The Constantine Affliction (20 page)

“Which man?”

“Dunno his name. Young, younger than you. Wore a nice suit.”

“Mmm,” Pimm said. That didn’t sound like Value or Oswald, but it could have been one of their employees. Which made sense—neither one would hire a thug personally. “And where are you supposed to deliver this report?”

The man named a tavern, but not the Black Dog. Pimm considered his options. He could go with this man to the tavern, and confront whomever had hired him, but the odds were good that person would just be
another
thug acting on orders. And even if this man did lead him to Oswald, what good would that do? He didn’t
know
anything about the man—at least, nothing more than any other casual newspaper reader did, and certainly nothing that would connect Oswald with Value. He needed more information. Pimm made a decision.

“I’d very much like for you to
stop
following me,” he said. “How about, let’s see… ten pounds? Would that suffice? You can go back to your paymaster and say I cunningly gave you the slip, how would that be?”

“I… suppose that would be all right,” the man said, in the tone of someone who’d expected a kick and, in all defiance of reason, received a kiss instead.

“Good man,” Pimm said. “I approve of the entrepreneurial spirit.”

A Wrongful Termination

O
ne of the bells Adam had connected to the doors leading to his laboratory rang, and he hurriedly whispered, “We’ll talk later.” He unscrewed a valve, cutting off the artificial air supply, then threw a dirty white cloth over the jar containing Margaret’s brain, covering the brass speaking apparatus as well.

Adam made a point of appearing absorbed in work on an improved version of his battery when his visitor entered. “Mr. Oswald,” he said, not looking up from his work. “It has been some weeks since you graced me with your company. What brings you here today?”

“You know I prefer ‘Sir Bertram,’ Adam,” the scientist chastised.

“Ah, yes. Your knighthood. For services to the crown. I’d forgotten.”

“You forget nothing, Adam. That’s part of why you’ve been so valuable to me.”

Adam did look up, now. His patron was dressed impeccably in a dove-gray waistcoat, and carried a cane made of some darkly gleaming metal—probably his own Oswaldium, an alloy lighter than glass and harder than steel, though when placed under sufficient strain, it had a brittleness that made it unsuitable for large-scale building projects. “
Have
been valuable? Don’t I continue to be?”

Oswald picked up a pile of books from a wooden stool, glancing at their covers briefly, then placed them carefully on a wooden table next to a row of jars filled with preserved human eyes, sorted by color. He sat on the stool, placed the cane across his knees, and sighed. “I understand you met Lord Pembroke.”

Adam inclined his head. “He is doing some work for Mr. Value, I understand. I was instructed to provide support in certain technical matters.”

“You planted false evidence of a murder for him, didn’t you?”

“I planted
true
evidence of a murder in a false location, to be more accurate. I know how much you value accuracy. Do you disapprove of my actions?”

“I am, generally, uninterested in your actions, apart from those that bear directly on my scientific projects. But do you know the name of the man you helped incriminate?”

Adam had to be careful here. As far as he knew, Oswald was unaware of Margaret’s existence, and he preferred to keep her existence a secret. A speaking brain in a jar might be altogether too fascinating for a man of Oswald’s intellectual leanings, and Adam wanted her all to himself. “Lord Pembroke may have mentioned the man’s name. Thaddeus, I believe?”

“Worth, Adam. Thaddeus Worth. Do you happen to know someone
else
named Worth? Or someone who
used
to be named Worth?”

Adam frowned. “It is not such an uncommon name, but I assume you refer to the person we once knew as
Madam
Worth?”

“Yes,” Oswald said. “Thaddeus Worth was her husband.”

“Ah. I never knew that gentleman’s given name. I can understand why you are… upset. I thought Thaddeus Worth had been paid handsomely for his silence?”

“That was the arrangement. And, true to his agreement, Mr. Worth did not tell anyone what truly became of his wife after her transformation—not in words. But he did murder women and leave them on the doorsteps of Value’s clockwork brothels, which are really
my
clockwork brothels. But that, too, would have been fine—I begrudge no man his hobby, and murder is as good a way to pass the time as any—except Value, without consulting me, brought in Lord Pembroke to investigate. And Lord Pembroke, being a man of fine upstanding moral fiber, handed Mr. Worth over the police.”

“Ah. And you are afraid Mr. Worth will tell the authorities about his wife, and thus about your connection to the Constantine Affliction?”

Oswald sniffed. “He won’t have the opportunity. He’ll be dead by nightfall. But his apprehension does indicate a troubling lack of forethought on the part of Mr. Value, doesn’t it? Indeed, it makes me entirely reconsider our strategic alliance.”

Adam sighed. “You mean to have Mr. Value killed, then. What impact will that have on my supply test subjects?”

“His assorted dead whores, you mean? Well, with Worth in custody—soon to be dead—your supply would at any rate once again be limited to those women dead of drink, or fevers, or tuberculosis, or misadventure. No more cleanly-suffocated girls, alas.”

“Their deaths, whatever the cause, are tragedies, which I seek to redeem through science.”

“Mmm. I’ve always felt I could talk to you, Adam. You hold the advancement of science in as high a regard as I do.”

“Nonsense,” Adam said. “I do not revere science, any more than I would revere a hammer. Science is a tool. Only the ends matter.”

“Ah, yes. As you say. Any luck finding your true love among the dead women, then?”

Adam scowled behind his smooth mask. He did not intend to tell Oswald about Margaret’s brain, though it was the first hopeful development he’d had in some time. “I continue to make incremental progress.”

“You continue failing to achieve what your own creator accomplished, you mean,” Oswald said, sniffing. “To bring dead flesh to life, endowed with a working mind. You have managed the first part, but not the second. Well, you are a
made
thing, of course. You can’t be expected to make things on your
own
, any more than a steam engine is capable of independently creating more steam engines. That would make you a sort of self-replicating machine, wouldn’t it? Seems a bit improbable.”

“All biological life can be viewed as a series of self-replicating machines,” Adam countered.

Oswald just shrugged, and that was when Adam began to worry. Oswald loved nothing more than a good argument, or an opportunity to demolish an opponent’s malformed illogic, and if he was declining to engage, it must mean something dire was afoot. “Would you say we’re friends, Adam?”

“Men like you and I do not have friends. Our work does not allow for such entanglements. But we are certainly colleagues.”

“Good. Then we understand one another. I had high hopes for your program, you know. I really thought you might be able to help me solve my little problem with the Queen.”

“The device works beautifully. The women who are resurrected on my table as ravenous beasts are transformed into docile creatures, biddable and easily led, with the insertion of a few wires and the severing of a few nerves.”

“They are mindless,” Oswald said, mouth twisted in disgust. “Good enough for Value to use in his secret brothels, catering to the more than usually depraved in a way few living girls could bear, but dead girls pretending to be alive are useless for my purposes. Mere puppets, without even the illusion of free will or agency. Why, my Air Loom—”

“Was entirely a failure,” Adam said. “While my approach, at least, shows promise. I still say, given a living subject, I could perform the surgery successfully, making it possible to control the patient without destroying the personality. I just need—”

“Oh, well, I’ll just bring the Queen here and we’ll etherize her on your table. I’ll let you put wires in her brain, why not? What could possibly go wrong?”

Adam shrugged. “You could contrive a means to bring me into the palace, unobserved, for the procedure. There are ways.”

Oswald shook his head. “And if she should
die
during your surgery? Yes, you could replace her blood with your remarkable chemical slurry, and give her the semblance of life, but I dare say Lord Palmerston would notice a certain difference in her
affect
when she attempted to devour his nose at their first meeting, or stared at him glassy-eyed and doll-like. How many surgeries have you performed on the living?”

Adam frowned, lifted the bottom of his mask, and scratched an itch on his chin. “Do you mean… counting myself? Then, a great many. But the principles are the same, a living body and a dead one are not so different—”

“Spoken like a stitched-together corpse.” Oswald rose from the chair. “No, Adam, I’m afraid I can no longer afford to fund your experiments. Or rather, of course I
could
afford to fund them, but I no longer wish to do so. I have a more promising solution to my difficulties, now.”

“Your clockwork,” Adam said, without bothering to conceal his scorn. “Your little wind-up whores.”

“Ah, Adam, they are so much more than that. The brothels were important, yes, to see if my clockwork creatures could be made human-seeming enough to satisfy a man, and to test the physical limitations of the devices. But I’ve gone much farther now. Did you know the latest models in the pleasure houses can dance, and play the harp, and recite poetry, and wield a riding crop? They can even follow selected verbal commands.”

“I am sure they can do all those things, following a pre-set program, from which they cannot deviate. Where is the free will there?”

Oswald laughed. “My dear man—or should I say my dear semblance of a man—I do not require free will, only the
illusion
of free will. The brothels get my
previous
generation of clockwork women. Those models I am working on currently are able to perform actions of astonishing complexity. And so much of a Queen’s life is rote, and ritual, and tradition—it is trivial to program a convincing simulacrum to do the things a Queen must do. With Prince Albert imprisoned, the Queen has few confidants, other than myself, who would notice any changes in her behavior. Simulating Lord Palmerston and other ministers will be more difficult, of course—damn this constitutional monarchy, things would be much simpler with an absolute ruler, only
one
person to replace—but I have confidence that I can surmount those problems as well. Controlling the Queen will give me greater access to the powers that truly rule England, and access is all a man like myself needs to achieve his goals.”

Adam frowned. “But… what of the real Queen, then? Will you have her killed? Become a regicide?”

“Killing her would be problematic,” Oswald said. “It is surprisingly difficult to entirely destroy a body, and getting her corpse out of the palace would be a devil of a job. But fear not. I have a plan. I always do. Alas, that plan does not involve you.”

“I suppose that concludes our business, then,” Adam said. He sighed. “It was a fruitful collaboration, Mr. Oswald. I am sorry we can be no further help to one another.” He would have to sell the design for his battery after all, to raise the funds to continue his researches. Perhaps he should contact his solicitor to handle the arrangements…

“Oh, Adam. I see you misunderstand the situation. I am afraid that, in my initial enthusiasm about our collaboration, I shared too many confidences with you. Surely you understand that I cannot allow you to live, knowing all the secrets you do?”

Adam moved slightly toward the edge of the table, so he might dart around it. “I have no interest in your plans,” he said. “Make the Queen and her ministers your slaves, and rule England through them—what does it matter to me?

Oswald clucked his tongue. “Do you truly presume my goals are to rule
England
? How… provincial. Seizing control of the country is merely the next step in a larger plan, a necessary precondition for a great experiment.”

“Whatever your intentions, they are of no concern to me. I have only one interest, as you well know—creating a companion who I may love forever, throughout my possibly eternal life, and who will love me in return. I took your money, and turned my attention to researching mind control, in order to further those goals. In the absence of that money, you cease to interest me.”

“You may be telling the truth,” Oswald said. “But truth can change with circumstance. You are simply too large a risk, Adam. Value’s indiscretion has made me more aware of the importance of keeping a tight leash on knowledge—at least, until my next great experiment is complete. I am on the cusp of important things, at a very delicate stage in my grand design, and it is important for me to… tidy up my affairs in order to move forward.”

Adam rushed him, moving far more swiftly than Oswald could have anticipated. But Oswald already had a revolver in his hand, drawn from some inner recess of his coat, and he fired almost negligently into the center of Adam’s body mass.

Adam had been shot once before, in the shoulder, many years ago—the gun fired by a man Adam had tried to help, who had been terrified by Adam’s ferocious visage. That had been the beginning of a period of bitter disillusionment for Adam; a period that had never entirely ended. Now he was shot again, in the chest, this time, and the pain was worse than he remembered, but now, due to the strange cross-wirings in his brain, the pain also filled his mouth with the taste of fresh oranges, such as he’d tasted once in Spain. He twitched on the ground, staring up at the beams of the basement roof, with no memory even of falling. His entire torso was in agony, and he could not have said where, precisely, the bullet had penetrated his body.

Oswald stepped into view and peered down at him. “I considered dissecting you,” he said. “But, ultimately, how interesting would it be? Flesh is so disgusting, anyway. Too many irregularities, and you would be more irregular than most, I imagine. I prefer gears and joints and struts and pivots to bone and muscles and nerves. Much cleaner.” He aimed the pistol, and Adam knew that if Oswald fired into his brain, that would be the end—but Oswald instead crouched, and pressed the pistol directly over Adam’s heart, and pulled the trigger.