Shaking off the horrid recollections, he returned to the present and found that Gull had removed his hand to denote waiting. They stood outside a long, ward-like corridor. The walls were painted in a thick, heavy yellow, more marrow than flower. The same apron-clad guard stood in contrast by the doors. Gull gestured, and the guard pulled an elaborate bolt that slid levers and greased phalanges to open to the ward beyond. It all seemed highly theatrical, more like one of the new zoological gardens than a sanctum of health.
Gull caught the scent of his thoughts, and began to explain. ‘Some of the women here are very unstable, a danger to themselves and others. Their tides of mania and excessive will are beyond discipline or control. Therefore we contain them, and for good reason.’
Muybridge felt his excitement grow at the proximity of these demented creatures. The pair walked the corridor and stopped at another door, where Crane stood waiting. Gull nodded and the assistant unlocked it.
‘First,’ said Gull, ‘I will show you Abigail. She is the one I gave the picture to. She was picked up off the streets, where she was working the Penny Finger trade; she has been here now for nearly eight months.’
‘But you said this was an infliction of the affluent, not of the poor, not of street women?’
‘Quite right!’ said Gull. ‘But to understand a disease you have to find its root. To instigate it from the beginning. So we collect test subjects and create the malady in them. This is the same protocol that grew from vaccine research, but here we apply it to the mind. Those already suffering are only useful to study symptoms – not the cause, effect and cure: you can’t grow a plant from a leaf.’
‘So the subject of your lecture at Guy’s was different from this one?’
Gull looked at him in the way strangers do when they are trying to politely judge the age of a friend’s child. ‘On the surface they are different, yes, but fundamentally they are the same. The one you saw at the lecture
hall came into my care with her malady already fully formed. Her family were glad to see the back of her. They would have willingly packed her off to the bedlam, to die in the filth with all those others that have caused grievous embarrassment to their parents and siblings. This one came here undernourished but in good spirits – I saved her from a life of rotting on the streets. She will take part in the experiments and then eventually be released, if she is well enough.’ Muybridge watched the doctor as he spoke, glancing at the guard every so often to gauge a reaction, but both their expressions remained impassive.
‘When she first arrived, we treated her like royalty, spoiling her with food, compliments and fine clothing. She grew fat and weak, and she was soon ready for her first encounter with the Lark Mirror.’
‘The Lark Mirror?’
‘Yes. It’s a tool we use in our hypnotic process, not unlike the peripherscope I used for your treatment.’
Muybridge did not care for the comparison.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, the problem started when we gave Abigail here the picture.’
‘What was the picture of?’ asked Muybridge.
‘It was a picture of her, taken three weeks ago. I took your advice and photographed all my special cases.’
The news took Muybridge aback. He had offered his services and been flatly turned down and now, a few years later, Gull had taken the idea and instigated his own photographic enquiries? He tried to hide his disdain as Gull continued.
‘When I gave her the print, she just stared at it. I had to tell her it was her likeness. And then she ate it. Before I could stop her, she stuffed it into her mouth and refused to take it out. By the time Crane arrived to part her jaws, it was gone.’
Before the words had time to settle and sting, he opened the door. She was on the far side of the room, standing in the corner. She was skeletal
and absent. Only the top part of her body was clothed. A thick blouse that looked many sizes too large was wrapped about her torso. The lower part of her body, from her sternum down, was swathed in bandages, ending in a small, dangling flap for decency.
Her stick-like legs were naked and shivering. Her feet turned inwards and were blue with cold.
‘She’s undressed again,’ said Crane, exposing the reality of his below-average intelligence.
‘Yes,’ said Gull calmly. ‘Cover her up.’
A blanket was wrenched from her thin mattress and wrapped around her waist. The guard seated her on the equally skeletal bed.
‘Her wounds are healing slowly, it takes a long time when the body has so little to draw from.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Muybridge.
Gull turned and directed his gaze with withering force into the photographer’s unsuspecting eyes.
‘She tried to get the picture back. She clawed herself open to find it.’
Muybridge yanked his gaze away from the surgeon to look at the frail creature again: her distant, vacant stare; the bandages; her bird-like hands with some of the fingernails broken off. He felt queasy and somehow aroused, one sensation cancelling the other out, making him impassive, becoming for a moment like her.
‘If we had not found her in time, she would have bled to death. She ripped her abdominal wall, lost part of her lower intestine and nicked her fallopian tubes without screaming or making any other sound.’ Gull was obviously impressed. ‘Imagine the willpower that would take!’
‘Did she use a weapon?’ asked Muybridge, already fearing he knew the answer.
‘No, sir, that’s what I am telling you: she used her bare hands.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Not to you or I. We would hesitate. The hand would lose its power
and only scratch and bruise at our weakness. The human hand is a potent and massively strong mechanism. It is a series of fulcrums and levers worked by tough and dominant muscles. Its sinews and bones are tensile and capable of bearing colossal strain. We barely use a fraction of its potential strength, developing its agile pliancy and delicate touch instead. The hand, without doubt, is an awesome tool. Did you know it is one of the most difficult parts of the human body to destroy? You have to crush and mangle it just to get it to break into smaller parts.’
Muybridge was not sure he wanted to know all this, but clearly he had no choice, and Gull galloped on.
‘There is an ancient funeral practice in Tibet called ‘sky burial’. Deceased monks are carried to a high platform where their bodies are dissected – butchered, really – into small, devourable pieces. The surgeon-priest then leaves the platform so that a flock of vultures may descend onto the meat table. They then eat every scrap and depart, taking the body of the holy man into the clouds. In this procedure, the hands require the most work. All else is child’s play in comparison. To get them shredded enough for the birds to eat takes great effort, heavy, sharp tools and time.’ He paused for a breath. ‘Yes sir, the hand is a ferocious weapon when sent forth, without doubt.’
All four of them fell silent, with not an ounce of communication floating between them. They all looked in different directions, into different worlds, and waited for theirs to begin again.
* * *
Ishmael was thirsty. He had finished his supply of water the day before, and was following a track that seemed straighter than the others, but was, in truth, identical to the rest. He had walked so many since turning his
back on the city and pointing himself into the depth of the forest. He had resolved to never take a forking path that curved to the right or the left, and instead sought only straight paths, knowing that even they could be deceptive and capable of making him walk in circles.
This was a truth he had learned in one of his lessons with the Kin; something about navigation and sense of direction. What at the time of its telling seemed difficult and abstract now hovered over his will like a halo, or a beacon in the night. ‘Humans always walk in circles’ – this is what Seth had said, adding that human beings were faulty in their alignment; they were off-balance, permanently tilted from birth. Even placing one foot in front of another and staring straight ahead was not a remedy.
But he was now sure that he was not human. Maybe some part of him had been gleaned from there, but not his whole. He was unique, and his dealings with the woman had proven that. He would not be sullied by their fears, or crippled by their imperfection. All their ailments and stupidity meant nothing to him, and here, in the midst of the Vorrh, they all seemed petty and trivial. None of the hurt and shame had lasted past his fifth hour among the trees. He was unbridled, and the yoke of his previous emotions lay in discarded ruins at the entrance of his new life.
He had slept in patches throughout the days and the nights, always facing towards the inner direction of the forest. He had spent nights in sandy hollows, or in a trampled nest of undergrowth. Once, he had tried sleeping in a tree, but found that it attracted attention from the things that dwelt there.
He and the Vorrh were beginning to converse, and he was finding a pleasure in its growing strangeness. He knew he would have to hunt and forage it soon. The loaf of bread, water and wine he had hastily brought was gone, and his body was starting to complain, the pangs of hunger and thirst and his aching feet confirming his corporeality. Perhaps, as he got deeper, these too would burn off and he would change, evolve into a different being. He would have tasted and spoken the possible names of
such an original entity if his tongue were not encrusted to the wall of his mouth, and his throat blocked with sand and emptiness.
As he tramped forwards, he noticed a stone blocking the slender path ahead of him. He approached it, and the rock focused its smooth contours from a supposed stone to an earthenware bowl, containing pure, fresh water. He marvelled at the miracle, seemingly conjured by his thirst, and sniffed at its cool freshness. In only a few seconds, he had swallowed every drop, drinking it with relish. His thirst quenched, he took a closer look at the mysterious bowl. Its shell was that of unfired nut, packed rigid with mud and still showing evidence of the finger-marks of its maker. The prints were tiny; the hands of a child, he thought absently, his brain still soaking up the fluid and its function. He put the bowl in the sack that he carried over his shoulder and resumed his journey through the trees.
The animals in the forest seemed tamer than those he had passed on his way out of the city, indifferent to him, as if they carried none of the natural fear that most creatures have of the earth’s most bloodthirsty predator. Or perhaps it was his differences that affected them; perhaps only Double Eyes carried that taint? He had seen a snake lift its head at the side of the track, its flickering tongue tasting the molecules of his being. Several times, small, deer-like creatures calmly watched him pass without starting in the slightest. He was beginning to feel that he was continuously under surveillance, that the trees and their occupants were watching him; it made him feel safer, somehow, protected from afar.
Several hours passed, and he stopped to rest, pulling the final chunk of hard, stale bread from his pack. He longed for something more substantial, remembering the dishes prepared for him in the secret basement so very long ago. The memory suddenly seemed so close to him, as though the aroma of cooked potatoes was wafting through the air at that precise moment. Then he realised: this was no mirage – he could smell food! Startled, he clambered to his feet and looked around. A few feet behind
his resting place was another bowl, filled with steaming hot food. He laughed at it, astonished, then plucked the dish out of the grass and held it to his nose, savouring the luscious scent of potatoes cooked in a rich sauce and gladdened with sage.
‘Is there somebody here?’ he called out. No answer came back.
He prodded the warm food and tasted his finger. Within minutes he had devoured every scrap. It was excellent, so similar to the dishes the Kin had made for him. Could they be there with him, in the dense foliage? The thought brought back a great and unexpected wave of emotion, one he had never allowed himself before, not since the day of their desertion. The delayed comprehension of his loss overpowered him, and he started to weep in the forest clearing, the warm, earthen bowl in his hand and the taste of his innocence in his mouth. He choked back the unexpected tears and called out again, this time with hope.
‘Who is here?!’
Nothing came back, but he sensed a different kind of stirring in the undergrowth and span to face it.
‘Please, if anyone is there…!’
Nothing met his ears but the sound of birds. For the first time, he thought about returning to the city. He had been foolish to believe that some remnant of the Kin might be here. If he had really wanted to find them, he would have done so before, in the house where they had lived, not in this twisted wilderness of plants and miracles. In frustration, he packed his meagre belongings and stalked deeper into the trees, watching the bends of the narrow path curl and curve with his changing moods.
An hour later, he found another bowl of water, placed neatly and noticeably in the centre of his route, and he guessed they might be leading him safely towards the forest’s interior. He felt energised and protected, reassured that his path was cared for and significant. Again, he thought of the Kin skulking around him, the bright, dappled light camouflaging their shiny brown bodies with ocelot intensity.
* * *
‘I am now working on making direct contact with that ferocious willpower, trying to set aside the starvation obsession, to cleave it from the unique determination it engenders. I am gaining remarkable results: it has been possible to map its mechanism in the brain and produce its exact responses under experimental rigour.’
They were walking the corridor again, Gull finally keeping his hands to himself. He had his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his breeches, as he strolled past the locked metal doors. There was something unstoppable about his confident posture.
‘There is one side effect, however, that does not make clinical sense,’ the doctor was saying. ‘There appears to develop a taint of violence in all I have treated or experimented with, as if there is some fundamental correlation between the activation of peripheral sight and the loosening of moral codes that keep us all in check.’