Godspeed (20 page)

I realized too that having other doctors care for Jib in his final days would protect Quinn, his work, and his other patients, myself included. I thought about what Jib's parents must be going through, knowing that he was their only child, and how much it must have pained Quinn to be unable to help them.

“I will return, when it is safe. If…” He slumped heavily down into his desk chair, holding his head in his hands. “If the boy asks for me.”

I approached him cautiously, aching to touch him, to console him, to offer him the solace that only the embrace of love, truly and purely felt, can give. Yet the moment my hand got within a hair's breadth of touching him, he seemed to know it; he bolted upright, looking at me with blood red blue eyes and a complexion the color of ash.

“Please,” he whispered, much more kindly than he would have done, I imagined, if I were anyone else. “Leave me.”

I did as he asked, but doing so took strength and a power of determination I did not know that I was capable of.

I was only able to find it because he'd asked it of me.

*   *   *

The red room was eerily still with Jib's absence and the news of his condition. We all tried to pass the time any way we could to help ease our pain, and while for Penn and I that meant remaining silent, for Marielle it meant speaking. Excessively.

“What does he look like, really?” she asked me, her hands working the knitting needles faster and faster as she spoke.

“Who?”

“Penn,” she whispered, leaning closer to me. “Who else?”

I glanced across the room where Penn was slumped over a book once more.

“You can't see him at all yourself?” I asked, finally broaching the subject I'd wondered about for so long.

“Not in the detail I wish to,” she answered sadly. She set down her knitting and removed the spectacles from her eyes and began to rub them. “These create an enormous strain, you know. They are heavy, and tiresome.” She set them on the table beside us, and I looked at them more closely than I ever had before. I was amazed by the thickness of the lenses and also the craftsmanship in the metal that held them. They were made with a keen eye and a careful hand, and I was certain there was not another pair like them in all the world.

“He made them as small as he could to allow me enough range to move around without injuring myself. I am though, still lacking the ability to see much beyond motion and light. My eyes are so extraordinarily sensitive to the light that he altered the color of these lenses, I still do not understand how.”

“The doctor does a great many things that I do not understand,” I admitted softly.

Marielle begged now. “Please. What does he look like?”

I handed her spectacles back to her and stood, taking her by the hand and pulling her along with me.

As we walked past him I saw Penn flinch, and I remembered what he had told me about whispers being as loud to him as the regularly spoken word. He knew what she had asked me, and I wanted to answer where he could not so easily ascertain what was being said.

“The first thing you must know about Penn is that the amplifiers make it nearly possible for him to read minds.” I took her face gently into my hands. “Dear girl, don't you know that anything whispered in the same room as he is in may as well be shouted?”

She immediately reddened, until her cheeks were pinker in hue than the glasses she wore. “No, tell me it's not true.”

“It is true, he told me with his own lips.”

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands with the kind of overwrought dramatics of which only girls in their middle teenage years seem capable. “NO! Do you know how many conversations I have had, whispering with him in the room, thinking he could not hear?”

I felt a small smile purse my lips, and shook my head. “Do you not know that teenage boys are as prone to want to listen in on girls their age as girls their age are to whisper about them?”

“Yes, yes, be that as it may, you still haven't answered my question.” She stomped one foot and folded her arms now, leaning back against the wall. “What does Penn look like?”

“I haven't really taken notice,” I said, and thinking about it, it was true. Even when in the dining room and seated nearest Penn, my attention was continually drawn across the table to the face of a much older man. “How do you think he looks?”

“Well,” she lowered her voice again, and started once more wringing her hands into tight knots before the pinafore of her dress. “His hair seems to be the first thing you'd notice about him. He seems pale of complexion, but I cannot tell for certain the color of his eyes. I imagine that he has fine cheekbones, and a dreamlike expression upon that handsome face most of the time.”

“Are you sure that you cannot see him clearly?” I asked, truly marveling. Her description was eerily correct. “You've described him with astounding accuracy.”

She sighed heavily. “That is what I feared.”

“Why do you fear it?”

“I feared that in his looks, if I could but make them out, I'd only find more reasons to love him so desperately.”

The small smile that had taken up the unusual location of residence upon my usually down-turned lip now withered and died there. I understood exactly what she meant.

“Do you?” I asked, now wringing my own hands as well. “Are you certain you truly love him?”

“Only more with each passing day,” she confessed. “He is so gentle, so brilliant. We speak sometimes, of books, of the great poets
and storytellers. I wasn't always so limited with my sight, you know. I could read, as recently as one year since.

“Then my remaining sight soured, and turned the world first to a hideous shade of yellow; sickly, jaundiced, before taking me quickly hence into darkness. I did not think I would ever see the light of the sun again.”

I wondered now, as I listened to her mourn what had turned out to be a temporary loss, if I ever would feel the sun myself again.

“Then the doctor took me under his care, at the pleading of my second-cousin, Schuyler, who had come to learn of my situation through a favorite great-aunt.”

“The one with which you now live?”

“Yes, Aunt Casilda. She insisted that Schuyler must know someone, somewhere that could help me, among all of the famous physicians that buy art from the store. Some travel great distances at least once a year to purchase here. It was only after swearing her to secrecy that he was willing to introduce me to Doctor Godspeed.”

“There is such secrecy surrounding the doctor.” I had wondered just why but been unable to ask the question. Of course I knew there was great danger in the work that he did, because of the laws against experimentation on living human subjects. These laws were created for a reason, I knew, but I couldn't fathom why anyone would ever imagine that Quinn could ever do anyone intentional harm.

“There have been those, especially in recent years, who have exploited this new dawn of technological advancement for their own gain. Those who would victimize and exploit those most in need of help. Some believe…” Her voice faded, and she did not continue.

“Some believe what?”

“That Quinn Godspeed was one of those men.”

I inhaled sharply, and she reached out and grasped hold of my shoulders. “I am sorry, Else, I should not have said so much. Forgive me.”

“What do you mean by it?”

“I really shouldn't say any more. I'm sorry, I—”

“Please, Marielle,” I now grasped at her arms with hands that had gone ice cold. “I need to know. You've seen what has happened to me here… no, you have not, have you?” I shook my head at my own ignorance. Of course, if she could not make out Penn's fine features, she
did not know anything more of the device strung up around my neck than anyone had dared to tell her. “This is the work of the hands of Doctor Godspeed.”

I took hold of one of her hands, and I felt her recoil. “I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. I just want you to know why it is exactly that I need so much to understand.” I uncurled her tightening fingers and brought them level with my heart.

Her face contorted in horror as she first felt the metal of the ornately fashioned pendant, to all outward appearances a heart-shaped, antique locket. She felt the slight humming through the wires though I was careful to draw her hand away before the next, larger pulse, which I had learned to time the fixed increments between with great accuracy by this point.

“What
are you
?”

“I was a girl, much like you. Not much older, in fact. Then, as you know, I fell ill, and through a series of events, I ended up in the laboratory of Doctor Godspeed. He took me into his care, and before I really knew what had happened, this was the length he went to, in order to prolong my life.” I whispered the last words, still trying to fathom their true meaning. Death seemed such an odd and intangible thing, something that happens to someone but that cannot be described to anyone else. I felt that the girl I had been died on the street before Schuyler Algernon had ever taken me into his arms and rescued me from it. I awoke another person, and yet another still after Quinn had physically rewired the workings of my soul.

“I have often asked myself why he was willing to go to such lengths and risk so much for my sake. So please, if you know something of his past, something that might help me to reconcile this in my mind.” I shook her once. Not with violence; still, I was certain that my desperation bled through. “Please, tell me what you know.”

She hesitated still, but then a light dawned over her features, and she came to a conclusion that I hoped not everyone else in the house already had. “You love him, don't you?”

“What?” I drew back. I laughed, but the laugh was thin and hollow and she knew far better than to believe it. “What are you talking about?”

“I see Penn with my heart, and you,” she said with a nod, more convinced of her assertion with each word she uttered, “you feel Doctor
Godspeed's, beating with your own. You are the work that is literally dearest to his heart.”

Tears spilled from my eyes and burned a trail down my cheeks. She could not see them, but she reached out and brushed her fingertips along my face now, wiping them away. “It's all right, dear Elsewhere, I will tell you what I know. But not here, and not now. We've been gone from the sitting room too long, questions will be asked if we delay any longer.”

She yanked me back into the room by the arm. I felt as though my brain and my heart still kept residence in the hall, along with the great many secrets that haunted this house.

*   *   *

This night's schedule had Schuyler and Penn working on inventory in the shop. With Jib missing, and the doctor hidden away working, only Marielle, Lilibet, and I remained in the red room.

Lilibet rocked as usual, and the clicking of Marielle's knitting needles clacked on in a dizzying noise that harmonized with the ceaseless, unnatural rhythm of my heart.

“You had questions that I was not able to answer before,” Marielle began, turning her head in the direction of my quickening breaths. I was nervous — terrified actually — to learn the truth about Quinn; but then again, I was certain that there could be nothing about him that would make me love him any less. It was simply impossible at this point, and I wondered for an instant if he'd found a way to wire feelings of such boundless love directly into the workings of the machinery that kept me alive.

“Are you certain that it's wise to…”

“Lilibet hears all but says nothing. She is wiser than people think. It is safe.”

“What…” I wanted to ask but I didn't wish to offend her. Still, it seemed that Marielle needed to talk about this before she was going to be willing or able to speak of anything else.

“My sister was a normal, healthy child, until just before the age of two. She was beginning to speak. She was greatly interested in all around her. Then, one day she just started to disappear. One piece at a time.” Her eyes clouded over with the memory.

I looked over at Lilibet, so deeply lost in her own thoughts, seemingly inhabiting a world that existed only within the confines of her own mind, unless, of course Jib was playing the piano, or when she'd had the modified typewriter. I hoped Quinn would return it to her soon.

“Her name is truly unusual, is it a family name?” I asked, trying to bring any sort of light I could to darker thoughts from Marielle's history.

“It's all we have of her to hold on to,” she answered. “When she was small, before she stopped speaking, she could not say her given name, Elizabeth. She called herself Lilibet, and so, the family did too. I remember how…” Her eyes filled and tears rained down now.“…she used to smile, when she would hear Father calling her name.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My parents are living out of the country now.” She clenched her hands together and she looked away. “They sent us to live with Aunt Casilda under the guise of getting us ‘treatment’.” She spoke now through jaws, tightly shut. “I do not deceive myself into thinking that they are ever coming back to get us.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know my parents too well,” Marielle concluded. “They would rather sip cocktails and speak of trivialities than raise children with actual needs.” She shook her head. “My mother is a socialite, Elsewhere, and my father is a businessman. Blind and mute children do not make good conversational topics at polite dinner parties.”

“Most things of importance are not considered good conversational topics at polite dinner parties,” I replied, knowing fully of what I spoke. I'd witnessed enough of those parties firsthand while living as a servant in the house of my former employers — and heard about even more of them in hushed whispers between my parents when I was barely old enough to understand what they were saying.

“Before I tell you what you've asked me to tell you…” Marielle turned her body toward me; even though she could not make out my features, I was certain she was taking stock of my intentions. “Are you certain that you really want to know?”

“No,” I answered truthfully, “but I must know.”

“Very well.” She sighed and set her knitting aside. “I must warn you that I only have fragments of information. Bits and pieces of a puzzle that grows increasingly more difficult to solve. I do not know if anyone will ever know the entire truth of the history of Doctor Quinn Godspeed, but I will tell you what I know. Or I should say, what Penn and I have pieced together in the time we've been in association with the doctor and Schuyler Algernon.”