Camera Obscura (33 page)

 
 

She could no longer sense the Phantom. She could no longer sense Kai.

  Something was changing.

  The voices said,
Ninety-eight point eight percent, ninety-eight
point nine
. The pain was still with her, but she couldn't see.

  The auction was at the Zoopraxographical Hall.

  She staked it out. Waiting for the players to arrive, the Phantom, Kai. She couldn't go – the Monsignor's orders were very specific.

  She watched Dellamorte arrive. McGill and the leopard woman were with her. They fanned out, found observation posts. She saw her signal – more of the Scab people were already in place.

  Master Long had left her. She was on her own. She knew he had his own operation going – she thought she saw Mistress Yi on the roof, but she was gone before Cleo could be certain.

  So many watchers and she was watching the watchers. She wondered who was watching her.

  The voices said,
Ninety-nine point one percent
and something was wrong, but she didn't know what.

  The buyers began to arrive.

  She didn't recognise the Sioux chief, but she did recognise the Empress-Dowager's emissary. She entered the building with her escort: ushers on the door searched everyone for weapons. Madame Linlin bore it stoically.

  More faces she didn't know – a short black man who may have represented Zululand, a tall one who may have been Dahomey. A fat white man had to be helped from his carriage and she stared at his face: it had to be Krupp, the industrialist.

  A delegate from Siam, then an Aztec, then another familiar face: Mycroft Holmes, puffing on a cigar. They kept coming, these sole representatives, while their people watched from outside and had the entire building under lockdown. There was no way out of there. Kai had no way of escaping… She knew they would all bid, but who would actually get hold of the statue depended on later, on who had the superior firepower.

  
Ninety-nine point two percent.
And something still wasn't right.

  There were no windows. Inside was a machine that showed pictures. Is that what they thought the statue was? Pictures of another world… She shuddered, feeling suddenly cold. She was sitting in a coffee shop on a roof opposite the building. She wondered how many of the other diners were watching too, waiting as she did.

  All of them, she thought.

  She saw a tall turbaned man come to the Zoopraxographical Hall. His face was familiar – Prince Dakkar, she thought. She had once seen his dossier… A delegate from the empire of the Mexica next, followed by a tall pale man – one of the Nordic countries? – and another, and another. The Monsignor's black carriage arrived. His two bodyguards helped him down. They disappeared through the doors.

  More delegates…

  Last one, unexpected: she saw Master Long.

  Before he entered he turned his head, for just a moment. Did he see her?

  He disappeared inside. The ushers followed, and the doors closed.

  The auction was set to begin.

  And something still didn't feel right.

  She knew then that she had to get inside.

 

She saw him before he saw her, she was sure of that.

  Tômas, a shadow moving against the wall.

  She left money on the table and was gone. She was on the street and running, and the alien energy coursed through her. Someone tried to grab her – McGill. She broke his wrists and kept going. Someone high up took a shot at her. She rolled and kept going. The Phantom turned, saw her chasing, grinned.

  He leaped up into the air, found purchase on the wall, climbed. She followed.

  So this is what it felt like, long exposure to the statue, she thought.

  She could do impossible things.

  They leaped on and off walls, street lamps. Gunfire zinged past them. But the watchers couldn't come any closer. The terms of the auction were strict… and the prize too valuable to risk.

  For anyone but the Phantom and her.

  He found a side door and burst it open as if it were paper. There were guards inside and she arrived a fraction of a second too late. He'd killed them neatly and kept going.

  She followed.

  Into darkness and smoke–

  The Phantom disappeared, too quickly to catch. She stood very still.

  A light flickering, a beam crossing a cloud of smoke. Moving pictures: figures moving through mist, haltingly, grey figures with the faces of the dead. The mists seemed to part, but didn't – something behind them she had to see and couldn't.

  She was standing to one side of the screen, hidden by a pulled-back curtain… an audience of faces looking up. They were all seated, and on the stage a man was standing before a podium, and a jade statue of a cross-legged lizard sat on a velvet cushion in a glass display cabinet beside him.

  But it was not Kai.

  She could still not see him. She could not feel the Phantom…

  
Ninety-nine point three percent. Initiating gateway transfer proto
cols. Checksum routines engaged.

  She had seen the man before.

  Kai's servant.

  The Manchu.

  There was excitement in the audience. The images flickering on the screen were hypnotising. Could they not see what was happening?

  Mycroft Holmes: "Ten million."

  Madame Linlin: "Fifteen."

  Dakkar: "Sixteen."

  Krupp: "Twenty million."

  She stared at the statue, felt nothing.

  The images kept flickering on the screen. Pictures of the dead, the mist almost but never quite opening…

  Not yet.

  The Sioux chief: "Twenty-three."

  Krupp: "Twenty-five million."

  Holmes: "Thirty."

  She saw several of the delegates shake their heads. She knew the real bidding would be between a handful of people. But it was wrong!

  And where was Tômas?

  She spotted him. He had moved around the audience, a shadow in the dark, was approaching the stage on the other side from her. He grinned at her, his face barely human, then his gaze turned towards the statue and remained there.

  She couldn't put the audience at risk. On the stage, the Manchu said: "Ladies and gentlemen, for this once-in-alifetime offer, please let us move past the courtesy round. Do I hear fifty million?"

  But it was all a charade. Couldn't they see it? The statue was worth any amount they could throw at it, but Kai and the Manchu could not possibly hope to get out alive after the sale–

  And where
was
Kai?

  
Ninety-nine point four percent
, whispered the voices, from far away.

  Madame Linlin: "Thirty-five."

  Holmes: "Forty million."

  Images flickering on the screen. The Manchu waving an auctioneer's hammer – she looked for the Phantom again and couldn't see him–

  Then a roar, and the Manchu dropped his hammer–

  Shouting in the audience – she saw Master Long turn his head – their eyes connected – a message in his eyes she couldn't decipher. He shook his head – no.

  The Phantom had leaped onto the stage. The Manchu drew back his hand, sent a fist into the Phantom's face–

  Tômas extended claws, tried to rip the other man's throat out–

  The Manchu laughed in his face.

  Shouts, the bidders rising from their seats in a panic – on the screen the mist rolled on. The voices of the statue said,
Ninety
nine point four five percent complete. Transference protocols initiating.
Primary power source hooked up to origin-point mechanism.

  The Manchu had Qinggong, she realised: long-term exposure to the statue gave him strength equivalent to that of Tômas.

  With a bit of luck they would kill each other.

  And no one was minding the statue…

  She dashed onto the stage, broke the glass of the display case and grabbed it.

 
 

 
 

She had expected pain. There was none. The jade fragment in her eye socket remained motionless. No visions, no flashes of green – the statue was inert in her arms.

  She ran.

  They were trashing the stage, the Manchu fighting Tômas against a background of moving pictures. Screams were muted – everything was muted.

  And something was still very wrong.

  She carried the statue one-handed. It felt too light. Bursting out to the street outside – it was chaos. The security forces of more than a dozen nations descended on the building. A familiar face – Mistress Yi running, Ip Kai behind her–

  "Milady, no!"

  The leopard woman tackled her. She had claws for hands. She missed Cleo's eye, left bloodied gashes on her face. Cleo kicked – the woman came at her again, hissing.

  She shot her.

  Her gun arm had a life of its own. She shot half a dozen attackers but there were too many of them and it was hard to fight holding the statue…

  Wrong. All wrong.

  She ran – they followed. Bullets missed her – mostly. One hit her artificial leg, sent her sprawling. The statue rolled away–

  The voices kept whispering in her mind, but they were too far away.

  And Kai was never in the building, she realised.

  Mistress Yi, a light shadow – "I'll distract them."

  She grabbed the statue, jumped – onto a street lamp and going higher, trying to scale the roof of the next building. People ran screaming down the road – innocents caught in the crossfire of politics.

  Cleo was ignored – they were all pursuing the statue and she'd lost it.

  Construct the sequence of events, try to overlay some logic. The auction was a diversion, Kai had other plans–

  He still had the statue, and it was nowhere near the Zoopraxographical Hall.

  Which meant the statue on the stage had been a decoy.

  Which meant–

  She ran.

  She tried to reach him, through the fragment – reached into the jade light, forcing it.

  Met resistance. It was pushing her out – the pain spread through her so quickly she couldn't even shout. Glimpses, nevertheless: Tômas bloodied, the Manchu holding him down – the inside of the Zoopraxographical Hall was a mess, the stage had collapsed – Tômas rolled, bit down on the Manchu's arm. She heard bones breaking, heard the Manchu laugh.

  Was pushed away – the jade a viscous liquid. Where was she? Running blindly, the lake on her left, searchlights crisscrossing the white city – lanterns floating in the air.

  She stopped, took a deep breath, held still.

  Tried again.

  And all over the white city the lights dimmed and died out at once.

  All around her, uncertain silence.

  In the darkness only one thing remained alight.

  The Ferris wheel. It shone with a blinding white light – too strong.

  There were gunshots in the distance…

  Someone screamed.

  The silence broke – the screams rose from multiple directions. She tried to hold her ground – people pushed against her, running now, trying to get away.

  The magic was gone from the white city.

  She pushed into the jade. A picture resolved – slowly, and it hurt when it appeared. Kai against a background of stars – he seemed to float in mid-air.

  Kai: "Help me…"

  She saw the statue beside him. It was burning, engulfed in cold flames.

  The Ferris wheel.

  Once again, she ran.

 

Screams.

  They cut through the night, voices wafting down from on high. Trapped in the moving cars of the giant wheel: thirty-six cars and up to sixty people in each – and it had been busy every day since it had opened for business.

  Two thousand people trapped above-ground – the wheel kept rotating, faster and faster. It was a streak of white light in the night, a blur of motion.

  She looked up – no way to climb, Kai somewhere up there – electric cables snaked towards the base of the wheel. When she stared up the air inside the wheel seemed to shimmer.

  "Master Long says you must stop it." A voice beside her – Mistress Yi materialised, minus the fake statue. Blood covered her face, one arm was bent at an unnatural angle. She was breathing heavily.

  Milady: "How?"

  Mistress Yi: "You have to climb up there."

  Milady: "Up where?"

  But she already knew.

  Flashes of jade – Kai wasn't in a passenger car. He was at the centre of the wheel, on the axle itself. He was fastening the statue to the spider's web of spokes. Electric cables ran up there, too. The statue glowed. The air inside the wheel shimmered and looked like a mirror.

  Mistress Yi: "Use Qinggong."

  Milady: "Are you insane?"

  The girl shrugged. "Then it's going to succeed."

  "What is it doing?"

  "What it must."

  A key. A key was for opening doors…

  And this one led to another world.

  
Ninety-nine point six percent. Initiating quantum hookup.

  Kai, distant: "Help me!"

  Screams from the cars. The wheel was moving faster and faster. Darkness over the Fair – torches offered sporadic illumination.

  The wheel was almost three hundred feet high. There was no way up there.

  Unless…

  She said: "Stay here. There was one way to get up there–

  She ran.

 

The plane was where she'd last seen it. There was no one around. The Du Temple monoplane, looking like a moth, wings too delicate to work, the body tiny–

  But it
did
work. Thirteen metre wingspan, a light carriage weighing a mere eighty kilograms – she had to add her own weight, hope the ramp was high enough – but she'd seen it fly. A flash boiler–

  It was loaded – the pilot must have expected to make another flight. She lit the flame, climbed into the seat – the engine came alive behind her. Steam burst through a network of tubes, compressed water heated by the flame – no time to think now, no time for anything but–

  A jet of pressured steam came roaring out of the engine and the plane glided forward, gathering speed–

  She flew down the ramp. Wind and smoke stung her face. The roar of the engine filled the night–

  The plane reached the end of the ramp and flew over it–

  The ground came very close and missed her.

  The plane rose.

  She coaxed it, talking to it – she rose, slowly, slowly – the ground grew distant. She turned, swerving – saw the plane's reflection in the lagoon. She found a pair of aviator glasses and put them on. Circling, the wheel rising impossibly high, the air inside it changing now, the mirror becoming a lens, through which she saw…

  The voices said,
Quantum signature verified. Opening entangle
ment channels. Handshake protocols response correct! Correct!

  And –
Ninety-nine point seven percent. Ninety-nine point eight.

  She could feel their elation. She took the plane in a wide circuit, the Manufacturers and Fine Arts building rising on one side, the lizards' pyramid on the other, and she flew the monoplane straight–

  She could no longer see the spokes of the wheel. The structure of the wheel was no longer there, or – not exactly.

  It was overlaid. She saw through jade – Kai huddled on the main axis, the statue bathed in flames – the sky behind them disappeared and was replaced with–

  The voices said,
Ninety-nine point nine
– triumphantly. Behind her the air was full of steam. She aimed for the centre of the wheel–

  Where there was a deep blackness, filled with stars.