The Constantine Affliction (22 page)

“You work for Oswald,” Ellie said.

“I couldn’t possibly comment, Miss
Skye
,” he said, leaning hard on her pseudonym. “Your article about the families of those who’ve suffered the Constantine Affliction
moved
me, truly. Would you care to come with me now? My employer would love to speak with you about… oh, various matters.”

“What makes you think we’ll come quietly?” Winnie said.

He handed his cane to the automaton on his left, one with great masses of honey-blonde hair. She took the cane, a three-foot length of solid wood, in both hands, and snapped it as easily as Ellie would have broken a twig. “These devices are remarkable,” Carrington said conversationally. “I have no
idea
why they were made so physically strong. That’s not my area. But, the fact is, they are more than capable of subduing you, should you struggle. Now, let’s just be civil—”

Winnie smashed him across the face with her parasol, and he squawked like a wounded pigeon and stumbled backward into one of the automatons, knocking her off her feet. They fell together in a tumble of limbs both flesh and artificial. “Run!” Winnie shouted. She hiked up her skirt and attempted to dodge between two of the other clockwork women. They seized her by the arms, and when she opened her mouth to scream, one of them covered her mouth with its dainty palm. Winnie bit down, but the automaton didn’t react at all.

Feeling she was rather letting the side down, Ellie opened her mouth to shout for help, only to have one of the automatons grab her from behind and cover her mouth, too. Carrington stood up, wincing, and stroking his mustache back into place. “You loosened my teeth, Lady Pembroke. I knew you were of inferior breeding, but I never expected behavior so crass. Will you come peacefully, or shall I direct these fine examples of clockwork maidenhood to render you unconscious? Hmm? Oh, let her speak.” He pointed to Ellie. The automaton removed its hand.

“I’d quite like to meet Mr. Oswald,” Ellie said, surprised and pleased at how steady her own voice sounded. “Since he is the subject of a major article in tomorrow’s paper. I should interview him for my follow-up story. ‘Sir Bertram Responds to Allegations of Criminal Associations,’ that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure he’d be happy to answer all your questions,” Carrington said. “He does love to talk. And you, Lady Pembroke?”

The automaton uncovered Winnie’s mouth. “This is the part where I’m expected to say something like, wait until my husband finds out what you’ve done. And, it’s true—Lord Pembroke can be ferocious when roused. But I’ll let him concentrate on Oswald.
You
, Mr. Carrington, should be worrying about what I, personally, will do to you as retaliation for your actions.”

“Now, now, Freddy,” the man said, and smiled in a nastily insinuating way that Ellie didn’t entirely understand. “That isn’t very
ladylike
. Come along. We have a carriage waiting.”

Pimm will find us
, Ellie thought.
He knew we were going to the park, and he’s good at following clues
. But as she was led away, she saw the clockwork automatons gathering up the picnic basket and the blanket, erasing every obvious sign of their presence and sudden departure.

Very well, then. If they could not expect outside salvation, they would have to save themselves.

A Man of Parts

A
dam woke, and did not smell fire. Good. That meant Oswald hadn’t attempted to burn the laboratory, which might have sealed Adam’s fate. Such an action would have been profoundly ill-considered—the rooms were filled with explosive chemicals which would have burned uncontrollably, creating a conflagration that would surely have spread far and wide through the attached warehouses and other buildings, not to mention the tunnels. With Whitechapel already sealed off and uninhabitable, another great fire would have done away with most of the East End entirely—which many of London’s upper class would have considered a small loss, probably. Adam had worried that Oswald would consider it an acceptable level of disaster in exchange for destroying all evidence of Adam’s existence, but fortunately the scientist hadn’t followed that course.

Adam dragged himself to a sitting position, pressing a hand to his chest. Blood oozed out weakly from the hole. The bullet lodged in his chest hurt abominably. He’d have to remove it.

Oswald had aimed for his heart, but Adam had taken the precaution of adding a second heart, in case his first one were ever damaged—humans had two kidneys, after all, which meant life could continue even if one failed, a redundancy that had always struck Adam as eminently sensible. Oswald had destroyed one heart, but the other was intact and still beating. Adam felt a bit dizzy and lightheaded, from the shock of his injury and the loss of blood. He tore the mask from his face and tossed it aside. Limping to his operating theater, he set up the array of mirrors he used when performing surgery on himself, and sat down on the hard table.

Adam had developed great control of his own bodily systems over the years. For the most part his autonomic system ticked on independently, but he could assert conscious control as necessary—that was how he was able to shut off all sensation from his injured leg and move with great speed when necessary, though it took a conscious effort. With concentration, he deadened the nerves in his chest, and, working with mirrors and harsh electric light, he cauterized a number of blood vessels and removed his now-ruined heart, dropping the shredded organ into a metal pan. The empty place in his chest made him melancholy, seeming entirely too symbolic, but he had neither time nor energy to do anything about that space right now. He settled for sewing himself up and bandaging the wound, tying yards of fabric around his chest. The lost blood was a problem. Adam was more robust than ordinary men, but even he could die if his body’s vital fluids were sufficiently depleted. He had recently considered replacing his blood with the artificial substance he used for his reanimated cadavers, but was unsure of the long-term effects of such a transfusion, and so his heart still pumped ordinary human blood, though of a dozen intermingled types.

For now, he’d settle for eating lots of rare meat to replenish his lost iron. The hungering dead locked away in their chamber would have to go hungry today—he would feast on the kidneys and other offal he’d purchased for them from the stockyards.

After he’d eaten, and felt somewhat refreshed, he limped around his laboratory, to see what damage Oswald had done. Most of Adam’s notes had been left behind—that was a blow, actually, to find that his research hadn’t been worth stealing—but his prototype for the new battery was missing. Oswald was more comfortable with mechanical innovations anyway.

The door to the main tunnel, which led to the neighboring cellar, would not open, and was seemingly blocked from the other side. Adam wondered if Oswald had filled the opening with rubble or had it bricked up. The entry to the house above was also impassable, the trap door utterly immovable even for someone of Adam’s considerable strength. More bricks? “Sealed in like Fortunato,” Adam murmured. “For the love of… God.” Or so Oswald doubtless hoped. Why burn the laboratory when all access from the outside world could be sealed off? And that way, if Oswald ever had cause to return for Adam’s research or equipment, he could bring a few men with pickaxes and do so. Several of Adam’s other secret tunnels—including ones he would have sworn Oswald didn’t know about—were also sealed, and all from the outside, suggesting that Oswald’s attempted murder and successful entombment had not been hasty decisions, but carefully planned ones.

But Adam had learned long ago to make plans of his own, and secondary plans, and tertiary ones. In one corner of his laboratory, surrounded by other industrial detritus, there stood the huge, rusting boiler from what must have once been an immense steam engine. Adam put his shoulder against the boiler and pushed it aside, a feat no ordinary man could have accomplished on his own, and revealed another trap door. Once Adam satisfied himself that the door opened, and the way down the iron ladder was clear, he let the door fall closed again. Only then did he return to his work table and take the cloth off the apparatus that held Margaret’s brain.

He reconnected the tubes that supplied air to the speaking tubes—then froze. In his haste when Oswald arrived, he had failed to disconnect the wires that connected Margaret’s sensory apparatus. Which meant…

When he reactivated the speaking device, at first he thought it was malfunctioning—but then he realized the sound was simply inarticulate wailing. “Margaret,” he said. “Margaret, are you all right?”

The wailing ceased. “Adam? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“I heard such terrible things! I thought I heard—a gunshot.”

“Yes. My… visitor… fired on me, but as you can hear, I survived.”

“Are you injured?”

Hearing such concern in the voice of a woman who’d lost her entire
body
was strangely heartening. “Not grievously. I will be fine. I am sorry you were frightened.”

“Did he really mean the terrible things he said? That he hopes to… to do something awful to the Queen?”

“He is an evil man,” Adam said. He did not, himself, believe in such concepts as “good” and “evil” in absolute terms, but a more nuanced explanation would be exhausting, and he was still very tired. “I am also sorry I did not attend to you immediately—I had to see to my own wounds, and make sure there was no further danger.”

“Will he return?” Margaret asked.

Adam shook his head, then remembered she couldn’t see, and smiled ruefully at his own foolishness. “I do not believe so. He has attempted to seal me inside my own laboratory, to make this place a grave, but fear not, there are still means to escape.”

“This is not… a proper hospital, is it?” she said.

“No. No, Margaret. I am a physician, an expert in anatomy, but I do not work in a hospital. I had a private patron who funded my research.”

“Mr. Value,” Margaret said. “He was my employer, too, or he employed my employers. Is that why I was brought to you? Because you work for Mr. Value?”

“I had certain… business arrangements, with Mr. Value, and yes, that is why you were brought here—I sometimes tend to people injured in his employ. But, no, he was not my patron. Mr. Value and I shared the
same
patron, actually, a wealthy man with diverse interests in science and industry. He paid for the research that made it possible for me to save your life. Alas, he has withdrawn his support, as you heard. But I have other resources.”

“Will I ever be able to see, again?” Margaret said. “To feel my arms and legs? Or am I to be blind and paralyzed forever?”

Adam pressed his cheek against the cool glass of the jar that held her brain. “I will do everything in my power to see you made whole again,” Adam said, closing his eyes. “And my powers are considerable.”

Conqueror’s Words

P
imm went to Hyde Park, to all of Freddy’s favorite picnic spots, but there was no sign of his wife or of Ellie. He tried to decide whether he should worry, but couldn’t see any reason why he should. Oswald had taken an interest in Pimm, true, but there was no reason that interest would extend to Freddy or to Ellie—not as long as they didn’t know Pimm’s “assistant” Jenkins and Ellie were one and the same.

The two of them were probably just off… shopping, or something. That was enough cause for worry on its own. The thought of Ellie in Freddy’s clutches was harrowing enough—Pimm’s old friend had always possessed a streak of mischief as big as St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Pimm shuddered to think how Ellie would react if Freddy tried to play matchmaker, or even made a few of her usual sly double-entendres. Turning into a woman certainly hadn’t altered Freddy’s sense of humor much, apart from adding a certain additional flavoring of bitterness, which was understandable.

Pimm stood aimlessly under a tree for a while, considering the recently-replenished flask in the pocket of his jacket. The temptation to sit under a tree drinking the afternoon away was a powerful one, but he felt he should do something more useful, if at all possible. Value’s enigmatic statements and Ellie’s own hints about Bertram Oswald’s involvement with the old criminal hinted at some greater danger or conspiracy. He wanted to talk to Ellie, and find out what she knew, and—perhaps even better—what she suspected.

He could go home and wait for them to return, but he possessed sufficient self-knowledge to realize that he’d just end up profoundly drunk if given unfettered access to his personal bar just now. He was anxious, and uncertain, and those were states of mind the bottle cured… but only temporarily. And while a spot of oblivion seemed a just reward for his recent work—stopping a murderer, and sending one of London’s major criminals scampering off in fear for his life—there were too many other mysteries to unravel first.

He paced around the tree, looking at the grass and trees and flowers and the construction off in the distance, but really looking inward. All right, Oswald, then. What did he know about the man? He’d become famous a few years ago, just after Prince Albert was locked away for his adulterous crimes against the Queen. He’d opened a factory building alchemical lamps for domestic use and export, employing hundreds of skilled and unskilled workers. That innovation was essentially what earned him his knighthood, if Pimm recalled, and from that point onward, he’d become an intimate confidant of the Queen’s—though how he’d accomplished that specifically was a bit of a mystery. (Pimm had met his monarch on two occasions, both in the company of his esteemed older brother, but even if he’d wanted to turn those formal introductions into a personal relationship, he’d have no idea how to go about it.) Oswald had revived the disgraced Royal Alchemical Society, which had disbanded decades before after definitively failing to transmute base metals to gold or decant the
elixir vitae
. He gave to charity. He constructed municipal hothouses to grow vegetables and fruit in the winter. He had very little in the way of a chin. And…

That was basically the sum total of Pimm’s knowledge about the man. If Oswald was truly involved with Value—if Sir Bertram was the powerful man Value feared—it would behoove Pimm to learn more about his adversary. The time had come for a visit to Pimm’s friend the professor.