The Constantine Affliction (31 page)

“Oh, piss off,” Winnie said wearily.

Oswald sighed. “What about you, Lord Pembroke? What do
you
want most in this world?”

“Another drink, generally,” Pimm said. “You have nothing to offer me, sir.”

“Nonsense. Everyone wants something. Value wanted wealth and power, and I provided them—he is a child, essentially, though a very cunning child, and he does love his toys. Mr. Adams wanted… well, love, actually. Soppy romantic notions were a peculiar blind spot in his otherwise highly-developed worldview. I tried to help him find the perfect love he sought, but I fear he never did. Everyone has a price, my friends, and I am a man with a profoundly full purse. Just let me know what I need to pay.” He turned away.

“There is a third option,” Pimm said.

“Eh?” Oswald was consulting a pocketwatch, and suddenly paying them very little attention.

“You said we could join you, or we could remain imprisoned, but there’s something else we could do. We could
oppose
you.”

“Ah.” He snapped the watch shut and put it away. “Yes, I suppose you could, assuming you could escape. Though that option might just as well be reformulated as, ‘We could die, for no particular reason.’ If you wish to die, do let me know. It can be arranged with trivial ease. But I have hope for you all. To have learned as much about my plans as you did demonstrates impressive intellectual development. I have uses for people of your talents. Don’t waste your abilities on a silly grudge. There are more important things in the heavens and Earth.” He yawned. “I must prepare for the Exposition tonight. The great work begins. Do you wish to assist me, or remain trapped?”

“Of
course
we’ll help you,” Winnie said. “Your argument has swayed me completely.”

“Indeed,” Ellie said. “I look forward to helping disseminate your insights to the masses.”

“Naturally. We are entirely devoted to your cause. Only let us out—” and here Pimm smiled, showing all his teeth—“and we will be pleased to show you the
full
extent of that devotion.”

“You all disappoint me terribly,” Oswald said, and seemed as saddened as any parent who sees his children behave in a dangerous and stupid fashion. “But perhaps some time in captivity will alter your viewpoints. Forgive me. I have preparations to make. I trust you will excuse my rudeness if I depart? I’ll be sure to visit you in future days, as time allows—though I expect I will be
quite
busy after tonight. Society won’t reorder itself, you know.” He gave them a little bow, turned smartly on his heel, and marched off into the darkness.

They watched him disappear. “We really should leave soon,” Pimm said. “I think we’ve stayed here quite long enough, and there’s the other prisoner to think about.”

“You want to free the Queen?” Winnie said.

“Do you propose that we leave her in a cage here?” Pimm said.

“A fair point.”

“Now, Winifred, darling—”

“Oh, call me Freddy,” she said. “Carrington already told Ellie the truth about me.”

For the first time since she’d known him, Ellie saw Pimm look totally at a loss, his mouth agape. He glanced sidelong at Ellie. “Ah… you know? About… her?”

“I do,” she said. “And I can see the fear on your face. But I have no intention of making a sensational story out of your marriage. I consider Winnie a friend, and have only the utmost respect for you. I do not feel compelled to
divulge
every secret I uncover, Pimm—it is enough for me, sometimes, to discover the truth for myself alone. Nor am I troubled by the revelation on its own terms. Winnie may have begun life as a man, but that makes no difference—her soul is still the same.”

“That’s a relief,” Pimm said. “Though it’s rare to hear anyone attribute the possession of a soul to my wife. All right, then, Freddy—how quickly can you get us out of this cage?”

“Ten minutes,” Winnie said. “Perhaps five, if you can prevent yourself from prattling at me while I work.”

“Let’s hope I can get Big Ben awake in that time,” Pimm said, looking at his snoring comrade doubtfully.

“You mean to say you can circumvent the lock?” Ellie said.

“Of course,” Winnie said. “The lock on this cage is meant to keep
lions
captive, not creatures with thumbs and cunning small tools.” She reached up to her hair and began pulling out fine wires and rods, to Ellie’s astonishment.

“You’ve got lockpicks in your
hair
?”

“A woman needs a hobby,” Winnie said. “And you never know when you might find a nice lock to practice on.”

“But why didn’t you free us before?”

“Carrington was sitting there watching, mainly,” Winnie said. “We didn’t have time then, but for now, they seem to have left us unguarded. And I
was
curious to see whether they would capture Pimm or not. I made a small wager with myself, and in consequence, I now owe myself a sovereign.”

“And she accuses
me
of prattling,” Pimm said.

“Silence,” Winnie commanded, and knelt by the cage door to commence her work.

Love Life

T
his was to be the culmination of his long life’s work, and while Adam was annoyed to rely so heavily on the advancements of the loathsome Bertram Oswald, the end result would surely be satisfying enough to overcome his distaste.

The automaton on the table had been modified considerably from its original design. Oswald had consulted with Adam about the anatomy of his mechanical women early on—little did Adam know then how the success of the clockwork courtesans would lead to his own brush with death—and there were several partially-complete models stored around the laboratory. Adam had combined the best features of those mechanical women into a single harmonious form.

The parallel with the way Adam himself had been constructed, stitched together from pieces of corpses, was not lost on him, but while Adam was a patchwork creature of skewed proportions and inelegant seams, the clockwork body he’d created for his true love was perfection—mostly because Oswald was a great believer in uniformity and interchangeability of parts, while natural human bodies showed an astonishing range of variation even within the parameters of ostensibly “normal” physiognomy.

The heads of Oswald’s standard models didn’t contain much other than tubing for suction and speech—and rudimentary speech at that—plus some gears to run the eyes and facial muscles. With some rearrangement, there was ample room in the mechanical skull for a human brain. Connecting that brain in such a way that it could control the mechanical body was a rather different question, but in a way, it was a problem Adam had already solved: the delicate spiderweb of wires he used to transform ravenous flesh-eating corpses into docile submissives could be altered to act as an interface between mind and machine, without the magnetic mind-manipulators. This resurrection would have a mind of her own.

Adam carefully removed Margaret’s brain from its vat, disconnecting the leads, and placed it in the open skull of the clockwork courtesan on his table. He carefully attached the tubes that would circulate his artificial blood around the brain, keeping it fed and oxygenated, then attached the metal spiderweb that would allow her control of her body. These eyes were better than human eyes, capable of seeing spectrums invisible to ordinary mortals, and the hearing and senses of smell were likewise advanced. While the sense of taste was non-existent, he could address that problem in the future. Adam and his beloved could embark on a life of eternal self-improvement, literally making one another better people.

If Adam had known how to do so, he would have given Margaret his own synesthesia, to let her taste the cross-connections in the sensory universe—but without dissecting his own brain, he wouldn’t know how to replicate the effect. Still, being able to see magnetic fields and into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums would help her understand
something
of his own unusual perceptions.

Mutual understanding was very important, in love.

For he
did
love her, and as he worked on integrating her living brain into her clockwork body, peace and happiness suffused his entire being. Since bringing her brain to life, he had spent hours speaking with Margaret, and she was a funny, quick, witty woman, driven to a life of prostitution by desperate circumstance rather than stupidity or low character. For her part, Margaret was delighted by Adam’s company, and understandably grateful for his efforts to restore her to a normal life. Oh, he hadn’t been
entirely
honest with her about her circumstances or his plans, but he’d told her that she’d been attacked, her body damaged terribly, and that he had a bold plan to give her back her sight and other lost senses, and to make her stronger and more beautiful than ever before.

And now was the time.

He stood back to survey her body. She was dressed in a simple linen shift, which Adam had sewn himself. (He was an excellent tailor, with cloth as well as flesh.) Her face was peaceful and composed, her lips succulent, her cheeks eternally touched with a fetching hint of blush, the lashes of her closed eyes long and lovely. And her body… well. Oswald knew his work well, and Adam had improved upon it. She was perfect, a statue of a goddess, brought to a semblance of life—and with a real human brain, possessed by a real human mind, brought to
true
life.

“Arise,” Adam murmured, and triggered the device in his hand that activated the spiderweb in her brain.

Margaret gasped, drawing a deep breath—not strictly necessary for life, but it did remarkable things to her bosom—and sat up, opening her eyes. She did not look much at all as she had in life, apart from the red hair and the cream complexion, but she was in every respect more lovely than before, and the animation of her soul in the body made it even more astonishingly lovely.

“I can see!” she shouted, holding up her hands in front of her. “The light, it… it is so much
richer
than the light I remember, and I can smell, oh, everything, nothing blends together, I can detect every strand of scent, and I
feel
—” She turned her perfect head to look at Adam—and flinched away, crying out in alarm, nearly sliding off the table in the violence of her reaction.

“Do not be alarmed,” Adam said from behind his mask. “I know I am… fearsome.”

She reached out and took his hand, running her finger across the stitching where his fingers—all with flesh of different colors, and none quite proportional in their lengths—were attached to his hands. “Were you in an accident, Adam?”

“No, my darling.” He closed his hand on hers. There could be no lies between them, not now. “I was made, you see. Created, by a man, many long years ago, sewn together from broken pieces to make a whole. And I
am
whole, where it counts, in my mind, in my soul—in my heart.” Only one heart, at the moment. He’d have to rectify that when he had a chance.

She nodded, apparently having no difficulty believing him—she was intelligent, but not well-educated, and while someone with scientific knowledge might have found the story of Adam’s creation difficult to believe, she had grown up surrounded by the wonders wrought by Oswald and his ilk, and did not appear to doubt his story at all.

“You should see yourself, Margaret. I hope you will be pleased. Let me bring you a glass.” He fetched a highly-polished sheet of metal, the closest thing he had to a mirror—he still had a tendency to smash any mirrors in his vicinity, when the dark moods took him—and let her hold it up to her face.

“Oh, Adam, I… I can’t believe it. You have given me a whole new
face
!”

“A whole new body,” Adam said.

Margaret lowered the glass, frowning. “What do you mean? This is not my own body, repaired?”

“You were beyond repair, my sweet, your body broken—but your mind was whole. I saved you. I gave you a new form.”

“Am I made… as you were?” She examined her face more intently in the glass, as if looking for scars, seams, inelegant joinings.

“Oh, no,” Adams said. “I am a far better creator than my
own
maker was. No, your form is not fearsome, but beautiful, and you are not sewn from broken bodies, but made from only the most modern materials. You will not age, Margaret. You will not grow sick. You will be this beautiful forever. And we will be together, just as we discussed.” He laced his fingers into hers.

“Can I stand?”

“Of course.” He helped her down from the table, and she tottered a little, then found her balance. She looked around the low-ceilinged, cluttered workshop, frowning. “This place is so cramped, so dank, Adam. This is where you work your miracles?”

“It is indeed. But we need not stay here, my darling—I have money put away, and we may go anywhere. Where have you always wanted to go? Paris? Rome? Someplace warm. Someplace with lights. Some place where we may love, and be loved, and be in love—”

She touched his cheek, though he could not feel it, through the mask. “May I see your face, Adam?” Her voice was low, a whisper, and he could not read her tone, though her voice looked like swirls of dark ink dispersing into the air.

“I… I fear…”

“I must see your face,” she said gently.

“Of course.” He removed the mask, keeping his own eyes squeezed tightly shut, but nevertheless, he heard her sudden gasp, felt her hand tear away from his. “I know it is frightening,” he said. “I was not beautiful to begin with, and my skin suffered terrible frostbite some years ago when I was in the Arctic, and there was also a fire, but—” He opened his eyes. Margaret was standing several feet away, and had a hand to her mouth in horror.

Adam’s first memory was of his own creator, looking upon him in horror at the monstrous thing he had wrought, and though Margaret and Victor could not have been more different, their expressions were almost the same.

He took a step toward her.

Margaret backed away farther, faster than he advanced. “Adam, I… Forgive me. I will always cherish you as a friend, and as my savior, but I fear… I cannot be your… your…”

“Wife,” he whispered. “When you were ill, in the darkness, we spoke of marriage, of eternity together—”