The Great Game (33 page)

  Why
was
a raven like a writing desk?

  
Because there's a B in both,
as Mycroft used to say.

  Science was an alien way of looking at the world. It required asking questions, and then setting out to answer them, experimenting, trying to get the same results each time–

  And in the process inhaling all kinds of potentially quite dangerous gases, or experimenting with lethal death rays, or ravenous bacteria, or intelligent machines that would, unexpectedly, go berserk–

  If you weren't a little mad to begin with, Smith reasoned, you were likely to be more than a little on the unstable side by the time you spent a couple of lonely years in a draughty lab, poring over unknown chemicals, building weapons of mass destruction or trying to meld together human-dog hybrids. You'd see it time after time: with Moreau, with Jekyll, with Darwin and Frankenstein (both
père
and
fils
) and Edison (with his desperate quest for the perfect mechanical doll), Brunel the mad builder, Stephenson with his locomotives, and those people from the Baltimore Gun Club who tried to shoot themselves into space and ended up squashed like bugs by the acceleration.

  Scientists were mad, it was a well-known fact; there was nothing to it. You just had to use a soothing voice, avoid making any threatening gestures, and slowly go around them if you could.

  "Shoo?" Smith said.

 

Pavlov smiled. "I remember you, I think," he said. "They showed me dossiers of all the major shadow executives, back in the day, in case I got approached, in case anyone tried to turn me. Which proved to be the case. My experiments were harmless!"

  "Conditioning," Smith said. A lot of things were clearer now. "You were experimenting on dogs, back then, but the Bureau was interested in the practical application of your methodology on humans… and then the French stole you from under us."

  Pavlov shrugged. "They offered me what you, with your lizardine masters, could never offer me," he said. "Freedom, for myself and my experiments both."

  "We would have offered you the freedom you needed–"

  Pavlov's face twisted in a strange, unpleasant grin.

  Something in his expression…

  Smith, staring at him, suddenly aghast:

  "You can't mean–"

  "Lizards," Pavlov said.

  The word hung between them in the air, as heavy as an anchor. Smith swallowed.

  "The French would have never–" he said.

  "Think, Smith," Pavlov said. "Royal lizards! That alien lifeform, Les Lézards, our masters – and our enemies? We have to study them, Smith!" He peered at him. "It
is
Smith, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "Funny, I thought you'd be dead by now."

  "Retired," Smith said. Pavlov shrugged. "It is something your people never understood," he said, returning to his subject. "You were conditioned, just as my dogs had been conditioned, back in the St Petersburg labs. You've been
trained,
the lizards your masters, and to question them is, for you, simply an impossibility."

  He saw Smith's look, and smiled again. "Oh, yes," he said, complacently. "I have studied them. It was not easy, yet, even with the royal lizards, there are… how shall I put it? Disappearances? They make such fascinating subjects…"

  "You lie," Smith said. He could not picture it – Les Lézards, those magnificent creatures, those intelligent, man-sized lizardine beings,
royal
beings, subjected to experiments, locked up in a secret lab, abused, tortured–

  "Am I?" Pavlov said. "I have a specimen right here, as it happens. Though I've not been able to breed them…" He sighed, wistfully. "Such a perfect location," he said. "Up here. Total security. Usually we have soldiers guarding the Champs de Mars entrance but with this…" he waved his hand vaguely at the city – "this
invasion
, obviously, it's been alarming the test subjects. Incredibly inconvenient, really. Do you know what it is?"

  "Some lizardine device," Smith said. "Activated by accident."

  Pavlov sighed. "You see?" he said. "They are dangerous, and they seek to rule us all. They cannot be trusted, and have to be
studied
."

  "What
are
your test subjects?" Smith said. Pavlov lit up. "These?" he said. "My little dog-men? I raised them from puppies, you know."

  "I didn't think hybrids were your field," Smith said. He was still trying to figure out how to get past the scientist. Two of his "test subjects" were standing just behind him, ready to attack, and more had amassed down below, blocking any retreat. The only other way was to jump… and he didn't rate smashing into the ground far down below as a particularly successful escape.

  
When in doubt, keep them talking,
as they taught them at Ham, all those years ago.

  "They're not," Pavlov said. "I got them from Moreau. We've kept a… lively correspondence, even after his exile. He sent them to me as a gift. You see, us scientists need to work freely, to exchange views and data with each other, to
learn
from each other in order to achieve scientific progress, we have to work
together
to
assail
the
heights
of–"

  "Oh, screw it," Smith said. With two steps he was level with the Russian scientist and his stiletto, kept in his sleeve, snickered out.

  Pavlov froze.

  "Keep your dogs away," Smith said. The words wheezed out of him, he was tired and angry and the memory of Van Helsing's death lay on him like a weight, pressing him down. "Up the stairs, now!"

  He pushed and the scientist moved, the knife pressed against his flesh. The dog-men growled, but kept their distance.

  "Let's not have any more
bells
ringing, shall we?" Smith said. Pavlov, his face frozen in fury, said nothing.

  Up they went, up and up the long winding latticework stairs of the Tour Eiffel, higher and higher, the dog-men at their heels, the city smoking and burning below and Smith knew he was running out of time, fast.

  "You won't–"

  "Get away with this? I was going to say the same thing to you," Smith said. Pavlov, panting as the climb took its toll, said, "You're a fool, Smith. You have to stop serving false masters. Listen. Join us. Come over to our side. The Council needs good people – now more than ever –" this with a view of the destruction below. "The game is being played to its end. This is the time to choose sides. Join us."

  Smith was so surprised he almost laughed. "You're trying to turn
me
?"

  "I am trying to
save
you," Pavlov said. "These machines, out there? They're just the beginning, Smith! Who knows what infinitely more powerful force will come when we least expect it, when we're least prepared, to whom we are as ants are to humans? Do you really think you would save the human race best by serving its
masters
?"

  Smith didn't answer. Up they went, in a dizzying rise, and the dog-men silently followed.

  "I am… only… trying… to save this city!" Smith said, panting. They had almost reached the top. The Russian scientist, too, looked wan and out of breath. "Then go," Pavlov said. "I won't stop you. Just let me go. I can't take another damn step."

  Smith said, "Fine," and pushed him. The Russian Scientist lost his balance, then fell down the stairs, heavily, rolling until his dog-men stopped his fall. They stood hunched over him, looking up at Smith with hungry, yellow eyes.

  "Have you thought," Smith said softly, "that it might be better to have wiser masters, when these are the things that we do to each other?" He looked at the dog-men and there was anger, and compassion, in his voice when he said, "And you forgot your bell."

  From down below, the bruised Pavlov looked up. Smith held out his hand. Cupped in it was a small, silver bell.

  Gently, he rang it. The sound, clear and pure, pierced the air and carried on the cold high winds. Smith turned, and slowly walked up the last flight of stairs, up to the top of the tower. Behind him the sound of the dogs, barking and tearing, slowly drowned out the sound of human screams.

 
 

 
 
 

… and flying, he was flying, he was a man, a bird, he had wings, the moon rose huge above him, its face austere, the winds pulled him along, their music was the sound of waves, crashing on a distant, alien shore. Smith flew, high above the city, tracking–

 

He had gone to the top of the Tour Eiffel. Mooring lines for airships but what he found at the top was what, he guessed, Van Helsing had hoped for. He'd only used them once before, on training, long ago. But it would suffice – it would have to.

  The
Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat
. German-made, and rare – reputedly only a dozen had been made before Krupp had brought the nascent technology and Otto Lilienthal departed this mortal realm, two events generally considered to have a direct correlation between them. There were other flying vehicles up there, all manners of winged ornithopters, high-altitude unmanned probe balloons, a vehicle powered, it appeared, by paddling, like a bicycle with wings, a rocket harness, something that appeared to be a semi-hollow mechanical dragon, far too heavy, Smith thought, ever to fly… An inflatable blimp and a moored airship completed the odd assortment. A small sign translated as
Aerial Experimentation Station – No Trespassers.
There was also a small gas stove and a folding table and a device for making coffee. Smith checked, but there were no biscuits.

  Someone had fashioned a safety harness for the Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat. Smith appreciated the sentiment.

  The Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat was a hang glider, delicate-looking, with the wings of a fly and a long thin snout. Smith figured the most likely outcome of using the damn thing would be to plunge down the long way onto the Champ de Mars and end up a wet splat on the paved roads of the red planet. Behind him the dog-men were wailing. He stood up there on the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked over the burning city. From up here he could see Van Helsing was right. The affected area of the walking tripod death machines was entirely circular, a slowly moving, shifting area of fire and destruction that was heading east, almost out of the city by now.

  Could he make it?

  The howling of the dog-men behind him, bereft of their master and his bell. Smith took a deep breath. Then he slipped into the safety harness and lifted up the Lilienthal glider.

  The wind pushed at it, trying to lift him up. A short way away the floor terminated, air began. It was a long drop down. He took another deep breath. It was suddenly very quiet up there, only Smith and the winds, and the smoke rising in the distance into the air.

  He needed to shut down the device. He needed to find the Harvester.

  He needed to save Alice.

  He let the air out with a slow, shuddering breath. The wind caught at the glider, pulling, eager, wanting to play. Smith ran. The floor terminated and his feet connected with open air and the wind tugged and pulled at him and then he was airborne, the Tour Eiffel left behind, he was rising higher, the winds his companions, eternal and graceful and true.

 

  
Of course, the observer was the report, in a very real way, but that was all right, nothing lived forever, not even the observer's masters, near as he could tell.

  
The obsolete protocols and curious antique authentication routines were what must have activated the initial gateway back in the humans' calendar year of eighteen ninety-three. But whereas back then it was a primary scanner, able to open the entanglement channels back to Prime, these semi-scanners worked on broken frequencies, on quantum probability pocket worlds not seen or even remembered by any but the oldest of antiquarians. Like those tripod machines. This, the observer felt, could not go on. There were rules or, if not exactly
rules
, there was such a thing as
decorum
.

  
Which meant those probability world incursions had to stop.

  
The observer felt quite cheerful now. Soon it would all be over and he'd be back where he belonged. The voices protested at this but he quietened them down. The reconfigured scanner was picking up the signal clearly now and he headed for it, no longer in a hurry, savouring these moments, his mission soon to end.

  
Behind him, unobserved, for once, by the observer, a giant, malformed figure detached itself from the shadows and cautiously followed.

 

From high above there was something intensely beautiful about the tripod machines. They moved with the long legs of giraffes, their movements surprisingly graceful over the city. Flames reflected in their metal carapace, the bulbous heads of them that sat over the moving legs. They were like squid, Smith thought, soaring, coming closer – like aquatic beings somehow propelled to stand upright, stretched over the horizon, their tentacles reaching down to the city, bashing it this way and that.

  Where had they come from? What strange world would manufacture such machines? Who drove them? Were there people inside or were the tripods themselves some sort of advanced automata, the bulbous compartments huge mechanical brains?

  He flew over them, like a bird, the wind tossing him this way and that, the city a long way down below. The harness held him but his hands gripped the bar of the glider, this thing that looked too fragile to survive the winds, too impossible to fly. We built that, he thought. There was pride in that.