The Great Game (22 page)

  "Where our man is."

  Petroleum…

  Smith knew what it was, of course.

  A sort of fuel, highly flammable… There were high concentrations of it in Vespuccia and–

  The Arabian Peninsula.

  They used it for light, predominantly. But now it looked like the French machines could use it for power, rather than steam?

  A group of Punks de Lézard distracted him. They came out of the shadows, surrounding the two men, silently, their claws extended, their forked tongues hissing. Smith and Van Helsing moved in tandem, not breaking stride. Smith's knife was buried in the first man's belly before the man had time to gasp. Smith lowered him gently to the ground and stood above him, looking at the others calmly, while Van Helsing covered them with his twin guns. No one spoke. After a moment the punks went and picked up their fallen comrade and dragged him away, back into the shadows. Smith and Van Helsing moved on.

  The tunnels widened and narrowed, unexpected turnings leading farther down, until at last they came to a wide space where fires burned and groups, carefully apart, sat – beggars and automatons and Punks de Lézard, and Van Helsing said, "This way."

  They went along the wall, and the inhabitants of that underground place carefully avoided looking at them. For a fleeting moment Smith thought he saw an old, Asian man move, too swiftly to distinguish features, and disappear into the darkness. It made him uneasy, and he thought of his old master, Ebenezer Long, of the Shaolin. Could the secret world of the Wulin, those hidden societies fighting the dowager-empress, also be involved?

  And if so, what were they after? The
Erntemaschine
? The secrets Babbage must hold? Or something else entirely?

  The object stolen from the Bureau, whatever it may be?

  Van Helsing stopped, and Smith followed suit. They were standing in a branching tunnel away from that main hall.

  "What–?" Smith began, but Van Helsing, with a gesture, silenced him.

  They waited.

  Presently, there was the sound of shuffling feet. A small, hunched figure appeared ahead of them, growing closer, until it was before them. Then it stopped.

  "Van Helsing," the figure said.

  "Q. Thanks for coming."

  Smith examined the man. He was short and dark-skinned. He was also a hunchback. "I'm Smith," Smith said. The other man looked up at him, grinned. "Your reputation precedes you," he said.

  "What can you tell us, Q?" Van Helsing said. He looked ill at ease. His hand was on the butt of his gun and he kept glancing sideways, checking both sides of the tunnel. "What is the Council up to?"

  "Rumour has it the Comte de Rochefort was fed a little of his own medicine," Q said, and his eyes twinkled at Smith. "But he survived. And came back with a prize."

  "Do you know what it is?"

  "No," Q said. "But it has them all excited. Viktor himself is working on it, I hear."

  
Viktor
. That name again, Smith thought. The scientist they had tried to steal from the French, and failed, repeatedly.

  "Can we get access to it?" Van Helsing said.

  "I don't see how," Q said. "Breaking into the Quiet Council's secure area would be madness. There are measures in place to–"

  "Where is it?" Smith said. He, too, had caught Van Helsing's unease. "Where's the nearest access point?"

  "Not far," Q said. Quickly, sensing their changed mood, he gave them directions. He had lost his smile. "I have to go," he said. "You will not succeed in breaking in."

  "Let us worry about that," Smith said, when–

  There was a sudden crash, the tunnel shook–

  Smith reached out to steady himself against the wall–

  A voice, animalistic and full of hate, roaring–

  Hot breath with the stench of rotting flesh filling the tunnel–

  "
Smeeeeth…
"

  Van Helsing and Smith, moving together–

  Pushing the hunchback to the ground, behind them, covering him – Van Helsing with guns drawn, Smith with the knife–

  A huge, repulsive figure appeared in the mouth of the tunnel. A giant in the semblance of a man, muscles bulging from torn clothes, a demented look over a leering, engorged face with massive, yellow fangs for teeth…

  "I'm coming for you, Smith…"

  The huge mouth moved: a grin.

  Smith stepped forwards, standing between the others and the monster.

  "
Bonsoir
, Comte de Rochefort," he said, politely.

  So the man had indeed survived his fall from the flaming airship.

  The Frankenstein–Jekyll serum had worked.

  But the fall had certainly made him angry.

  Smith grinned. It felt good to be here, facing one of his old enemies. "
Je m'appelle Smith
," he said. He nodded at the monstrous figure before him, almost in affection. "
Je suis un assassin
."

  The thing that had once been the Comte de Rochefort roared. Then it charged directly at Smith.

 
 

 
 
 

At the moment the giant body rushed him, Smith jumped. The Comte de Rochefort sailed past him as Smith, turning in the air, landed behind him. His knives flashed. The comte roared in pain and outrage and green-yellow blood, like pus, came streaming out of the gashes in his back.

  The confused Rochefort turned, but Smith turned with him, using the creature's bulk to his advantage. The wounds, he saw with alarm, were already closing. He jumped on the giant man's back, one hand over the comte's throat, and the knife came to rest against the side of the man's neck, ready to go in and finish the job.

  But he had underestimated the Comte de Rochefort. With a roar of rage the beast bent and with one flowing motion threw Smith off. He hit the wall and pain exploded in his shoulders. He fell to the ground.

  Blinking tears of pain away, he saw Van Helsing step forward, both guns extended. "Eat lead, Frenchman!" Van Helsing shouted (a little melodramatically, the winded Smith nevertheless thought), and the guns burped once, twice, catching the giant monster in the back and, as the monster turned, in the chest.

  The comte roared, holes opening in his chest, bleeding more of that yellow-green blood. The blood hissed when it touched the ground. Acidic, Smith thought, horrified. And the comte had intended the Frankenstein-Jekyll serum for
him
.

  He stood up. It was time to finish the job. The knife flashed, flying through the air, finding the comte's neck with unerring accuracy. A jet of blood sprouted out of the wound, burning a hole in the nearby wall.

  The Comte de Rochefort, trapped between Smith and Van Helsing, turned this way and that. A look of incredulous horror was etched into his face. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. The roar of his laughter filled the underground chamber. With one meaty hand the comte pulled out the knife. Already, the wound was closing.

  "You can't kill him."

  Smith had forgotten the hunchback was there. The Comte de Rochefort, looking confused, peered at him, as though trying to identify a half-remembered face.

  "It's me," the hunchback said, gently, reaching out a hand to the giant monster. "Q. You remember?"

  The comte grunted. Something about the hunchback's manner seemed to subdue him.

  "I helped Viktor with the experiments, you know," Q said. He was speaking softly, as to a child. "He tested animals at first, rats, then rabbits, then monkeys. Then he began to test it on people."

  The hunchback approached the Comte de Rochefort, and the great hulking beast let him. Smith remained in place. He was winded, and his knees hurt, and he was out of breath.

  
Getting old.

  "They suffered," the hunchback said. "Do you know how they suffered? They used to scream, in their cages. For hours and hours and hours, there in that underground facility, where there is no day, only night." He looked up at the comte, and his big, innocent eyes were tranquil. "I used to sing to them," he said, softly.

  Van Helsing had been cautiously moving away from the comte. De Rochefort, suddenly noticing, hissed. "Shhh…" Q said. Then he began to sing.

 

Paris, the catacombs, night.

  Smith, slowly, cautiously, rising from his fall.

  Van Helsing, sliding against the wall, blood on his lips.

  In the centre of that underground tunnel, two figures, facing each other. The giant, deformed, hulking figure of the man who had once been the Comte de Rochefort.

  And, facing him, the diminutive, hunchbacked figure of Q, of Notre Dame de Paris.

  Who was singing.

  The comte growled. Q, undeterred, kept singing. He had a high, reedy voice, not unpleasant. It seemed to fill the small, enclosed space.

  "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot,"
Q sang
. "Prête-moi ta plume, pour écrire un mot."

  
Under the moonlight, my friend Pierrot, lend me your pen, so I could write a word.

  
"De la lune…"
the Comte de Rochefort said. The words came out of his misshapen mouth with difficulty. Smith could only stare at the giant, no longer bleeding, as it knelt down to be closer to Q.

  "Ma chandelle est morte,"
Q sang
, my candle is dead.

  
"Je n'ai plus de feu ouvre-moi ta porte pour l'amour de dieu."

  There was something chilling in the innocent words, this lullaby for children the hunchback was singing.
My candle is dead, I have no more fire. Open your door for me, for the love of God.

  
"L'amour…"
the Comte de Rochefort said, captivated. Q did not turn away from him. "Go," he said, in the same soft, singsong voice. "Go, find Viktor's lab. Finish your mission. Go!"

  Van Helsing came to Smith and, supporting each other, they limped away, the clear sound of Q's singing following them all the while.

  "Eat lead, Frenchman?" Smith said. "Really?"

  Van Helsing had the grace to look embarrassed.

 

They found the place, but they got there too late.

  The door would have been hidden in the rock bed, but it had been blasted open, from the inside. The security would have been a nightmare to break through, even with an F-J serum, but there was no longer any need.

  The door had been blown, the metal oozing on the ground as from an unimaginably strong source of heat. Van Helsing and Smith exchanged glances, then Van Helsing gestured with his head at the opening. Smith nodded.

  He stepped carefully over the still-steaming door, and into the dark opening. He went to one side then and Van Helsing, following, took the other. They stood, silently, trying to evaluate the scene before them.

  "What," Van Helsing said softly, "has happened here?"

  Smith shook his head. He couldn't imagine.

  They were standing in a large, open cavern. The ceiling of bedrock extended high above their heads. A pool of light engulfed a surgeon's workspace, large metal dissection table, while against one wall a series of cages stood.

  Smith gestured. Van Helsing followed him, along the wall, to the cages. They were full…

  Smith did not know what they were. Perhaps, once, they had been people. Now they were changed, each one differently. Man-machine hybrids, a child with the sad beak of a parrot and small, grimy wings sprouting from his thin naked shoulders, a woman in a black iron mask, rocking her knees, humming tunelessly, something that looked like a human-sized frog, an automaton with a human face–

  What joined them all together was the silence. Smith had expected screams, a cacophony of sound. But the caged creatures did not make a sound, and when he approached closer they shied away, pressing themselves against the walls, trying to stay as far away from the bars as they could.

  "What–"

  "Look," Van Helsing said. He pointed at the far wall. A hole had been blasted into it, by the same unknown source of heat. Yet the chamber was quiet, and there was no sign of an intruder, or a device capable of generating such power…

  Smith, for the moment, gave up on the beings in the cages. He went over to the operating theatre–

  Which was where he found the body.

  Almost tripped over it, in fact.

  "Over here!" he called. Van Helsing came running. Together, they looked down at the man on the floor. He was wearing a white lab coat that was no longer white. It was stained a deep, crimson red.

  Blood.

  Smith knelt down, put his fingers to the man's neck. There was a pulse, weak but steady. He looked up at Van Helsing.

  "Viktor," Van Helsing said.

  Smith nodded.

  "What happened here?" he said.

  Van Helsing said, "I don't know."

  "Search the chamber," Smith said. "I'll see if I can wake our friend here."

  Van Helsing was already moving. "We haven't got long," he said. But Smith shook his head, though the other man couldn't see it. "It's too quiet," he said, but softly. A breach like this should have alerted seven kinds of security forces by now. That no one had showed up…

  Suddenly he was very concerned.

  A sense of urgency gripped him: that this was beyond a confrontation with de Rochefort, this was something larger than a break-in into the Quiet Council's secure research facility. For the Great Game was exactly that, a series of moves and counter-moves, quantifiable and understood: a game.