Dangerous Offspring (13 page)

I was never any good at waiting. I paced through to the museum and stood blinking until my eyes adjusted. Rayne’s museum, representing her workshop through the ages, was a vast collection so tightly packed together it overwhelmed. Candlelight reflected on the curved surfaces of glass jars, thousands of different sizes, and on the sliding door of a
materia medica
cabinet with tiny square drawers for herbs. What to look at first? Here and there I noticed an object because of its special rarity: a two-headed foetus floating in a jar; or its great size: a broken sea krait tooth; or its beauty: a baby vanished to nothing but a three-dimensional plexus of red and blue veins and arteries to show the dissector’s skill; or its ghastliness: the preserved face of a child who died of smallpox. Some objects caught my eye because they were illustrated in the etched plates of books I’d read.

I stepped back, trying to perceive an order to the collection. In the centre a grey stone fireplace housed a copper alembic with a spout, resting on a little earthenware furnace with a bellows handle projecting. It was for fraction-distilling aromatic oils. The lintel above it bore the deeply incised and gilded legend: ‘Observe nature, your only teacher.’

I looked at the anatomical preparations: dense white shapes in jars, organs folded, wrinkled or bulging, or feathery and delicate like branching lungs. Alcohol preserved specimens like paperweights, of this or that organ in sagittal or cross section. Living with these, Rayne must see people as machines, nothing but arrangements of tissues and liquids, interesting puzzles to solve. She also knows that individuality is mostly skin-deep because, inside, people are all the same. Rayne and Frost, I reflected, had many traits in common.

Her reference collection was ordered by pathology. Some samples were hundreds of years old–the only immortality available to Zascai by virtue of their interesting ailments. The sufferers usually readily agree to be preserved; it’s all one to them whether their useless remains are placed in the ground or in a jar. The only exception are Awians, who prefer to be interred in tombs as florid as they can afford, as if they want to take up space forever.

A glass case housed a collection of surgical instruments past and present–steel bone saws and silver catheters, water baths for small dissections. Rayne kept some–like cylindrical saw-edged trepanning drills and equipment for cupping and blood letting–to remind the world of the doctors’ disgusting practices to which she put an end when she joined the Circle.

A six-fingered hand, a flaky syphilitic skull. A hydrocephalic one five times normal size, and the skeleton of a man with four wings growing out of his chest.

Rayne uses me in demonstrations when I’m available. I pose at the front of the auditorium while she lectures the students on how weird I am, or on her great achievement in healing my Slake Cross injuries. One day my skeleton might stand here to be prodded by subsequent generations, my strong, gracile fingers adapted for climbing, my curve-boned wings articulated to stretch full length to their pointed phalanges.

Beside the door I’d come in by stood a large showcase of chipped stone arrowheads, which Rayne had arranged into an attractive pattern. She buys them for a few pence each from boys who pick them up on the Awndyn Downs. There was also a ‘piece of iron that fell from the sky onto Shivel’. On the other side of the door a skeleton inhabited a tall cabinet; its label said: ‘Ancient Awian, from a cave in Brobuxen, Ressond’.

Over two thousand years the grey smell of old bone and neat alcohol had saturated the tower’s very fabric. It was a haze of carbolic and formalin. Spicy volatile notes of orange and clove must be the essential oils Rayne had most recently prepared.

I examined the labelled majolica jars: oenomel, rodomel and hippocras; storax, orchis and sumac. Patent medicines crusted or deliquesced in slipware pots. Their names skipped off the tongue like a schoolyard rhyme: Coucal’s Carminiative Embrocation; Popinjay Pills for Pale People; Ms Twite’s Soothing Syrup; Cornstock Electuary; Emulsion Lung Tonic; World-Famed Blood Mixture; Dr Whinchat of Brandoch’s Swamp-root Kidney Cure; Fruit Salt; Spa Mud; Abortion Lotion; Concentrated Essence of Cinnamon for Toothache; Confection of Cod Livers; Balsamic Elixir for Inflamed Nipples; Bezon & Bro. Best Beet Juice. A pot with a spout: Goosander Lewin’s Improved Inhaler. Preparation of Bone Marrow: an Ideal Fat Food for Children and Invalids; Odiferous Macassar for Embellishing the Feathers and Preventing Them Falling Out.

‘I’ doesn’ work,’ Rayne said.

‘What, any of it?’ I asked, but I turned and saw she was referring to the atropine, which her servant had brought, and she had mixed a miniscule amount with the water drops she was squeezing into Cyan’s mouth. ‘This should work. Why doesn’ i’?’ she said, annoyed. ‘I’ brings you round, on t’ times I try i’ wi’ you. I daren’ give her more than this. Do you know how much she took?’

‘No…’ I suddenly remembered I had the wrap in my pocket. I stopped moping around the museum and joined her in the bedroom. ‘But I can assay it. I picked up her scolopendium from the barge.’

‘Of course, you would.’

I sighed. ‘Just don’t let me put my fingers in my mouth.’ I cautiously brought out the wrap–the sight of it triggered my craving and damp sprang up on the palms of my hands. Truly we are nothing but chemicals.

‘Don’ give in,’ said Rayne, over her shoulder.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘I…I can’t…’

‘So you’ll give in? Think of t’ disadvantages–look a’ her! Remember how bad you feel for six months after kicking. You’re doing well now; each time you ge’ clean i’s for slightly longer. The balance has tipped.’

I calmed myself, thinking; no one is asking me to do without it permanently. I said, ‘It’s cooked at source somewhere in Ladygrace. But is it cut?’

The rounded hills of Ladygrace, where scolopendium fern grows, have that name because as you approach from a distance their profile looks like a voluptuous woman lying on her back with her knees in the air. The most difficult part of the route is shipping the finished product across the Moren estuary. It never occurred to me, when I was ripping off Dotterel’s shop and selling at the wharves, how much more money I could have made smuggling by air.

I poured water into another glass and delicately shook the paper over it. Grains fell out and dissolved on impact with the surface, leaving no residue. Even the largest had gone before it fell half a centimetre through the water column.

‘Shit, it’s pure. Maybe eighty to ninety per cent…If I hadn’t used for a while I wouldn’t shoot this.’

Rayne said, ‘If Cyan was buying, I think she could prob’ly afford pure.’

‘That’s what killed Sharny. He wouldn’t have been used to it. He didn’t even have time to take the tourniquet off…’ I imagined him thinking–some bastard’s cut this–then the fact it isn’t cut hits with full strength. His hands clench, he struggles for breath but it’s clear there won’t be a next one.

Feeling suddenly nauseous I dumped it in the fire and wiped my hands. ‘It’d lay
me
out.’

‘For how long?’

‘A day and a half. Is she likely to die?’

‘I can’ tell. But if she does i’s no’ my faul’.’

‘I’m fucked. What will Saker do when I tell him his only daughter is in a coma from a massive overdose? I’m the only junky he knows. He’ll shoot me!’

‘Mmm.’

‘When I first saw her I drooled like a dog on a feast day. I thought she was feek! She was a mink!’ I ran out of slang and just scooped a feminine body out of the air with a couple of hand movements. ‘But now she looks like a corpse! They called it jook, not cat, or I would have known!’

We called the stuff cat because it makes you act like one, roaming all night on the buzz at first, then languid and prone to lying around.

‘Did you jus’ throw i’
all
away?’

‘Yes.’

The night wore on, mercilessly. I put on the clothes the servant had found for me, though they were not svelte enough to fit–I have to have clothes made to measure–and the shirt was red. Red is not my colour at all. I ate some bread, but it didn’t cure my hangover. The liquor settled in my gut, leaching water from my body and diluting it. The water I drank turned straight into piss and I was still so dehydrated my tongue clacked on the roof of my mouth like a leather strap. I felt as if my skin was drying; my fingertips were wrinkled and a headache like a steel band tightened round my temples. My heartbeat shook my whole body, and I scarcely knew what to do with my hands.

Pit
.

I looked up. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘I don’ hear any noise,’ Rayne said.

‘That noise like water drops?’

‘Look around,’ she said. ‘My collections are valuable.’

I did so and noticed a movement on the first turn of the spiral steps where the staircase rose into the gloom. A worm was crawling there. As I watched, another one fell from the upper floor. It wriggled to the edge of the step, tumbled over and dropped onto the step below.
Pit
. Another one fell.
Pit, pit
. The worms began descending the steps with a determination I could only attribute to one thing. They were dropping faster now, like the first giant drops of a rainstorm.
Pitpitpitplopplopplopplopplop
, in ones and twos, linked together. The austere steps began to disappear under their pink flesh.

Rayne yelled, ‘Worms? Where are they coming from? An infesta’ ion?’

‘It’s worse than that,’ I said.

‘I had t’ theatre cleaned this morning!’ She glanced from them to her patient.

I said, ‘It’s from the Shift. It’s called the Vermiform.’

‘Is i’ safe?’

‘No…’ I giggled. ‘It’s not safe.’

With a sound like flesh tearing, a curtain of worms appeared over the top of the spiral stair. It started to tatter as individuals fell from it. Large holes appeared, a rent, the curtain swung sideways and fell with a slap onto the steps then began to undulate as it slithered down them.

A flake of plaster fell off the wall, leaving a round hole. Something that looked like the end of a twined rope spewed out, then all of a sudden swelled to the thickness of an arm, and a mouth formed on the end. Under the plaster, flesh seemed to continue in all directions. The mouth bobbed closer to me, then back, as the mass undulated. It said, ‘Go to the door.’

‘Go to the door!’

A crack ran from the hole and raced splintering along the wall, then forced out another flake of plaster. A thin cord, rolled like a butterfly’s tongue, unspooled from the hole and hung, dangling, a mouth on a flesh tube. ‘Go to the door.’

It touched the floor and dissociated into long worms that went crawling out in all directions. More mouths started sprouting from the bases of beams, the corners of the room, ‘Go to the door! Go to the door!’

Rayne’s face was set with fear but she didn’t back off. She went to the grate and picked up the coal shovel. ‘Wha’ is i’?’

‘Don’t bother. Even if you hit it you can’t harm it. It’s a colony of worms and it’s sentient.’

The Doctor nodded sagely. ‘I’ll le’ you handle i’.’ She went to stand next to Cyan, still holding the shovel. As far as she was concerned, her most important task was to protect her patient.

The handle of the outside door turned. Rayne and I glanced at each other. The door burst open and the Vermiform woman flowed in. Ten arms appeared from all over her, waved at me, then sucked back into her. She was much larger than last time I saw her; her worms must have bred, and though her shape and features were pretty her skin was a padded, pulsating mass. Added to the pink tide toppling down the stairs and falling from the ceiling the Vermiform must be huge, and this time I could hear it. Its worms made a rasping noise as they stretched, contracted, slid, with invisibly small bristles. They seethed and pressed like maggots and gave off a stink like urine-ridden sawdust, like old piss.

Through the open door I saw that the statue of the university’s founder had gone. That was even more horrific–I couldn’t stand the thought of the statue wandering around out there. I stared at the empty plinth until I realised that must have been the place where the Vermiform Shifted through and it had crumbled the marble into rubble.

More worms were pouring through the plaster as if Rayne’s room was moving. They twitched out of the ceiling and wound down the wall. They knocked her models onto their sides, and swept them off the mantelpiece. From her shelves a stack of tiles on which pills were made fell and shattered. A flask smashed, spilling heavy mercury. Its curved shards rocked like giant fingernails. A jar tipped over and ovate white pills cascaded onto the floor.

Rayne flinched. ‘Hey! Stop destroying my house!’

The worm-woman created two more beautiful female heads on stalks from somewhere in its belly and raised them to the level of the first one. It moved them about in front of my face. I couldn’t choose which to focus on and I felt myself going cross-eyed.

‘Are you the same Vermiform as before?’ I asked it.

‘We are always the same.’

‘Well, you’ve grown.’

‘We were asked to find you, Comet, although we do not appreciate being a Messenger’s messenger. Cyan is in Osseous–for the moment. She is in deadly danger. She is trapped in the Gabbleratchet.’

The Vermiform paused, as if it expected me to know what the fuck it was talking about. Its surface covering the walls smoothed and stilled, lowering slightly as the worms packed closer together. It became denser and more solid, and the shapes of the furniture buried under it bulged out more clearly. I had the impression it was deeply afraid.

Rayne asked, ‘Gabbleratche’? Wha’s tha’?’

‘Why are you frightened?’ I added.

The layers of worms blistered as individuals stretched up indignantly. They looked like fibres fraying from a flesh-coloured tapestry. The necks bent and the heads swayed. Their lips moved simultaneously, and its voice chorused like thousands of people speaking at once: ‘The eternal hunt. It is travelling through Osseous at the moment. We must try to intercept it before it veers into another world carrying Cyan away for good. We cannot predict it. No one can pursue it. Time is of the essence.’ The worms around my feet reached up thin strands and spun around my legs.