeing their burning flat, only to freeze to the metal ladder before they could unstick themselves. Both bodies were being picked clean of their clothing now to toss into the fire on the street by the fire feeders, a whole new class of working man that had popped up almost instantly in response to the planet’s new position relative to the sun.
More of the reclamation team were inside the woman’s apartment, tossing out other items which could be burnt; furniture. And one of the ensemble was by the window butchering up the dead husband. His family of merchants he was tossing the pieces to was selling them along with the potion to override the effects of cannibalism on the street below at a table situated so as to catch the deliveries from above as they came in. A couple of the fortune hunters that were part of the same family enterprise, were starting in on the frozen mother and child, one climbing up to them from below with his hatchet in hand, the other one climbing down to her from the apartment above.
Glossing over the scene in his mind as he walked by, Soren took advantage of the extra space in his head to get to the core of something that had been eating him for a while. What, Soren wondered, were the cabbalistic mandalas keying to? They had to be taking their instructions from somewhere, or someone. Were they simply more keyed to certain algorithms on his mindchip than others, the ones associated with the darker shades of Soren’s personality? If the shapes were designed by a master wizard of the dark arts, they might well be. But it didn’t rule out other frightening possibilities. Like maybe he’d been turned into the hand puppet of anyone who understood the deeper meaning of these cabbalistic shapes and how to wield them. The beast inside him riled at the thought; it didn’t like being under anyone’s thumb. Well, he shared that much at least in common with Soren. If this latest fear proved to be true, then Soren was walking toward his own possible enslavement at the hands of a master cabalist in the form of one of Chinatown’s more ancient wizards. Not smart.
FOUR
Soren and Naomi’s posse had retreated back to their old stomping ground in the basement of Victor Truman’s building in Swank Town. Here they had once lived off the hand-me-downs of rich people, only too happy to play ‘out with the old and in with the new,’ using the basement as a substitute for a landfill. Nothing had really changed in the subterranean lair since they were here last, except, of course,
for the people inside it.
Naomi strode to Lar’s usual hangout, in his library section against a far wall, situated as far away from the ever-full-of-himself Player, whose bluster no one could much tolerate. The book cases lining the wall spanned about thirty feet across and he had a small raised platform that you stepped up one riser step to get to before hitting the deck upon which he’d planted his desk, facing—unwisely perhaps—away from his books. He had his face, as usual, buried in a tome.
“What are you working on, Lar?” she asked her spectacled friend.
“Protection spells for when dear old Dad decides to take that tone with me again and takes one injudicious step too many in my direction.”
Naomi choked off her smile as best she could. Lar couldn’t flee a room without tripping over his own shoelaces, so, with that in mind, the protection spells probably weren’t a half-bad idea. He was, furthermore, a man of scant build, and looked more like a librarian than a spiritual warrior with his tweed suit and tie, horn-rimmed glasses, curly black hair, owlish, round brown eyes, and overall timid nature. “Some shielding magic should do it, I think,” she said. “In case I’m not around to shield you myself. Let’s not go overboard and turn him into even more of an ogre than he is now.”
Lar glanced up from the book at her finally, his face relaxing somewhat out of the knot of tension that his skeletal muscles had put it under. “I’ll take it under advisement.” His tone suggested he had some empathy for what Soren had become, in no short account because of Lar’s own aborted attempts to save his life. It was Naomi’s sense he was using his anger right now largely to shield him from his guilt and his fears over what would become of Soren.
Reviled (Frankenstein Book 2) Page 5
