Beneath London (35 page)

St. Ives regarded Klingheimer for a moment without speaking. His matter-of-fact tone was appalling, but interesting in a clinical sense. “You knew that I carried a ham and pickled onion sandwich into the underworld,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Because an inept man detonated an explosive charge that cast you and Mr. Frobisher to your doom, or so I thought. I sent a party to search for you. The world below is vast beyond belief, however, and we failed to find either you or Mr. Frobisher. What we found was a scrap of newsprint that had recently wrapped a sandwich. Certainly that’s one of the lesser mysteries.”

St. Ives nodded. “No sign at all of Gilbert Frobisher?”

“Alas, none. I tell you that truthfully. Some weeks earlier we had made an exploratory foray into the underworld through a little-known point of access on Hampstead Heath. Perhaps you are now familiar with it. It was then that we came upon the living corpse, if you will, of Ignacio Narbondo. I was amused at the look of surprise on your face when you saw the Doctor in his vivarium – in his fungal jungle, if you will.” Mr. Klingheimer smiled broadly once again, although the smile was short lived. St. Ives wondered if his facial expressions meant anything at all, or were simply a continually shifting mask.

The door to the antechamber opened and Willis Pule walked in, carrying a silver tray with glasses, a bottle of sherry, and a half dozen cream tarts. He set the tray on the low table that separated St. Ives and Mr. Klingheimer and poured sherry into each of the glasses. St. Ives looked hard at the door and then at Pule.

“I adjure you to do nothing foolish,” Klingheimer told him. “It is
utterly
unnecessary. You’ve come to the place of your song dream, sir. I intend to offer you a noble position in the godhead, if you will – a minor dukedom on the mountainside, but palatial.”

Pule went out again. Mr. Klingheimer tasted the sherry and nodded in apparent approval. “And now a question for you, Professor. When you were finding your way out of the underworld you no doubt took an avid interest in the luminous mushrooms. You must have considered their very interesting effect on the animals they capture – a human animal in Narbondo’s case. How would you describe them?”

“I would describe them as nondescript, gargantuan, vampiric, predatory, motile relatives of the common field blewit, although this last is mere guesswork. The leech-like tendencies of the fungus are strangely pronounced, and they are apparently immune to the rapid growth and decay of countless species of mushroom here above. As you stated, their fluids seem to have the power to sustain life.”

Mr. Klingheimer nodded. “I wonder if you can distinguish the faint green pallor to my skin?”

“I can and I have. The effect is even more pronounced in Willis Pule. The pallid green tone is consistent with that of the liquid in the fungus, of course.”

“Indeed it is. Mr. Pule dines upon them, as do I. Both of us swill the luminous fluids. He was a pioneer, was Mr. Pule – a willing subject. The effect is startling – a sharpening of the senses, the diminution of age itself, the repair of the flesh. The fungal blood, I mean to say, is nothing less than the elixir of life.”

“Immortality, do you mean?”

Klingheimer shrugged. “There is no such thing,” he said. “There is, however, considerable ground between mortality and its opposite. One is the fate of mankind and the other the fate of the gods, all of whom have passed away in due time. How old do you take me for?”

“Old enough to have more sense and scruples than you apparently have, if either of those things in fact interest you.”

“Fie, sir. Philosophical gabble. What if I told you that I was ninety-three years old? What if I revealed that small doses of the elixir have had a salutary effect upon my health? I purchased a bottle of it many years ago from a man of whom you have some knowledge, and very shortly thereafter I set out to find my own source – a great challenge, I assure you, as was the process of brewing it. It is only recently, however, that I have discovered vast fields of it, as have you, without a doubt, given your trek underground. The pressing of my first harvest yielded a small keg of refined elixir, and now I drink it in quantity.”

“You mean to bottle it like wine, then? Set up as a commercial gentleman in a factory, perhaps.”

“Not at all, Professor. I simply mean to possess the elixir in quantity. I mean to annex the lands in which those fields grow. I’ll happily share it with my… associates – with yourself, if you’d like. I beg you to consider it.”

“Your increased consumption is not due to an addictive quality in the elixir? I’m reminded of the perils of chloral hydrate or laudanum.”

“Nothing of the kind, sir. It’s a noxious brew at first, and it requires an act of will to consume it, even if it’s diluted with spirits to cover the flavor and smell. Its result is efficacious, however, one relishes the effect and what it portends, if not the flavor of the swill itself.”

St. Ives tasted his sherry. Clearly Klingheimer had manifold addictions, extreme self-opinion fueling them, and was dosing himself in order to pursue his supposed ascent to some sort of lunatic godhead. There was no means by which a mortal could reason with such a man.

“Is the wine satisfactory?” Klingheimer asked.

“The elixir of life,” St. Ives said.

“Then pose me another question. I seldom get an opportunity to speak my mind.”

“What do you mean to do with Narbondo now that he too has the fluids flowing in his veins? Now that he has become one of your ‘associates.’”

“We’ve already done it, sir. We have accessed his mental faculties. Dr. Peavy has trepanned the man, and his mind has been explored. He is a receptacle of vast knowledge, which news does not surprise you, and because of the mushrooms that knowledge remains intact. He is also mentally unstable, a man driven by hatred – an emotion to be despised, as are most of what we refer to as emotions. Because of that he is destined to live out his life in his wood-and-glass prison. His life is mine to dispose of or to maintain. Would it astonish you to know that he is entirely conscious? You can speak to him, if it would amuse you.”

“Nothing about the man amuses me. How does Dr. Peavy effect this ‘exploration’ of the mind?”

“His methods involve the electrical stimulation of the cortex and the linking of two brains, connecting them, literally, with thin silver wires across which knowledge passes in an electrical current. Willis Pule has been the medium.”

“That explains the wires intermingled with the hairs on Pule’s head?”

“Just so. The wires are fixed in his brain. You can see for yourself that he bears no apparent ill effects. To the contrary, Mr. Pule has the honor of being the first explorer of the vast ocean that is the human mind. I myself am another.”

“
Literally
, do you mean? You’ve put yourself willingly under Peavy’s knife?”

“Literally, yes.”

“Despite his being
careless of the single life
?”

“Even so. That unfortunate carelessness led in time to great successes. Willis Pule is an example. Narbondo another. Dr. Peavy has made other discoveries also. He has discovered the seat of paranormal powers as well as a means to enhancing them.”

“You refer to this mumbo-jumbo about the pineal gland?”

“I can assure you, Professor, that ‘mumbo jumbo’ has nothing to do with it. It is a simple matter of effecting several small lesions with a very thin, charged wire – a matter of… opening a window, if you will.” Klingheimer bowed deeply and parted the hair on the top of his head, fingering a small circular scar. “Do you see it?” he asked.

“Yes,” St. Ives said. “No trepanning, then?”

“Unnecessary. Peavy spent the better part of a year finding a
route
, shall we say, to the center of the brain, where the gland lies between the hemispheres. The streets of our city and the hallways of our asylums provided subjects who, if not entirely willing, were safely persuaded to take part in Peavy’s experiments. Once Peavy was sure of himself, I myself went willingly ‘under the knife,’ as you put it. The result was extraordinary.”

“I admit to being baffled by all of this,” St. Ives said. “What is your motive if not material gain?”

“I have no motive but knowledge, sir. As I said but a moment ago, I am a mountaineer. My sights are on the summit, and I use whatever means are at hand to scale…”

The door opened – Jimmy this time, who nodded and stood by the door. He held a pistol in his hand, and he regarded St. Ives with distaste.

“Ah,” said Mr. Klingheimer, “it appears that Dr. Peavy is just now completing his work. Will you follow me into the theater, Professor? I believe you’ll see some prodigious wonders.”

Klingheimer stood up and set out. Jimmy falling in behind St. Ives, the three of them entered the operating theater, which was stiflingly warm. St Ives saw that a large iron furnace some three-feet wide by eight long was emitting a low roar, which accounted for the smoke rising from the chimney outside. A heavy stovepipe connected the furnace to the chimney.

St. Ives was distracted from the ominous furnace by the sight of Clara Wright bound into a chair. Her head hung downward as if she were etherized. A wheeled pole stood beside her. Hanging at the top of the pole was what appeared to be a pig’s bladder connected by lubing to a syringe affixed to her arm. Dr. Peavy worked over her, manipulating a pump-like apparatus, drawing fluids from the bladder and forcing them onward with an injector.

“Clara and I are being wed as we speak, Professor,” Klingheimer said in a low voice. “Wed in the highest sense of the word. She is appropriately clad in her matrimonial gown, as you can see, made from good, English, Macclesfield silk. You’ll agree that the gown is artfully simple. There was no time to chase after superficial elegance, and of course there is nothing superficial in the girl at all.”

St. Ives stared at him, looking for any facial indication of perverted humor, of irony, but he saw nothing beyond a mask of self-satisfaction.

“Our ceremony involves no clergyman, and this theater is our humble church. My blood is even now flowing into her veins, mingling with her own, and her blood with mine, a portion of fungal elixir into the mix – a
literal
marriage, do you see? Nothing symbolic. The girl has been sedated and fixed in the chair for her own good. She might do herself a mischief otherwise.”

“You run the risk of murdering her,” St. Ives said. “If the blood is incompatible…”

“And of murdering myself, sir. Clara and I have exchanged blood twice now, and will continue to exchange it until we are quite the same person, at least in essence. If our bloods, so to speak, were incompatible, we would be aware of it six times over by now. I depend on Dr. Peavy, you see, in these matters, just as Peavy depends upon Jules Klingheimer.”

“What can you possibly hope to gain by this dangerous play, sir?”

“Clairvoyance, in a word. Second sight. It is one of my goals to expand my sensibilities, to see beyond that which ordinary mortals see. Clara, of course, is no ordinary mortal, and she will share her powers with me. I am in the act of becoming. You, sir, are in the act of
unbecoming
, which is the great human curse. Now, sir, I adjure you to silence for a brief time. I would like to commune with my bride. Please sit, Professor.”

Mr. Klingheimer waited until St. Ives was seated, and then he himself found a seat where he had a clear view of Clara. He settled himself and ceased to move. St. Ives watched his now blank face, wondering what the man intended.

* * *

C
lara felt the blood leaking slowly into her vein – an amount exactly equal to what they had taken from her and put into Mr. Klingheimer, or so he had told her. It was painful where the needle went in, but no worse than other things she had known in her life, and she knew by now that the pain would recede when the needle was taken out. She forced her mind away from thoughts of the tainting of her blood…

She was aware of the Professor’s arrival. Finn had told her that he was in London. Had he come here to Dr. Peavy’s to take her away with him? He seemed to be at odds with Mr. Klingheimer, who was enamored with the sound of his own voice, his own gabble.
You run the risk of murdering her
, the Professor had said. And yet the sharing of the blood went on. The Professor had no power here. If he did, he would stop what they were doing.

It came to her now that someone was regarding her – not from without, but from within, as if an intruder had found his way into a darkened house and was standing in silence watching the family sleep. Intruders never meant well. She began to recite “The Jumblies,” which she had long used to drive interruptive thoughts from her mind when she wanted her mind ordered, or wanted it to shine a light in the darkness – a light that her mother might see:

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,

In a Sieve they went to sea:

In spite of all their friends could say,

On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,

Clara pictured the sieve, spinning on the surface of the sea, faster and faster, the Jumblies holding on tightly in the stormy weather.

Far and few, far and few
,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
,

In her mind’s eye the sieve spun faster and faster until it was a spinning ball, like the round head of a man – white like the moon, like the man in the moon. There was a green tinge over all, however, green like the Jumblies’ heads.

And all night long in the moonlight pale,

We sail away with a pea-green sail
,

The conversation in the room diminished to a mere droning noise like the speech of bees. She saw in her mind a bearded face, smiling an empty smile, the smile of a figure drawn in the dust with a stick. It was him – Mr. Klingheimer, who was the intruder within her mind, and he looked about him, as if to make himself at home.