The Constantine Affliction (26 page)

This was too elaborate to be merely a ruse to rob him, Pimm decided, and chose to follow. As he descended, far enough down to make the light above fade to a distant circle, he wished he’d worn more practical clothing. He was dressed more for a business meeting than a spell of spelunking. At least he’d worn decent walking shoes. Though when he reached the bottom of the ladder, and stepped in something that softly squished, he wished he’d worn
less
decent shoes.

Light suddenly flared as the boy lit a lamp—not alchemical, just a bit of candle stuck in a tin dish with a wire handle. Pimm squinted at the old brickwork around them. “We started out crawling down into a drainpipe, but we’ve broken through to something deeper, haven’t we? Was this a cellar?”

“Dunno,” the boy said. “Mr. Adams says London is like a trash heap, with things piled on top of other things, but the other things are mostly just more London, from a long time ago.”

“True enough,” Pimm said, and followed the boy’s flickering light through the darkness. They ducked through holes smashed through stone walls, crouched—Pimm did, anyway—through narrow tunnels with dirt ceilings, and finally, after so many turnings that Pimm lost all sense of his position in terms of surface geography, pushed open a roughly-cut wooden door and emerged into a corridor where electric lights were strung up on wires above. Broken bits of brick were scattered all over the ground, and a sledgehammer leaned against the wall, as if the entryway had just recently been smashed open. “Adams’s laboratory?” Pimm said. “How remarkable!”

“I’ll leave you to it then,” the boy said, and disappeared back into the tunnel without further farewell, taking his light with him.

“Wait!” Pimm called, but the boy did not return. Pimm had tried to pay attention to all the turns they’d taken underground, but he didn’t entirely trust himself to find his way back out again with a guide. He’d best find Adams. Perhaps the man could draw him a map back to the surface after he delivered whatever message he had.

Pimm checked his walking stick to make sure it seemed operational, and patted his pockets to confirm the presence of his pistol, along with one or two items of Freddy’s invention he’d brought along in case Value proved to take disappointment violently. Adams had never threatened him, but a man who could remove a human brain so easily was probably not to be underestimated. “Adams?” Pimm called. “I received your summons.”

“Down the hall, my lord,” the hoarse voice called, and Pimm proceeded in the proper direction, ducking low to pass through what was less a doorway and more another ragged hole smashed through a wall. He emerged into the familiar main room of Adams’s laboratory, though the slab was, blessedly, free of corpses today. Pimm glanced toward the brain in the jar, attached to its convoluted tubes and brass fixtures, and suppressed a shudder. Was the poor thing still
aware
? Did the woman not deserve the peace of death after her suffering?

Adams lurched into view from behind a shelf full of large clay pots, wires emerging from their lids. He seemed to be favoring his injured leg more than usual, dragging it after him, and when he turned his head, Pimm realized he’d dispensed with his mask.

Pimm stared, and Adams reached up, touched his face, and winced—at least, Pimm
thought
he winced. It was hard to tell. “Apologies,” Adams said. “I will hide my face.”

“No need, sir,” Pimm said, controlling himself. “This is your home, and you certainly need not hide yourself here on my account.”

“No, no. I would rather you listen to my words than be distracted by my figurement.”

Surely he meant
disfigurement
, Pimm thought, but didn’t say so. Adams retrieved his white mask from a long table and fastened it on, then sat on a stool, gesturing for Pimm to take a seat as well. “Thank you for coming,” Adams said. “I was afraid you would not receive my summons before I departed.”

“You’re leaving the city, sir?” Pimm said.

Adams nodded. “I am no longer as welcome in this city as I once was.”

Ah ha, Pimm thought. Value had said much the same thing. Was Oswald severing all ties with his less-than-savory associates? And did that severing involve things being
literally
severed? Like, say, jugular veins?

“The time has come for me to move on, once I make some… final arrangements. But I thought, before I left, I could pass on some information you might find interesting, in your capacity as a criminal investigator.” Adams coughed, a terrible, rasping noise, and pressed his hand to his chest, as if suffering a pain there. “Ah. Though calling such acts merely
criminal
is an understatement. I refer to nothing less than treason.”

Pimm leaned forward. “And who, may I ask, is the traitor?”

“You know I work for Abel Value. But, in truth, Value and I are
both
employees of another man—”

“Bertram Oswald.”

Adams inclined his head. “Indeed. You are a keen investigator. What have you learned about Oswald?”

“I’m fairly certain he’s involved with the clockwork brothels, and may be the creator of the mechanical courtesans himself.”

“That is true,” Adams said, and Pimm thought he detected a hint of amusement in the disfigured giant’s voice. “That is scandalous, perhaps, but not criminal.”

“And far from treasonous,” Pimm agreed. “I have also wondered… with no proof at all, mind you, just something I’ve mused about… whether Sir Bertram may have been involved in the creation of the Constantine Affliction?”

“Ah, that certainly
would
be a crime, wouldn’t it?” Adams said. “If you could find a statute that covered such a thing. Probably the deliberate creation and release of a plague could be considered akin to, oh, a mass poisoning? The difficulty would be in proving such an act. I know Oswald’s laboratory and original samples were destroyed in a fire that was by no means accidental. Once the plague was loosed and proved suitably contagious, there was little need to maintain his facility to manufacture more. Which is not to say he doesn’t have a few vials set aside against future needs. The toxin is quite effective when injected through a needle, or slipped into food or drink and ingested.”

Pimm whistled. “Can it be possible? For a man to create a
plague
?”

“Nature does it,” Adams said. “Without even
trying
, through a series of endless mindless iterations that don’t even warrant the term ‘trial and error.’ If a man like Oswald turned his intellect toward the problem, of
course
he would find it tractable. He could never quite get the mortality rate as low as he liked, I’m afraid, and he never intended for people to die halfway through their transformations. He only wanted to change people, and to see what effect such transformations would have on society, but such a profound physical alteration could not be accomplished without occasional deaths.”

“And he started with Mabel Worth as his first patient?”

“His first patient that survived, at any rate,” Adams said. “Well done. You are a bright man.” Pimm was annoyed that the huge anatomist sounded so surprised. “Imagine what you could accomplish if you did not allow liquor to dull your nerves. I do not know all the details, but I understand Oswald approached Mabel Worth and… offered to make a man out of her, and fund her expansion into greater criminal realms, in exchange for the use of her illicit connections. Mrs. Worth—soon Mr. Value—allowed Oswald to infect the prostitutes in his employ, spreading the disease throughout society. Though society has proven strangely intractable to the changes wrought by the Affliction. I think Oswald anticipated rather more social upheaval, perhaps a sudden universal realization that men and women
aren’t
so different, genitalia and certain anatomical differences aside—that a mind, as it were, is a mind, and that one’s sex does not necessarily define one’s character.”

“I am repulsed to find myself in agreement with Oswald on any point,” Pimm said.

“Even lunatics can have good ideas on occasion,” Adams said. “The problem with Oswald is, he does not understand
people
, not even remotely. He has some interesting insights about larger systems, but when it comes to individuals…” Adams shook his head. “He simply doesn’t understand what motivates actual humans. He views everything intellectually, and whenever the world fails to behave rationally, it bewilders him. Oh, he knows people
have
feelings, or claim to, but he doesn’t experience much in the way of emotion himself. Oswald has no true understanding regarding universal human motivations like spite, jealousy, anger, generosity, charity… or love.”

“Speaking of love… Oswald infected Prince Albert with the Affliction, didn’t he?”

“Ah.” Adams clapped his hands together, slowly. “We now surpass the merely criminal and come ever closer to treason, do we not?

Other Plans

“T
hat’s a yes, then?” Pimm said.

“Our Queen was devoted to her Prince. Oswald hoped to gain her favor by helping to save the man’s life—but when he succeeded, the Queen became ever more devoted to Albert, having realized how bereft his loss would have made her. She was favorably disposed toward Oswald, of course, but Oswald couldn’t get close
enough
for his purposes. So, yes—he injected the man, using one of those cunning little rings said to be favored by the Borgias of Italy.”

“Hollow, filled with poison, with a tiny needle on the underside,” Pimm said.

“Indeed. A handshake, a barely-perceptible sting, and—the plague was passed on to the Prince Consort himself. Since it is well known that the
only
way anyone contracts the Constantine Affliction is by having sexual relations, the prince’s denials of adultery were all in vain. Albert’s death would have been preferable—so long as he died from something like the Affliction, to alienate the Queen’s affection—but his transformation and subsequent imprisonment were good enough. Oswald took the opportunity to comfort the Queen in her time of sorrow and outrage. He can be quite charming, when he puts his mind to it, though he treats ingratiating himself with people like any other mechanical problem.”

Pimm stood up and began to pace. “All right. But
why
poison Prince Albert? Does Oswald want to be the Queen’s consort himself? It’s not as if the position includes much in the way of power, and she’s shown no inclination to divorce Albert, anyway.”

“Oswald
has
to get close to her,” Adams said. “How else can he possibly be in a position to replace her?”

Pimm stopped walking, staring off into space. “Wait. Wait… No. I don’t see it. Explain?”

Adams rose from his stool and began to sort tools on the long work table, placing some into a large leather satchel. “His
original
plan was merely to seize control of the Queen—to take over her mind, and force her to do his bidding. That was the goal of my project.”

“What?” Pimm said.

“Oh, yes,” Adams said. “Oswald is quite skilled at manipulating tiny bacteria, but he cannot equal my genius in dealing with the
human
body.” He gestured to the brain, floating in its liquid. “You know I am very good with brains. Don’t worry, Margaret cannot hear me—I disconnected her sensory apparatus, as there are things I plan to say I would rather she not overhear. Oswald’s hope was that I could create a device that would enable him to control the Queen’s mind. Alas, my results were not all that Oswald hoped. I was capable of making humans behave tractably, obeying instructions, but in the absence of guidance, they were docile, almost doll-like, without any spark of personality. That was not good enough for Oswald—he feared a Queen incapable of feeding herself without being told to do so might elicit some notice. But I thought the whole
point
of being Queen was that
others
had to feed you—”

Pimm reached into his pocket, touching one of Freddy’s keen little devices. “You are saying you…
destroyed
the minds of people, in your experiments?”

Adams waved a hand. “Save your outrage, Lord Pembroke. I only experimented on the brains of dead whores. It’s all very technical. I replace their blood with a special solution that restores a semblance of life, then perform the necessary surgeries on their brains, implanting a device based on recent magnetic innovations. You’d be amazed what a strong magnetic field can do to a brain, and thus to human behavior. Value returned the women I resurrected to their old lives as prostitutes, where a lack of initiative and complete obedience are admirable qualities. They aren’t allowed on the streets, though—they serve in rather depraved secret brothels, I understand, but rest assured, they are beyond feeling pain or sadness or despair.”

Pimm released the device, but his hands still trembled. “Even so. That is a desecration, Adams, it is
monstrous
—”

“I am a monster, sir,” Adams said softly. “I have been called such my entire life, and see no reason to dispute it now.” He stood unmoving for a moment, then shook his head and returned to sorting his tools. “I had hopes for better results if I could operate on the brain of a
living
person, to find a way to take control without destroying the personality, but Oswald… lost interest in my studies.”

“I’m told he does that,” Pimm said.

“Yes. He became more enamored with the concept of
replacing
the Queen than with merely controlling her.”

“What do you mean, replacing her? With whom?” Pimm was thinking of certain melodramatic novels where kings discovered peasants who resembled them down to the last detail, allowing each to take the other’s place.

“A clockwork replica, of course,” Adams said. “Like the courtesans, but wrought in the Queen’s image, and
much
more lifelike, as advanced a creation as Oswald is capable of producing.”

Pimm gaped. His speculations had never taken him so far. “Good God, man, can you be serious?”

“He may have already replaced her.” Adams spoke with a curious indifference, as if the situation did not concern him one way or another. He held up a tiny gearwheel, gazed at it in the light, grunted, and put it in the bag. “I am not privy to the details of his plan.”