Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (12 page)

I was stunned by the pain, and all of the sudden it was upon me, its scissors' sharp blades slicing into my flesh, snipping at my face. I raised an arm to ward it off and felt a scarlet pain as the cold steel parted my flesh as the blades' tips slashed the back of my hand. I twisted aside at the last moment, turning what would have been amputation into a severe laceration. My uninjured hand found the handle of the fireplace's poker, which I brought against the beast's wrist with a savage ferocity. It recoiled with an inhuman cry of rage and pain, backing up just enough that I was able to rise and face it. If I am to die it will be on my feet, not on my back.

It shook its wrist with a snap several times and I could hear the joint pop back into place. Its head swivelled back towards me again before it attacked, howling, and I launched myself at it with an answering cry. It raised its scissors high but I came in low, driving the sharp end of the iron poker in and up under its ribs, between the edges of its leather wrappings. It drove deep into where the creature's heart would have been, and I shoved as hard as I could, bringing my grimace right up alongside its fetid countenance.

Its black pits stared into my rage-filled eyes and, slowly, it grinned.

I felt its long arms slither around me, moving with an inhuman flexibility, holding on too tightly to allow me to withdraw the poker from its chest. It drew its head back with a ghastly grin and brought its broad forehead down on my face, again and again, like a steam-hammer, breaking my nose and cracking one of my teeth. I clung as tenaciously to consciousness as I could, but felt the strength fleeing my body as I slumped to the ground. My left eye had swollen shut, but I watched with my right as the killer dismissed me and turned back towards Bartleby, who had recovered and grabbed one of the ceremonial rapiers crossing his family crest off of the wall. Idiot. Even if it wasn't decorative, piercing the creature was as useless as sticking pins into dead flesh.

And with that, I knew it for what it was.

Lacking the strength to call out I could but watch as Bartleby deftly avoided the creature's grab, countering with his blade, stabbing at organs once vital but now atrophied. Bartleby was fast and skilled, but the melee's conclusion was foregone. The world spun as I rolled to my side, blood from my injured hand and smashed nose splattering onto the parlour's tiled floor. I stared at it, focusing, and when I looked up I saw the girl from the workhouse standing in the doorway, staring at me.

"No," was all I could manage, terror welling in my breast. This beast could kill me, kill Bartleby, but I couldn't bear to see it hurt the girl.

I heard a crash and looked to see that the creature had rushed Bartleby, his rapier sticking uselessly out of its hip. The killer had smashed him up against the wall, slamming him into the plaster, again and again, battering my poor partner. I looked back towards the girl, who had stepped into the room.

"Run!" I pleaded with her.

The creature heard my cry and whirled, dropping Bartleby into a heap at its feet. It watched the girl as she ran towards me, and started after us. The girl threw her arms around me, tears pouring down her face.

"離開他吧!" she shouted at it. "走開壞男人!"

It faltered in its stride, the scissors in its hands lowering slightly, an unreadable expression on its monstrous face. I pulled the girl behind me and slipped in the pool of my blood as I scrambled to my knees. I held the poker in my hand, rage and a protective impulse devouring my sense of self-preservation, and bared my teeth at the devil facing me.

"Come then!" I bellowed, barely articulate. "End this!"

It half-moved towards us again, staring with its cold dark eyes, its face twisting and contorting. Its gnarled hands gripped the sides of its head and it threw its head back, screaming in sorrow and frustration. Moments later it was gone, back out the shattered parlour window, into the night.

The adrenaline left my body and I half collapsed, knee skidding in blood. I checked on the girl: crying, terrified, but unharmed. I pulled her into an embrace, letting her sob into me, letting the fear leech from her body, knowing darkly that there wasn't actually anything I could do to make her safe, keep her protected. Knowing that, for now, the illusion of security was enough.

***

"How exactly is it that we're not dead?" Bartleby asked upon regaining consciousness. The creature had battered him hard, but it looked like no permanent damage had been done. His shoulder had dislocated but I'd gotten the worst of the attack.

"I'm not sure." I'd brought Bartleby to his bed while he was unconscious, and the girl was curled up alongside him, exhaustion finally defeating terror. "I know what it was, now. Galvanic Resurrection."

"Good Lord."

"Quite the contrary."

"Like the Spider?" He asked, referring to the assassin we'd caught some months before.

"Not exactly. The Spider was mostly clockwork, with a human brain and spinal column taking the place of the Babbage engine. This is different. This is the reanimation of dead tissue."

"I'd thought such necromancy was banned?"

"Galvanism is prohibited by the Ingolstadt Convention as a crime against humanity, but it still happens. The Royal Guild of Engineers and Artificers denounces it, but research continues in secret. This explains the N-Ray signature I'd found – obviously the Galvanisation process has some impact on the N-Radiation organic bodies give off."

"That doesn't explain... anything, really. Why would a Galvanic Resurrection be killing families? And why would it leave us alive?"

"I don't know. It's a forbidden technology, and not one that I've studied." Biology wasn't of much interest to me.

"Blast." Bartleby sounded bitter. "Know of any alumnus who might know how these things act?"

"No alum," I hesitated. "But there is a man. If you're willing to deal with the devil."

"I think that when one is fighting devils, one cannot be too picky about one's allies."

"You remember that you said that. We can meet with him tomorrow. The girl will be safe with Aldora."

"Good, good." He closed his eyes momentarily, then fixed them to my gaze. "Good heavens, James, your face. Should we send for a physician?"

"Not necessary. I'll heal. Go to sleep."

***

We met with the Genevese doctor at his place of residence, the Tower of London.

"They actually keep people here?" Bartleby marvelled. "I'd assumed it was all for tourists."

"We do house a few very special personages." Johnson removed the ring of keys from his belt to unlock the sturdy iron door before us. He was a crude man, base and earthy, beloved of gallows humour. "Guests of the Empire, you might say."

Bringing young Apprentices to the Tower was a RGEA tradition, a warning disguised as a field trip. The Empire kept prisoners there, prisoners too dangerous to be allowed free congress with the outside world. Some of them were anarchists and political agitators, but the ones we were shown were those whose misuse of science had put the world itself in danger. I am fairly certain that many of my fellow students took the trip not as a cautionary tale, but rather as proof that with science anything was possible... and, in some cases, should be. Many of us had arrangements with Johnson, paying him a tidy sum for access to the brilliant but twisted minds kept in the Tower. The man we were to visit was one such luminary – widely considered to be the father of modern Galvanic sciences. Widely considered to be dead.

The cell door opened resentfully, perhaps trying to protect the world from the wretch living within. The thought of what he'd done – of the sorrow his research had unleashed upon the world, and for such petty, selfish reasons – I decided to let Bartleby do the talking, fairly certain that I'd be telegraphic in my contempt.

The wretch we were to visit was kept manacled to his bed by short chains. The cell contained little else beyond a simple stool, beyond the reach the chains allowed, provided for the convenience of the prisoner's infrequent visitors. Some of the Tower's guests were permitted reading materials or even paper to work out theories with, but not this one. Not this man.

"Don't get to close," Johnson grinned, motioning us in past him. "This one's a biter. Just pound on the door when you're ready to leave."

Bartleby sat on the stool that was the room's only other furnishing, regarding our host silently while I remained, leaning, against the door. The doctor was wizened, ancient, shrunken into his simple prisoner's linens. Rheumy eyes slowly opened, acknowledgement that we were there, but he didn't speak.

"They said that you were dead," Bartleby stated.

The doctor spoke in a voice soft yet strong, rusty with disuse. "They lied."

His eyes opened a little wider, and he craned his neck in our direction. "They always lie. Walton lied. Shelly lied. Made a better story if I died of pneumonia. More mortal. More moral."

"You laugh. Morality amuses you?"

"At my age everything amuses me, boy. They've kept me in this tower for... what year is it?"

"Nineteen-Hundred and Seven."

"That so?" His face soured. "I so wish death would hurry on and come collect me. There's not much left for me but waiting, now. I keep trying to call him, but the
hurensoh
n won't let me die."

"We have something that might make you useful..."

The doctor frowned. "Getting to the point? Good. I only get a few visitors each year, but they always hem and haw and waste time making small talk. I don't care. They think they're doing me a favour, poor poor Victor locked up all alone.
Arschlochen
. Like I want your pithy words. I don't want to be useful. I just want to die."

"Someone's built a Galvanic Resurrection."

The revelation didn't seem to surprise the doctor. "Of course they have. Why else would anyone come to see Victor?"

Bartleby's composure slipped. "This... happens often?"

"Often?" Victor considered. "Often enough. They come to ask me for help several times a year. Like I have some special insight into the things."

"Well, you were the first."

"Would that I was the last. Let me tell you a secret, boy. I have learnt more about the Resurrected from people like you coming to beg for my help than I ever did in my experiments. So. Enlighten me, and I will enlighten you."

Disquieted by the apparent prevalence of the Galvanic, Bartleby related what we'd discovered of the Scissorman. His murderous habits. His behaviour when he came for us. Victor listened to it all quietly, and remained silent for some time after. I had to restrain him from giving the old man a nudge, bearing in mind Johnson's warnings of the old man's mastication habits.

The old man finally opened his eyes, fixing Bartleby with a steely gaze. "I will tell you three truths, and in exchange you will kill me."

"I'm not going to kill you," Bartleby scoffed.

"You are like the Great Detective," Victor said. "I can see it in your eyes. You put things together. The third thing I will tell you. I told him, and he revealed that if was not a better man he would have killed me. You? You are not as good a man."

"I am not going to kill you."

"We will see. The first thing I tell you is that the Resurrectionist who created this Scissorman is not done yet. This is why he kills. He is bringing parts to his creator. His creator has discovered what I had discovered – that he has failed. The stench you described is indeed formaldehyde, but it is not the Resurrected's flesh. His creator thinks that with fresher, better preserved body parts he will succeed. He is wrong. So, the first truth is that the Scissorman has been tasked with the collection of body-parts.

"The second truth is the nature of the Resurrected. They are childlike, but they are not children. They are not men. They are not aware in the same way that we are aware. They exist in a dreamlike state of impulse, instinct, and emotion. Strong is the impulse to obey their creators, but there are others. Other impulses that may prove stronger. That was the hard lesson I learnt. That is half the reason I am here."

"And the third thing?" Bartleby asked. "The thing that will make me kill you?"

Victor had gotten visibly agitated as he spoke, shifting on his mattress, rubbing his fingertips together. "Oh. Oh my yes. So long I have waited."

"Let's go, Bartleby," I said.

"No. No, I want to hear this."

"The other reason I am here. The reason they keep me alive. Why your government locks me up and did not let me die. Firstly, it was not to provide my wisdom to seekers like yourself."

"Then what--" Bartleby began.

"Secondly, it is done. They don't need me for it anymore. I completed the task they needed me for eight years ago."

"Eight years--" Bartleby stopped, his face suddenly blank, his eyes wide. His cogitating look. He sat silent and still for almost an entire minute, running through the permutations of what he'd been told, making connections, eliminating possibilities. Alton Bartleby is a subtle man and I am not the greatest diviner of human expression, but live and work with anyone for long enough and you pick up on their tells. His face cycled through small changes indicating confusion, surprise, terror, disgust, and finally settling on rage.