Whitechapel Gods (12 page)

He extended one shaking hand, balking at the cracking skin of its palm. The ferocious heat bit at him, reddening the back of his hand, blackening the knuckles. Oliver dared not breathe.

“Forgive us our faults,” Fickin cried. “Forgive us our imperfections. We wish only to be humble…”

Inches from the knob, Oliver’s fingers froze. The heat dribbled like a thick stew into his mind, erasing thoughts as it progressed.

Move!
Oliver screamed inwardly, but the fingers would not budge. With mechanical precision, the heat slipped into every chink in his mental armour, exploiting every fear and doubt to gain entrance.

And then Mama Engine was in his head. The horrid infernal vastness of her tore apart all comprehension and blasted away his sense of the space around him. Oliver beheld a savage universe of pulsating desires given form in random and hideous shapes of iron, linked across distant leagues by strings of luminous, fiery coal. Through these tumbled the charred bodies of so many souls, worried at by shapeless creatures of molten glass.

The closest corpse turned to him and grinned.

“She fancies you, Mr. Bull.”

Oliver squeezed his eyes shut against the sight, but it would not leave him.

The blistering heat on his neck woke him just enough to see the door shimmering through the shifting air before him.

The doorknob! He lunged forward. His hand exploded in a flaming ruin, but the door opened, and he toppled out into the shelves. Books fell on him. The floor struck him in the face. The floorboards scratched at his knees and palms.

He shouldered aside a bookcase that toppled into his path, kicked at another that reached for him from the side, struck a third with his fist. The lamp leapt from above in an effort to strike him, but he dodged aside and bolted for the door. It, too, defied him at first. Then he wrapped his charred fingers around the handle, planted one smouldering boot on the frame, and tore it open.

The little bell dinged. He was free.

The first principle of the forge is Intention. It is this impulse, whimsical or practical, that has fevered Man for all his long ages. Man would temper this impulse oftentimes with the ethics and rationality of his own nature, but the impulse itself is slave only to its own needs. In this it is found that the words of scholar and madman have equal weight, for all creation is Holy, and the realm of the Divine.

Curse God for giving his power to creatures such as She.

—V. ii

Far away, a ticking.

As of a single watch passing its time in a vast space. It was peaceful. He lay in the warm void and enjoyed the sound, let it slide into him, let it overwhelm him, until he was nothing more than the watch’s echo.

He felt a welling of sadness, as if his crushed body were weeping for him, and ignored it. All that was past him now. He’d gone beyond the fragile identities of a cruel and vulgar world. He had the void, this endless gap just beyond life, just before whatever came after. He revelled in the stillness, inviting it into his broken mind and willing the few remaining pieces of himself to vanish into it. Lost in nothingness, every vibration ended, all momentum expended.

And he was happy for a time.

Then something else found him.

He could not tell what it was, for perception was different here, but it moved through the nothingness like a drop of dye spreading in clear water. It reached a limb for him, one too small to straddle the void.

He found no need to turn to face it, finding no existent directions to speak of. And that was beautiful in itself.

Who are you?
he asked.

Its answer floated slowly to him, buoyed on an invisible ether. He caught the answer in outstretched limbs, hugged it, explored it. It was the frigid, shifting chill-warmth of the human body in sickness, and oozed a clammy toffeelike liquid into the void. The answer did not speak to him, and he was grateful, for the thought of human speech repelled and terrified him.

The answer dissolved into bubbles of oil and slipped from his grasp.

Who are you?
he repeated.

His companion shifted closer, slithering through the spaces with the sinewy motions of an octopus. He could not see it, nor hear it; rather he felt it, like a piece of coarse wool dragged across the arm, or a trickle of sand running down the face. Its movements revealed themselves as might ripples in the wake of an invisible swimmer.

When it reached for him again, he stretched out to greet it.

A vision came to him.

No!

Pain. Fever. Sweat. Suddenly bone and flesh ensnared him, bound him, and he was screaming,
screaming
, as growths of metal broke his skin. He trembled and spasmed, scraping hot nerves against fibrous blankets on top and beneath. He shrieked again as hundreds of growths inside his body shifted with his shudders, tearing flesh and muscle, scraping and sawing at bones.

Light ripped into his eyes as he flung them open; noxious air seared his lungs. An unbearable cold slapped onto his forehead. Over him, a woman cried and prayed. Behind her, two pale-faced children wept and shivered.

Please end this. Please, I want to go back.

His stomach clenched and he vomited on himself. A rib cracked as he convulsed, and he clawed at his own throat with hands gnarled from age.

And suddenly he toppled back into the void, leaving the world of pain and light far above.

It was not the stillness that greeted him, but a seething boil of madness. It seized him and drew him into a fire of screeching monstrosities. Tiny metal monsters crawled all over him, biting and scratching, growling and gnashing their teeth. He withdrew as far as he could, shrinking into himself, but they closed on him, writhing.

Help us,
they shouted.

Go away!

They howled in despair. They ran amok, driven by a ceaseless agony conjured with every movement and every breath. Their pain bled into anger and they fell upon one another in a cannibalistic frenzy.

At length, the creatures withdrew, leaving him in a pool of his own substance. Much of him had been broken and consumed. What little remained lay shuddering in that lightless place.

Gradually, the tick returned, and warm viscous fluid lifted him up. His companion settled into the dark beside him.

Are you the pain?
he asked.

Words did not exist in the void. His companion encircled him with sticky arms.

I understand. You are the source of the machine-disease. The Mother’s heat and the Father’s noise hurt you, and you hurt them back, and that causes only more pain.

The thing wept tears of pus.

I will help you,
he said.
I will help you to end it.

Gratitude. His companion swept one long limb out into the void, and from immeasurable distance retrieved something that it laid before them both.

A tiny metal monster: a clickrat. This one lay on its back, jaws wired shut, legs bundled against its stomach. It did not thrash about. The bindings had prevented it from lashing out against its pain, and that pain had consumed it. It lay now empty and inviting.

A gift.

Aaron floated up and took it.

John Scared knew he was immune to the clacks, and he did not know why. The question bothered him, as all unanswered questions did. If he did not know the reason, he could not be sure of the result.

Perhaps that was why these poor, diseased wretches made him uncomfortable.

He leaned heavily on his cane. Below, dockworkers struggled to unload the goods descending by crane from two zeppelins tethered to the Aldgate spire. No single class seemed as afflicted with the mechanical growths as the dockworkers. They shambled around like parodies of men, covered in gleaming iron pustules, hobbling on malformed brass legs, and picking at ropes and crates with hooked hands and fingerless steel stubs.

Why don’t you tell me what they are?
he asked of the hot tingling in the back of his mind.
Are they the result of inhaling your breath, my dear? Little spores cast off by the belching of your long throat, nestling in places warm and wet and springing to vibrant life?

“Tick, tick, tick,” he muttered. A bad habit. He did it for no good reason, but that it might annoy
her
.

He lifted his gaze to the Stack beyond and watched it flare to crimson life. A cloud of black foulness like the tenth plague gushed up into the air.

Ah, my lovely, my dear, my sweet mistress. I do not understand you. Any one of your beloved children would be faithful to you until the oily grave took him, and yet you place your trust in me. You are a stupid, stupid creature.

John Scared was not averse to stupidity, as long as it was practiced by others.

He turned from the electric glare of the dock lights, hobbling like a cripple to the opposite end of the rooftop of the Pilot’s Club, where Boxer hung suspended by his feet from a hook.

Astride the trapdoor leading to the Club’s highest floor, where men gambled their livelihood away on fixed games, stood a broad-shouldered man in rigid military pose. Two shifting-eyed boys huddled together just forward of his reach. Scared waved at the two children.

“Come forward, my grubbers. Time for a lesson.”

Scared read them as they advanced. Each piece of them became a variable: the motion of the eyes, the dip of the shoulders, the speed of the breath, the weight of the footfall. These he categorised mentally and applied against a mathematical function long ago devised, and the boys’ personalities became plain to his understanding. The one on the left, called Shoe, was good for nothing more than spying and fodder. The one on the right, called Tuppence—that one could be moulded. Another Penny, perhaps, if there was time enough for more lessons.

“Did you know, children,” Scared said, “that this hook was originally added to allow a piano to be hauled to the second storey? The piano fell and crushed the club’s original owner.” He turned to Boxer. “An accident. And a fortunate one it was for me, as it put the club on the market. Don’t you agree?”

The man called Boxer hung mute and shirtless, facing the blackness of Bishop’s Gate tower, and beyond that, the muted lights of London. His arms had been excellently bound behind his back by bands of iron—pounded into shape while still hot.

“Gather here, grubbers. You must see. Come, now, don’t be shy or there may be no food at all.”

Like hungry dogs they padded up, unconsciously rubbing their little tummies. Scared swept his arms wide, gathering them together in front of him. He settled his fingers on their shoulders, one hand on each boy, and thrilled at the warmth and the shivers he felt. He knelt behind, leaning over them so that the folds of his cloak encircled them like the wings of a mother bird.

“This man has done a bad thing,” Scared explained. “He has lied to me, you see. One may lie as much as one likes, so long as one tells only the truth to me.”

He fetched his cane and poked Boxer’s shoulder. The man slowly rotated around to face them. His chest had been opened, the skin peeled back and pinned to the edges of the torso. An iron plate had been riveted across his mouth. The children gasped and drew back against the rough wool of Scared’s coat. He held them steady as they tried to hide their faces.

“Yes, it
is
horrible, my dears. Your reaction is nothing to be ashamed of. After more lessons—and there will be many more—I will teach you to appreciate the artistry of what our good hunchback has done here.”

The military man behind them shifted the position of his feet.

Scared pointed forward with his cane, indicating the red glow that issued from between Boxer’s exposed ribs.

“You see this, grubbers? Mr. Boxer’s heart is not like yours and mine. His has been replaced with a coal-burning furnace, as have his arteries and vessels been replaced with pipes. Do you know what this means, grubbers?”

They did not respond. Through shudders and twitches, he watched bits of both of them curl up and die then and there.
Innocence crushed beneath the red meat of reality. A thing of beauty, is the growth of a child. Would you not agree, my love?

“It means,” he said, “that Mr. Boxer is a black cloak. He doesn’t
wear
a cloak, of course. Being a deceitful man, he has endeavoured to hide his nature from me since he came into my employ.”

Scared deftly flicked the latch holding Boxer’s furnace closed. Boxer growled something unintelligible.

“That was his first lie to me. But he is a bad liar, and thus I have known about his treachery for some time now.”

Scared passed his cane to Tuppence. “Go on, now. Give him a poke.”

Tuppence reached up a shaking hand and wrapped his little stubby fingers around the cane’s silver head. The polished mahogany gleamed red in the Stack’s omnipresent glow. Tuppence stood still, eyes fixed on Boxer’s gaping chest, as if unsure what to do next. John placed two fingers under the boy’s arm and urged it up. With but a few hesitations, Tuppence reached out with the cane and tapped it against Boxer’s side. He then quickly withdrew, shrinking close to himself. Boxer made no sound.

“Good, good,” Scared said. “Did you feel the way the flesh bounces back? Elasticity, it’s called: the pressure of moisture and fluid inside the body pushes the cane away.”

The two boys nodded slowly.

“Give the head a turn, my child. Come, I’ll show you.”

Scared placed one hand over the boy’s, gripping the cane’s length with the other. Gently, he guided the little fingers in a slow swivelling of the cane’s head. The boy jumped as a four-inch spring-loaded blade shot out the far end.

“Now give him another. In the same spot.”

He let his fingertips linger on the back of the boy’s hand as he withdrew. That was the softest part, between the rough knuckles and the bony wrist.
And very soft, indeed, on this one.

This time Tuppence needed no coaching. He reached out with the blade and stabbed a quick hole in Boxer’s flank, close to the kidney. Black oil-blood spurted out. Both children jumped back and John caught them with one hand against each small back. The blood splattered against the wall one storey down.

Scared gently retrieved his cane from Tuppence’s shaking hand.

Using the cane’s blade, he tapped on several of Boxer’s mechanical parts as he spoke. “You will notice,” he said, “that these parts of his shed no blood or oil, while these”—he ground the blade through a muscle—“shed plenty.”

Boxer grunted but did not speak. John wedged the blade to a secure position between the ribs and left the cane hanging from Boxer’s body.

“This man cannot be killed by the shedding of blood, grubbers. He has rejected the precious flesh given him by Our Lord, and embraced the fallacy of the machine. Now pay attention. I will show you how to kill such a man.”

Scared seesawed the cane from its resting place and deftly flicked open the slotted door covering Boxer’s furnace, releasing a pulse of red light and a wash of heat. He then carefully scraped out a thimbleful of embers, which fluttered down towards the glow of Aldgate Tower and vanished.

“Mr. Boxer’s body is not heated by blood, but coal. Deprived of this substance, he will cool and freeze, and then he will rot like meat left too long untended. Whether he will actually die…” Scared shrugged. “That is up to Mama Engine.”

And you do have a hard time letting go, don’t you, my sweet?

He scraped the rest of the coals from Boxer’s chest, leaving only a smattering of tiny embers coating the edges of the chamber. That done, he pressed the cane’s blade into the rooftop and forced it to retract once more.

“I have one more task for you, my grubbers, and this lesson will be over.” Scared dug out of one pocket two lumps of coal. He passed one to each of the boys. “Both of you will stand or sit, as you please, at the edge of the roof and offer him your coal. Hold your coal out to him as far as you can reach, and ask him if he would like it.” He made earnest eye contact with each lad as he spoke. “Now, you are not to give him any, no matter his answer. Simply ask him over and over. Do this until I come back to retrieve you; then there will be as much food as you can eat.”

The boys nodded, Tuppence more confidently than Shoe. John Scared guided them to the edge of the roof, his fingers gracing their delicate shoulders. He listened for a moment as their quiet voices made the offers, and Boxer replied with weak, muffled squeals. Then he left them to their work and hobbled over to the trapdoor.