Camera Obscura (27 page)

 
 

Behind glass walls, the sailors crawled… On hand and foot, they prowled, the rat men of the
White Worm
– all but their master.

  With his tattered old coat the old captain looked more batlike than ever. Silently, he peered back at them through the glass. Silver strands oozed across his large hands.

  "My poor Karnstein…" the countess said, surprising Milady. She approached the glass, and laid her palm against the glass. On the other side Karnstein did the same. "Camilla…" he said. "Help me. Help us."

  "I will," the countess said softly. Milady felt as if she were interrupting a private moment. She coughed, and the countess turned to her, her hand falling away slowly from the wall of glass. "Do you understand the nature of their malady?" she said, her voice sounding harsh in the quiet room. She glared at Milady, who did not reply. "I am well informed," the countess said. "The Council has been updating me on a regular basis as to the… events that took place in Paris. Events to which I understand you were central."

  Behind the glass the rat men crawled pitifully. The countess said, "I know your nature, Milady de Winter. I have seen it in other agents of the Council–" Her tone made it quite clear she did not approve. "Single-minded. Determined – to a fault. I have met Tômas before, too, did you know that?" she smiled crookedly. "He was a handsome man in those days. Yet the same as you, Milady. The same as you. No conception of the larger canvas, as it were. Tell me, what do
you
think the nature of this malady is?"

  Milady, thinking back to her vision of the lizardine statue, a thought recalled – she said, "It's a device, for recording the dead."

  The countess's eyes opened wider – Milady, it appeared, had managed to surprise her. "You have a fragment of jade where you once had an eye…" she murmured. "What else do you see, Milady de Winter?" She tilted her head, looking at Milady curiously. "It is a good thing the Council sent you to me, to be studied."

  Milady, her gun arm rising as of its own volition – "I am not yours to be
studied
."

  "Ah, yes," the countess said, unperturbed. "The modifications are rather fascinating. Dear Viktor's work, yes? A darling man."

  Milady had never heard Viktor referred to as anyone's darling, before. She bit her tongue and didn't answer. "A gun," the countess said, some amusement in her voice. "Always a gun is the answer to you, is it not? Tômas, he was the same. A weapon, you are. The Council's own guns." She sighed, and shook her head. "Guns do not think," she said, "guns are there to be wielded." She turned away from Milady, looked again through the glass. "Look at them!" she said. "A device, you said, for recording the dead, yes – or the living. A device for making
impressions
of organic life – would it surprise you to learn that I believe that had been rather a speciality of the lizards' science? No?"

  She didn't wait for a reply. "Come," she said again – Milady was becoming seriously irked with the countess's manner – and walked away, Karnstein still standing with his hand against the glass, watching her. Milady, unnerved, decided to follow the countess.

  "Yet you do not ask," the countess said, continuing a onesided conversation as she stalked ahead of Milady – they were passing through a corridor and back out onto the open space of the platform – "you do not think to ask –
why?
You do not pause, in your endless chase, and ask yourself, not what it does, but why it does it? For what purpose?"

  Milady, a small voice – "I have wondered–"

  A snort from the countess. "You wonder. Indeed. Come. I will show you my work here."

  They were approaching one of the shafts built into the bottom of the raft. Milady stared down into dark water. It was a wide, open hole into the ocean, and rising out of it–

  She pulled back, her gun arm rising–

  A giant creature, whose tentacles ebbed across the water–

  "This is Waldo," the countess said, with some pride.

  Milady stared at the creature. The head bobbed up to the surface and stayed there, and the wide body floated upwards, one of the tentacles rising into the air to come landing, extended, on the platform beside them. "I designed him myself," the countess said. "Come, come!"

  A machine, Milady realised. And now the countess, quite unconcerned, was walking along the rigidly extended tentacle towards the head, where a mouth opened like a door. Milady followed her, afraid of slipping, and knew that, for the moment, at least, her fate was in this woman's hands. The thought did not make her happy.

  She entered the mouth, found herself in a utilitarian room – the two eyes she had seen before were indeed windows, and just before them was a large control panel of polished wood and burnished chrome, two chairs before it. The countess sat in one and gestured for Milady to sit in the other. At the touch of a button, the door – mouth – closed and there was a hiss of escaping air. "We're now sealed in," the countess said. Another button – the countess's painted fingernail as polished as the controls – and the giant creature came to life. "And… down," the countess murmured. "Are you familiar with the poem by that fellow who was fond of laudanum? Down to a sunless sea…"

  Milady shivered. Water began to rise over the windows as the vessel sank. In moments they were under the giant platform that was Scab. It was dark outside, and there was no illumination inside the vehicle. "It is dark," Countess Dellamorte said. "As dark as space, Milady de Winter. Think of space, Milady. Think of that vast unexplored region that lies just beyond our atmosphere. The universe is out there…" And now, moving the controls, she made the vehicle turn, and as it did Milady began to see lights coming alive down there, in the darkness, tens and then hundreds of lights blossoming in the depths of the sea.

  "Stars, and planets, beyond count…" the enigmatic woman beside her said. "And who knows what manner of life dwells beyond our world?"

  Milady wasn't sure she was expected to provide an answer. She stared instead, fascinated, at the approaching lights. A guage set into the control panel indicated depths, it seemed. They were sinking fast.

  "You may have heard the theory expressed that those of the lizardine court –" a note of distaste in her voice – "have come from another world, beyond our own. That is, I can assure you, quite correct. Their technology far surpassed our own. Their race was able to build ships that sailed amongst the stars." She gave a chuckle that did not have much humour in it. "But technology fails – perhaps the first thing any practical scientist ever learns. Who knows what accident – if that is what it was – led to their being stranded here, on this world?"

  "What are those lights?" Milady said. Countess Dellamorte shook her head. "You must consider the larger implications!" she said. "Like it or not, we are at war. Or will be."

  "War?" Milady said.

  "A few years ago, the Lizardine Empire successfully sent a probe into space. That probe was meant to study our neighbouring planet – Mars. But that was not its true function. What I am telling you, by the way, is highly classified. However, I feel I should be candid with you and, here on Scab, one
is
rather given more leeway… especially seeing as Scab itself, of course, does not exist."

  "Of course," Milady said, and the two women shared a smile. They were both professionals, Milady knew. And as different as their positions were, their goals were the same – weren't they?

 
 

 
 

Waldo descended. Around the sub-aquatic vehicle the dark sea pressed, and Milady saw the dial of the pressure gauge moving slowly, continuously, in a clockwise direction. The darkness of the sea oppressed her. Who knew what lay below, deep at the bottom of the sea? Again she thought of her mother, all the others on that long-ago journey. Were they waiting for her, down below?

  "Space," Countess Dellamorte said. Her voice seemed hushed, down here. "Look around you, Milady. I said my research involves life. More specifically, it concerns human survival in inhospitable environments." She gestured at the dark water beyond the glass. "The sea is my laboratory. Here, we work on the possibility that, one day, humanity will survive beyond the atmosphere. It is imperative that we do. The Lizardine Empire poses danger to us on Earth – but what unimaginable danger may threaten us from beyond the stars?"

  "The probe," Milady said. The countess nodded. "It was a distress buoy, to use a nautical term," she said. "Sending out a message to – whom? That is what we must prepare ourselves for, why Scab was built, why funding can be found."

  "But we have co-existed with Les Lézards for centuries," Milady protested. "Surely–"

  "They have changed our history!" the countess said. "Changed our future, with their presence."

  "We have peace–"

  "Do we?" The smile the countess gave her was as cold as the sea. And now she could see the lights growing closer, illuminating–

  There were structures in the sea, hazily visible through the murky water. Bubbles of hard matter anchored on an enormous chain, each bubble as large as a house. There were figures moving along the chain, human in shape, but only just. Suits, she thought. Some sort of outer layers protecting the divers. And long, elongated shapes like cigars moving in the water – submarines. They looked like tiny fish against the bulk of the chain and the never-ending sea.

  "Krupp is developing a new kind of cannon," the countess said. "Krupp's Baby, they call it now – and Krupp's Monster, too. A cannon of the type the Lizardine Empire already possesses – one whose shot is so powerful it can penetrate the very atmosphere."

  "A weapon?"

  The smile played on the countess's face. "A weapon," she agreed. "For what can fire into space can also fire across vast distances right here. The future of war…"

  "Who else?" Milady said – demanded. The countess nodded slowly. "Many others," she said. "All playing their own subtle game for domination. Chung Kuo, behind their secretive walls… the Council, the lizardine court, and others… It is said Lord Babbage himself is gathering power, and as for Vespuccia…"

  Milady thought of the wide open spaces, the buffalo hordes and the cities of the migrants who came there to escape the lizardine dominion. The countess said, "Edison, Tesla, each gathering power. And as for the Council of Chiefs and their Black Cabinet – who knows what they think as they weigh and listen and learn and decide? They have the power of a continent in their hands. Do you expect them not to use it?"

  As Waldo sank lower and lower the lights grew in brightness, and Milady's breath caught in her throat. Structures came into view, enormous bubbles tied together with a chain in complex patterns, and she realised she was seeing an entire city under the sea. Small figures and vessels moved between the alien structures, and she saw more of the bubbles were being added, as a swarm of vehicles converged over a half-built structure, and the chain was being extended. "What do you think the plague is?" the countess said. "This alien device – do you think it is the only one?"

  "I… I don't know."

  "Remnants of the lizards' technology can still be found," the countess said. "Objects of power far advanced from our own, fledgling technology. There are others, and more – what may we yet find beyond our own world? Did they litter our solar system with their machines, do you think? And are they sleeping? Or awake?"

  Milady was growing uncomfortable of the countess's presence. None of this concerned her. Her objective remained the same. Scab did not – should not – exist. Talk of space seemed fantastical to her. All she truly knew was what truly mattered – she had a killer to catch, a job to complete. Regardless of the Council's instructions. The countess may have noticed her expression. "Guns," she said disgustedly. "You are fashioned so precisely by the Council that you can no more conceive of your true purpose than the objects you resemble. The object you are hunting, it is not a mindless sickness, a natural plague. It is a
device
, a thing created by a technology you cannot even imagine, Milady de Winter. And its purpose is clear."

  "Not to me…" Milady murmured. The countess glanced at her sharply. "Then you are more dim-witted than I gave you credit for," she said.

  Milady stared at the impossible city under the sea. What manner of people would wish to live like this? she wondered. She saw it for what it truly was – a prison under the sea, the countess its warden. Peopled by those who could not live in society, exiles sent to live out their days on Scab. It was aptly named.

  The countess, grimacing, took the controls. Waldo spun around, tentacles flowing gracefully. The countess pulled a lever, and the pressure gauge paused and then began to travel in an anticlockwise direction. "Enough," the countess said.

  "It's a probe," Milady said quietly. The countess looked startled. Milady said, "That is your conclusion, isn't it?" She thought of the jade statue, of the insane, lonely voices babbling endlessly. "A device for studying a new territory, the way we send spies to learn the way for an… an invasion."

  Countess Dellamorte looked taken aback, then, suddenly, pleased. "A gun that thinks," she said. "You please me."

  Milady shook her head. She felt very tired, now. Her eyes threatened to close and she said, "Bring us up."

  The thought that was forming in her head, the thought she did not bother sharing with the countess, was:
What if it isn't
what you say it is at all? What if it is lonely, and desperately seeking
a way back home?