The Half-Made World (26 page)

Signals came in from the device that had been placed in the Doctor’s golden watch. In theory, the device should have transmitted every word that was spoken in the Doctor’s presence. But the world was only half-made, and had not yet attained the perfection of theory. The signals were weak and tremulous. Much was lost in transmission. There was a delay of at least several hours between the moment when those signals arrived through the ether and quivered on the copper receivers of the telegraphy equipment, and the moment when the Signal Corps had translated them into something intelligible, and typed up a transcript that could be placed into Lowry’s hands. It was therefore not until early the morning after, while he was shaving, that Lowry learned that (
a
) one of the precious Heavier-Than-Air Vessels had been lost, due to the criminal recklessness and idiocy of its pilot, and (
b
) a person matching the description of the Agent who’d massacred Kloan had entered the Hospital.

He sent a report up to Banks, and he sent a report back to Kingstown.

Banks did not respond.

That evening, Subaltern Thernstrom of the Signal Corps interrupted Lowry as he was eating his dinner, alone at the end of a long table in what had been the house of the Mayor of Kloan.

“Sir.”

“What is it, Subaltern?”

“Sir. A signal. Urgent, sir.”

Lowry sighed, abandoned his dinner, and followed the Subaltern back to the telegraphy tent, where Subaltern Drum showed him a brief typed transcript. It began:
FOR MORNINGSIDE ONLY. FOR MORNINGSIDE ONLY
.

“Sir . . .”

“Morningside’s dead, isn’t he? I’m Morningside now. Let’s see the rest of it.”

. . .
FOR MORNINGSIDE ONLY. OUR ADVERSARY HAS ENTERED THE HOSPITAL. UNACCEPTABLE. CONDUCTOR BANKS HAS PROVED INEFFECTIVE AND IS TO BE REMOVED. YOU ARE TO TAKE ACTING COMMAND, MORNINGSIDE.

“It came via the restricted device, sir.”

“I know.”

“The Engines, sir.”

“Yes.” The transcript tailed off with a long, long signature, the names of each one of the thirty-eight Engines themselves:

ANGELUS. ARCHWAY. ARKLEY. ARSENAL. BARKING. COLLIER HILL. DRYDEN. FOUNTAINHEAD. GEORGIANA. GLORIANA. HARROW CROSS
. . .

Lowry’s hands shook. In decades of service, he had never, never once, had any direct communication with the Engines themselves. The fact that this communication was merely accidental, being intended for Morningside, only very slightly tarnished Lowry’s pride or reduced his terror.

“Thernstrom.”

“Sir.”

“Wire back.”

MORNINGSIDE DECEASED IN ACCIDENT ON FRONT LINE CAUSED BY OWN CARELESSNESS. SUB-INVIGILATOR 2 LOWRY ACTING IN MORNINGSIDE’S PLACE. WILL ACT AS YOU COMMAND. LOWRY.

There was no response for three hours. Lowry waited by the telegraph, moving only when his nerves got too bad and his stomach revolted and he was forced to go dry-heave outside.

At last the response came:

FOR LOWRY ONLY. FOR LOWRY ONLY. LOWRY, YOU ARE TO TAKE ACTING COMMAND. YOU ARE NOT SIGNIFICANTLY LESS ADEQUATE FOR THE TASK THAN MORNINGSIDE. BANKS MUST GO. ACT WITH OUR SANCTION. ANGELUS. ARCHWAY. ARKELY
. . .

BOOK TWO

THE DOLL HOUSE

CHAPTER 16

EARLY DAYS

The Director of the House Dolorous had arranged for Liv to stay in an upstairs room, on the fifth floor of the East Wing. Maggfrid and two porters brought her bags up. One porter was missing an ear and an eye. The other was mercifully unwounded, though he had very nearly no teeth. She thanked them profusely, and asked them to escort Maggfrid down to his quarters—a bunk in a shared room on the second floor, West Wing. She asked for dinner to be brought to her. For two days, she hardly left her room.

The House terrified her.

“The aircraft,” she told the Director, “The incident with the—what’s the word?—the Agent—the thing at the gate—it rather shattered my nerves.” He was very understanding.

But the truth was that she simply couldn’t bear to face her new patients. There were too many of them. Their wounds, physical and mental, were too various, too terrible. She couldn’t tell the patients from the doctors—they all shared the same vague and haunted expression. Most of the doctors and staff were old wounded soldiers themselves. The House echoed with sobbing. There was no organization that she could discern. And a demon slumbered in the walls and under the earth. . . .

She felt herself falling back into the bad habits of her youth, of the dark years following her mother’s death. She despised herself for it.

On the third day, she woke early in the morning. She took three drops of her nerve tonic, which numbed her very helpfully. She spent an hour breathing slowly and deeply. She spent several minutes looking in the mirror, critically assessing her flaws, and her weakness, and her selfishness. Afterwards, she spent another few minutes practicing a confident unruffled smile. She placed the golden watch in her purse because she found its tick comforting, and she went to visit Director Howell in his office.

The Director’s office was at the back of the House, on the third floor, and its wide windows looked out over the gardens, which decades of painstaking effort had somehow made moderately green. Sunlight flooded the office. Everything in it was white and clean. In the gardens below, a dozen mad persons with wild and filthy hair sat stiffly beside the paths like dead trees.

The Director himself was a little dark-skinned man with round gold-rimmed spectacles, and a neat black beard, and a mild and reasonable smile. As Liv entered, he rose from his chair with a look of concern on his face.

“Good morning, Director!”

“Dr. Alverhuysen, are you sure you’re well—?”

“Of course!” She smiled. “Of
course
. Entirely too much work to do for us to waste time, don’t you think? I intend to begin with a study of the victims of the Line’s mind-bombs, the noisemakers. Uncharted territory, not yet visited by science—that’s where I can be of most use. We must all do what we can, don’t you agree, Director?”

“Fresh thinking, Dr. Alverhuysen. What a pleasure!”

The West Wing housed patients whose injuries were (primarily) physical, while the East Wing housed those whose injuries were (primarily) mental. The victims of the mind-bombs were housed on the East Wing’s second and third floors. Liv and the Director toured the cells, and she selected two to be her first subjects. She opened files on them under the names
D
and
G.

D is a woman in her early twenties. From her features, which include a prominent forehead and pale, freckled complexion, I would judge that she is descended ultimately from settlers from Lundroy. Her pupils are abnormally enlarged, which gives her an appearance (likely false) of being quite fascinated by whatever she sees. She is 5' 2'' and somewhat overweight, though she is more physically active than is the norm among victims of the bombs—she is often found running heedlessly down the corridors or through the gardens. She has many bruises and scrapes.

She sings to herself constantly, generally love songs, most frequently something called “Daisy, My Dear,” an irritating composition that I am told is the work of the fashionable tunesmiths of Swing Street in distant Jasper City. The staff have therefore nicknamed her “Daisy.” In fact, her name is Colla Barber. She is the only daughter of a prominent Land Baron in the Delta, who is not incidentally a significant donor to the House. Four years ago, while out riding with a young man, she stumbled across a long-forgotten minefield.

She returns again and again to those songs. Based on my observations to date, this is typical of the victims of the bombs. Most of them have one or two fragments of conversation or knowledge remaining, quite arbitrarily; rather like the way in which (so the
Child’s History
tells me) when the Line bombards an ancient city with explosive rockets, whole districts may be flattened, but sometimes a single fine old church will be left standing.

Otherwise her responses to communication (words, gestures, touch) appear almost random. Nevertheless she is more active than the average sufferer, less closed off from the world. I have some access to information on her life before the bombs (whereas the lives of most sufferers are a mystery). I propose to begin with conversational therapy.

G is a man of uncertain age, most certainly very elderly. I judge him to be of mixed descent, primarily Dhravian. He is more than six feet tall, and very thin—in fact, I suspect that the House’s staff have neglected his feeding, and I have instructed that that is to cease. When I first found him, he had an immense and filthy white beard, which I had trimmed. For a man of his apparent age, he is remarkably healthy. Perhaps the victims of the bombs, being only half-alive, age more slowly than we do?

How he came to the House is uncertain. He has been in the House for at least seven years, probably more, and no records were kept of his arrival. This is quite typical. It is impossible at this point to determine when in his life he ran afoul of the bombs. If he speaks at all, which he does infrequently, he babbles garbled and nonsensical fragments of fairy tales, which makes me suspect that possibly he was damaged in infancy.

The staff have nicknamed him “the General,” for no clear reason; perhaps because there is something grand and military in his posture and the fierceness of his eye? I would not assume from the name that he was, in fact, an officer or even a soldier. The staff have given at least seven other patients the same unimaginative nickname, for equally trivial reasons. (There are also four “Barons” and innumerable “Princesses.”)

At first G seemed a hopeless case. He responds to nothing, and hardly moves. But his eyes are intelligent, and sad. Where we know nothing, we must admit that we know nothing, and trust to intuition. I propose to begin with the electrical therapy.