The Constantine Affliction (11 page)

Halliday stepped back, but didn’t turn away, watching with an interest that Adam perceived as more than morbid curiosity. Halliday was a man who sought to understand the world. He was a fool, of course, and ignorant, as all normal men with their pitifully short lives were when compared to Adam or his patron. (How hilarious it was that Halliday thought
Value
was Adam’s patron, when in truth Adam and Value both served the same, far greater master.) Still, Adam’s reflexive contempt was softened a bit by Halliday’s clear-eyed willingness to watch this procedure.

“You seem rather more sober today than you did yesterday, Lord Pembroke.” Adam busied himself preparing the nutrient bath, filling his largest glass vessel with the component fluids.

“I do enjoy a tipple from time to time, Mr. Adams, but when pursuing a murderer, it is best to keep one’s mind clear.”

“I did not say you seemed
entirely
sober, sir. The alcohol on your breath is merely fainter today.” The smell of the brandy appeared, to Adam, the color of pale green grass.

“A drink can give one the courage to pursue a murderer, too.” Halliday spoke without apparent shame. “You have a good sense of smell.”

“All my senses are highly developed. I was endowed by my creator with
marvelous
gifts.”

“Such modesty.”

“It is modesty, in fact. My gifts were
given
to me—I am due no credit for them.”

“I see. All glory to God, indeed. But surely you were the one who developed those… gifts. With hard work, and study? One does not attain all this”—to his credit, Halliday’s voice betrayed not a hint of sarcasm as he gestured at the dank subterranean laboratory—“without sustained and serious effort.”

“We are all just machines, Lord Pembroke. Created, presented with a certain set of initial conditions and constraints, and set on our courses, which we follow unerringly.”

“Surely you don’t believe we have no choice—”

“The brain is a machine, too,” Adam murmured, raising his bone saw. “I will have to remove her head now. Do not be alarmed.” He cut through her throat and spinal column with his bone saw, careful to decapitate her well below the brain stem. The blood flowed, but didn’t spurt, as her heart was no longer pumping. Once the cut was complete, he arranged the straps and clamps on the table to hold the severed head in place for the more delicate work.

“Now I must scalp her. Normally, I would shave the head first. But time is limited. We may already be too late.”

“You said an hour. It’s only been forty-five minutes now.”

Adam began to scalp the woman, much as the savages in the New World were said to do to their enemies, only in reverse, starting in the back of the head and peeling upward. “Yes. That was merely an estimate, however. I did not expect you to actually bring me a fresh victim, Lord Pembroke. I assumed our conversation was theoretical. But you will note I am proceeding with all due haste, despite my surprise, and I have some hopes for a positive outcome.” He peeled the flesh and her lovely red hair away, letting it fall across her face, the scalp attached by a flap of skin at the base of her nose, revealing the bare skull beneath.

Halliday still did not turn away, though Adam sensed a certain level of agitation. Adam took his bone saw and began to cut around the circumference of the dead girl’s skull, just above the eyes. “The key now is to cut open the skull without damaging the brain. With a dog or cat, you can cut through the skull with shears, but the human skull is a mighty helm of bone, and requires a strong hand and a sharper blade.” Adam did not add that his strength was equal to the task, as that would be readily apparent. His movements were smooth and meticulous. The slip of a fraction of an inch would destroy portions of her brain, and this procedure had only a marginal chance of success under ideal circumstances, which did
not
include inadvertently sawing through her gray matter. “Tell, me, Lord Pembroke. Do you believe in love?”

“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 afraid.”

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

B
ecause 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.