Ghosts by Gaslight (64 page)

Authors: Jack Dann

BOOK: Ghosts by Gaslight

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“Excellent work,” he said. Soon after, he dismissed me, and I went back to the Ministry.

In the days that followed, I developed the most overwhelming urge to again sample the Sheer Beauty. I could easily say my wretched bodily and emotional state was akin to withdrawal from addiction. Profuse sweating, itching of the scalp, and the darkest dreams, things far worse than death scuttling in the shadows of sleep. At times, when I passed the bakery on my way to the Ministry, I mistook the smell of their crumb cake for that of the drug. I was in a bad way and growing weaker, more confused as the days wore on.

One night, after working late, completing a desk so full of paperwork the Sanctity of Grace might have pitied me, I went home and climbed into bed. I was shivering convulsively and the sweat poured down my face. The Beauty had a grip on me and was squeezing me like a sponge. Through my delirium, I heard a knock at the door to my apartment.

“Yes?” I called weakly.

“I’ve come to fetch you at the request of the Master, Drachton Below,” said the voice.

I groaned. “Coming,” I said. I rolled out of the bed and eventually managed to get off my knees. Buttoning my shirt and trousers was a chore, what with shaking hands. Out in the carriage, I met, of all people, Chibbins, and the moment I saw him, I feared this meeting with the Master must have something to do with our investigation of the Summer Palace. It soon became clear to me that Chibbins was suffering withdrawal from the Beauty as well. His hands trembled as did mine, and he belched and farted at a furious clip. “Chibbins is ill,” he said.

The Master sat before us in his office at the top of the city. I’d truly thought we were to be done away with, but Below was ecstatic. We greeted each other, with me showing the appropriate deference to our leader and Chibbins mumbling that Chibbins was going to vomit.

“This purple mess you’ve brought back from the Summer Palace, my dear physiognomists, this Sheer Beauty, is a revelation,” said the Master. “I’ve had my scientists ferret out its constituent ingredients, and quite the pharmacopeia it is too—shrubs and buds, bulbs and petals and roots from the wilderness we call the Beyond. How this woman’s ghost devised this elixir is a mystery, but the results of imbibing it are exquisite.”

“It’s addictive,” I said to him. “Since taking it I crave it more every moment.”

“No longer a problem, Cley,” said Below. “I’ve decided to make it liberally available to everyone in the physiognomical and security services.” Here, he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a hypodermic needle, the phial of which was filled with a violet liquid. “That mixture in the pot you brought back was mild slop compared to what my people have done with it. They’ve boiled it down to its active essentials, synthesized them, and suggested a method of delivery a hundred times more potent than sipping from a mug.”

He rose, walked over to Chibbins, who upon the Master’s approach put his two fingers on Below’s stomach and walked them up toward his chin.

The Master laughed and looked over at me, “If it was anyone else, I’d kill them right now,” he said, nodding to Chibbins. “Instead, in return for his asininity, I give him Beauty.” He lifted the hypodermic needle and plunged the tip into Chibbins’s neck, emptying a third of the phial. Before he removed it, the dim physiognomist had gone quiet. Below then walked toward me. Sharing a needle, I knew, was not healthy, and taking that needle in the neck was not a welcome thought, but I willingly bared my neck in order to feel the exquisite madness flowing through me again.

Chibbins, now mustached and elegant in his way and wit, the Master, and I stood at the window, staring down on the lights of the city. Oh, the things I saw, real and unreal, transpire before my eyes. Chibbins was ingenious in his use of metaphor when confabulating, off the cuff, a prose poem about the physiognomical deficiencies of the populace. The light snow that fell across town appeared golden confetti. In the distance there was piano music like in the parlor back at the Summer Palace. Everything was both profound and hilarious.

“You’ve inspired me, Chibbins, my good man,” said the Master. He went to his desk and leaned over a funnel next to it attached to a tube, through which he spoke commands to his people on the lower floors. “Send out the security forces with flamethrowers. Order them to incinerate anyone they see on the street.”

We watched from our great height as some minutes later small fires could be seen erupting in the streets beneath us. The Master clapped and howled with each one. Chibbins put his arm around our leader’s shoulders and laughed uproariously. I was dazed with the visions and the glow of the drug and wore a fixed smile. Somewhere amidst the merriment, the high spirits, and hallucinations, it struck me, like an icicle to the heart, that the Sheer Beauty itself was the agent of revenge that would eventually topple the city. Having envisioned the destruction it would bring, I embraced it like a favorite uncle, and ever since have lived for the sharp pain of the needle.

Afterword to
“The Summer Palace”

It’s been ten years since last I wrote about Physiognomist Cley, the protagonist of the Well-Built City trilogy—
The Physiognomy,
Memoranda,
and
The Beyond
. I’m not sure what caused him to rear his bleak, thoroughly opinionated head again. It wasn’t like I had to conjure him. His carriage rolled up, and he just strode into this ghost story like he owned it. And, when all was said and done, he did. Perhaps he is a voice fit for our current time, perhaps he just grew weary of being relegated to the shadowy edges of my imagination. In any event, he’s returned. This tale deals with his investigations before achieving the exalted rank of Physiognomist, First Class, the time period described in the novels. It seems a great trove of Cley’s personal papers, records of early cases of his in the physiognomical service, has been uncovered by a conscientious citizen of Wenau, digging around in the ruins of the Well-Built City. He’s informed me that he may stay around a while now and that I should consider surgery for my face, as it’s a mockery of nature.

—J
EFFREY
F
ORD

About the Editors

JACK DANN
has written or edited over seventy-five books and is the editor (with Janeen Webb) of the groundbreaking anthology of Australian stories,
Dreaming Down-Under,
which won the World Fantasy Award in 1999. The sequel,
Dreaming Again,
was published to rave reviews. The influential
Australian
Bookseller + Publisher
wrote, “If you read short fiction you’ll want this collection. If you don’t, this is a reason to start.” The anthology
Gathering the Bones,
of which Dann was a coeditor, was short-listed for the International Horror Guild Award and included in
Library
Journal
’s “Best Genre Fiction of 2003.” His anthology
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy
(coedited with Gardner Dozois) was short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. He is also a recipient of the Nebula Award, the Australian Aurealis Award (twice), the Ditmar Award (four times), the Peter McNamara Achievement Award, and the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence. He has been honored by the Mark Twain Society (Esteemed Knight). His own fiction has been compared to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Carlos Castaneda, J. G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and Mark Twain. His website is
jackdann.com.

NICK GEVERS
is senior editor at the major UK independent press PS Publishing (
www.pspublishing.co.uk
), under the banner of which he coedits, with Peter Crowther, the twice-yearly
Postscripts
genre fiction anthology, the latest volumes of which are
Edison’s Frankenstein,
The Company He Keeps,
The New and Perfect Man,
and
Unfit for Eden
. His other SF and fantasy anthologies include
Infinity Plus
(with Keith Brooke),
Other Earths
(with Jay Lake),
Extraordinary Engines,
The Book of Dreams,
and
Is Anybody Out There?
(with Marty Halpern). A past book reviewer and author interviewer for such publications as
Locus,
Locus Online,
SF Weekly,
Interzone,
Foundation,
SF Site,
Infinity Plus,
Nova Express,
and
The
Washington Post Book World,
Nick lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Credits

Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover photograph collage © by Alamy

A continuation of this copyright page appears in the
Copyright Acknowledgments
.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

GHOSTS BY GASLIGHT
. Collection copyright © 2011 by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-199971-0

EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062100702

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