Camera Obscura (6 page)

  She followed the scientist along the hard floor of the cavern, toward his open lab. Viktor favoured steel. There were steel desks and towering banks of instruments, gauges and blinking lights and enormous switches, all set into steel cabinets twice her height. There were steel surgical instruments and steel beds, an entire operating theatre lying there – thankfully unused, for once.

  There were refrigeration units, powered by the hiddenbelow engines. When they arrived at the lab area it only took Viktor a moment and when he turned back to her he was holding a syringe in his hands and she almost shot him. She had the urge to shoot him every time she came there.

  "It's a rejuvenation serum," he said, proudly. "Still experimental, of course, but…"

  "I just want a cup of coffee," she said. Viktor's face fell. "This will revolutionise medical science!" he said.

  "I have no doubt it will."

  "Of course," he said, putting it carefully away, "I still need to iron out some of the more unfortunate side effects…"

  "You do that," she said.

  "Coffee," he said. "Coffee, coffee… where did I put that machine?"

  "You now need a machine to make
coffee
?" she said.

  "Milady," he said, turning to her with a curiously serious expression on his face, "we must show
respect
to our machines."

  "I wonder if they are indeed ours," she said, but softly, and he didn't seem to hear her. "Or if we're theirs, and don't yet know it…"

  "Aha! There it is." Viktor had found a (steel, naturally) machine in one corner and pulled down a lever. There was a crack as if of lightning, and a gurgling sound could be heard. "Won't be a moment. Milk?"

  "No, thank you."

  He spoke French well, but with an accent. He had once been a baron, for what it was worth. He always insisted on Viktor. He was as egalitarian as if he had personally fought in the Quiet Revolution.

  And just as dangerous.

  He brought her a cup of coffee – china, mercifully, and not steel, in that at least – and took one for himself. "Are you sure you don't want me to do something about your face, at least?" he said. "Your poor face. I could hasten the healing process considerably–"

  "It's fine," she said. "Honest."

  "A modification of my own based on the early Hyde formula," he said. "Really, it's perfectly safe."

  She let it go.

  He took a sip from his coffee, made a face, and looked at her. "The Council is very concerned," he said.

  "About my face?"

  He shook his head, fighting off a half-smile. "About the missing object. I take it you haven't found it."

  "Yet," she said. He nodded. "Of course."

  "No," she said. "I haven't found it. Yet. It would help, perhaps, to know what it is."

  He shrugged, expansively. "What does it matter? You need not worry about what it
does
, only that
we
have it, and not–"

  She watched him. He blinked and looked away. "Not
who
?" she said.

  "Well, anyone else, obviously," he said, sounding a little irritated. Sounding like he had given away more than he was meant to.

  She watched him over her coffee. The scientist could not sit still. Already he was fidgeting, the coffee a distraction, conversation an effort. Wanting to go back to his work, his knives, his electricity… She said, "Was Grimm here?"

  "Grimm!" Viktor beamed at the name. "Yes. He dropped off the samples. Fascinating. Fascinating!" Happy again, he abandoned the coffee and wandered off to a long work table where test tubes, a microscope and various instruments lay in apparent disorder. "Fascinating!"

  "So you said."

  "I am going to have to run more tests."

  "Naturally."

  "But I can tell you–"

  "Yes?"

  "I have not seen such a thing before."

  She thought of the man's ruined corpse on the floor, of Grimm reaching over, sparking it alive with electricity. "What is it?" she said.

  The scientist fiddled with a pen, opened and closed his mouth. "I don't know," he said, finally. Then, with more defiance – "Yet."

  "Yet," she agreed, smiling.

  "Perhaps–" he said.

  "Yes?"

  "I think the thing inside him may have affected him. The tissue samples are suggestive…" He fell quiet, thinking. "You should be careful," he said.

"People keep telling me that, recently."

  He smiled, ceding her the point. "The Council wants to see you," he said.

  "Who's there?" she said, and his smile dropped when he said, flatly: "All of them."

 
 

 
 

Stone arches, dim light. The Council convened in what may have once been a wine cellar. The smell still lingered, of old vinegar and smoked cedar wood. The entrance was through the under-morgue. She had to pass the cages to get there. The things in the cages stared at her as she passed. Every time she tried not to look, and failed.

  What do you want to know about the Council? The Quiet Council, the secret council, those lords and ladies of the underworld? Human and machine, revolutionaries after the revolution had come and gone, quietly. Picture them sitting there behind their half-moon desk, looking down at the Lady de Winter as she entered, as she stood before them. Glaring up at them, a wilful child, but useful. Useful, particularly, in this curious matter of the dead man on the Rue Morgue, and of the thing that had been inserted into him and then, so savagely, taken out. A missing thing. A trifle, nothing more. And yet, a cause for some anxiety.

  "Milady de Winter." The Council spoke through the Hoffman automaton. Built by Krupp, rumour had it, and long ago, and based on an obscure Teutonic writer. The voice, full of hisses and scratches, had a thick, heavy accent. "Please to make your report."

  She stood and glared at them for a moment longer. So much anger, so much passion so tightly controlled! A street child, a circus girl, a lady, a killer – the last one first and foremost.

  She gave them her report. The murder in the Rue Morgue, the Gascon, the corpse, the search of the apartment, Tom Thumb, the shadows, Q's warning – she missed nothing and the Council listened with a grave silence, faces hidden behind shadows.

  "And so?" the Hoffman automaton said at last, when she had finished.

  "And so I came here to see what results were–" she began, but Hoffman interrupted her.

  "What results?" the automaton said. "What results indeed, Milady. I see no results."

  A murmur of agreement. She stared up at them, silent. "The nature of the corpse is not your concern. Your only task, child – your only purpose – is to find that which is missing. That which was taken. That which we want."

  Another murmur of agreement spread around, waves on the surface of a pond.

  "Results we want. And you bring none to us."

  She said nothing. They noticed her hand go, perhaps unconsciously, to the butt of her gun. There were some smiles at that. A charming young thing, very spirited. Too attached, perhaps, to her projectile weapon.

  "Where, for instance," the Hoffman automaton said, "are the two women whose apartment it is?"

  "I have not located them yet."

  "You did not try!"

  "I am only one person. I can't do everything."

  "Perhaps you should be replaced, then."

  She shrugged, waited him out, a small smile playing on her lips.

  The Hoffman automaton made a curious sound – a cross between a cough and a spit. She waited for it to readjust its sound.

  "Perhaps you could tell me what I'm looking for," she said.

  "That is not your concern!"

  "Does that mean you don't know?"

  Silence.

  The Council observed her, woman-child, this tall and deadly woman sworn to serve the Republic. Sworn to protect it, and that she does, but the danger from the East is great, greater than they had anticipated.

  And now she was turning the questioning on them.

  "Who is Tom Thumb working for?" she said.

  Silence, full of scratches.

  "And who are the people also looking for this thing, this object borne inside the man all the way across the seas?"

  "Let us see the impression you obtained," the Hoffman automaton said. "The tattoos."

  She stepped up to him, sensing the others shying away, further into the dark. A council of masks, hiding from prying eyes. What were they afraid of?

  "Is it the lizards you are so concerned with?" she said.

  "They are always a concern," the automaton said.

  Was that relief, detected in his words?

  The East. Indochina. What was there? A part of the world distant and filled with mysteries of its own. The Hoffman automaton took the sketch from her and studied it.

  "Imperial assassins," it said.

  What?

  "So she is after it too," it said, the voice low, barely above a murmur.

  Victoria? The lizard queen on her metal green throne?

  "It is as we suspected," another voice said, deep within the shadows.

  "And yet."

  She waited, but there was no more, not for a while. Then, "Proceed with the investigation. Report back to us. Find that which was stolen."

  "I still don't know–" she said, but the automaton cut her off: "You are dismissed."

  She walked off then, leaving the Council to its devices.

  Would she live? She was very good at not dying. They conferred amongst themselves. Perhaps another agent in the field – no, too dangerous. And already it was spreading, the grey–

 
 

 
 

Back in the under-morgue, she helped herself to the medicine cupboard and cleaned her face. She felt fatigued, knew the long night was not yet over.

  She was not angry at the Council. It was the way they operated, seeing her and others like her as chess pieces and little more, to be moved on the board according to formulae and calculations she could not even imagine. They would keep her in the dark, using the power of her ignorance to bring out that which was hidden even from them. If there was such a thing.

  Viktor was at his lab, muttering to himself, bent over his microscope. She walked over to him. "What am I not being told?" she said.

  He blinked. "That covers a lot of ground," he said.

  "You seemed," she said, and then stopped, putting her thoughts in order. "Almost dismissive, earlier."

  "What do you mean?" But he looked flustered, a fish hooked and watching the ocean disappear away from him.

  "Of the corpse. You said you've never seen anything like it before–"

  "Yes?"

  She smiled at him. He took a step back.

  "I think you were lying."

  He tried to outstare her and failed. "That's absurd," he said, but his hands were fluttering, the fingers working as if independent from the body, and she thought – he
wants
to tell me. Poor Viktor, all alone in his underground lab, no one to share the excitements of science with… "
Have
you seen such a thing before?" she said.

  "Well," he said, still being evasive, knowing, she thought, that it wouldn't fool her, "naturally, in my line of work… reanimation of the… as it were… the effects of electricity on the human… such as… scientifically speaking…"

  "Viktor," she said, speaking patiently, as if to a child. "
Scientifi
cally
speaking–" She smiled at him, trying to make it a nice smile, trying to reassure him. He was a nervous little man, afraid of crowds, torches, pitchforks and milk. "You have, haven't you?"

  He didn't answer. She moved closer to him, towering over him, knowing the effect she had on him and using it. "Viktor, Viktor," she said. "My poor little Viktor…"

  "Milady, I…"

  She ruffled his hair. He whimpered. "What are you trying to tell me, Viktor?"

  "The… the tissues… you see, they're –" then, with more force – "I can't," he said. "Council business, Milady. It's Council business!"

  "Out there," she said, "in the dark streets, out there in the night few dare to walk – out there I
am
the Council, Viktor."

  She looked down at him, then at his workbench. On the tabletop – was it flesh, a fold of skin? Grey and sickly – and moving. She listened back to what he said. "The effects of electricity on the human body," she said.

  He looked up at her, his eyes bright.
Dying
to tell her, she thought. "I know the effects of electricity on the human body," she said. "It does not make a man walk again, or open his eyes and point with a dead finger. It does the opposite. It kills."

  "My research indicates a high probability of eventual re–" he said but didn't finish. She smiled at him. "Is this it?" she said, pointing at the grey matter.

  "This? Oh, this is just a–"

  "Electricity does not do that to the human body," she said. "Am I correct, Viktor?"

  His fingers, interlacing, releasing, tapping air.

  "But what if the body is no longer human?" she said, and he jumped.

  "More coffee?" she said.

  "Thank you," he said. "I think I've drunk enough."

  "You are tightly wound up," she said. "Perhaps you need a rest. I know a castle–"

  "Please," he said, raising his hands before him like a shield. "No more castles."

  "Yes," she said. "I too find them overrated."

  "It's the draught," he said. "And the heating bill's always enormous."