Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (62 page)

"Fetch him up, then," I said.

She blinked. "Me? No, dear boy, I'm afraid that this task falls to you."

I looked at the drain again. "I'm not going down there."

"I'm afraid you'll have to."

"I'm too large! You'll have to do it yourself."

"You'd refuse a dangerous task and instead ask a woman to--"

"I know what you're capable of, Mrs. Fiske," I said.

She folded her arms. "Fine. Then accept that I'll be busy watching my husband while he cavorts about with that woman."

"You can't think that Bartleby is endangered by--" I stopped. "You're jealous."

"What?" she said. "Jealous? Mr. Wainwright, you forget yourself. Or rather you forget the arrangement my husband and I have. We do not... meddle in one another's affairs."

"Of course not."

Perhaps it had been that way, in the beginning. Aldora and Bartleby's wedding had been arranged out of convenience, neither interested in giving up the lifestyles they'd grown fond of, yet forced to bow to London's social pressure. It was enough of a fiction to satisfy the wagging of social tongues; such a thing was not even unusual enough to be remarkable. In place of affection and possession, they'd fostered a mutual respect, and during the years of their engagement had been permissive of one-another's extracurricular activities.

Things had changed after the wedding, though, and not so either would freely admit it. Aldora had withstood a cascading series of emotional blows leading up to the wedding, beginning with the death of her brother, and ending two years later with his death a second time. Bartleby had – perhaps uncharacteristically – put his selfish hedonism aside to care for her.

That's the way their nuptials had commenced. His care had been healing for her, and perhaps doubly so for himself. Neither seemed willing to acknowledge it, and perhaps in time they would both still indulge in their own adventures once more.

But not yet.

Not so soon.

And Doctor Teague, under the lab-coat and professionalism, was an attractive woman. I saw Aldora's distaste for the jealousy that it was. Perhaps Aldora's concerns were not quite so misguided.

I looked back down at the drain in the floor, rimmed red with Paddock's blood. "Very well. But if I get stuck--"

"I do so appreciate it, James," Aldora said, and when I glanced over, the words hanging in the air were all that remained of her.

***

I did not, as it turns out, get stuck.

It was a close thing, perhaps, but between removing my shirt and waistcoat and the decades of accumulated algae on the sides of the drain I was able to work my way down quite ably. How Aldora managed without a smear upon her dress is something I cannot fathom. That woman missed her calling as a master burglar.

It was as black as pitch below, but I'd brought a galvanic torch with me, and the dank tunnels were soon lit by its crackling glow.

It wasn't much, to be honest. More a toy than a tool, but I was fond of the torch, as fond as I'd ever been of a device not of my own design. It had been mine since I was a child, and perhaps better replaced than repaired, but it had been the first thing I'd purchased with my own money. One of the few things I owned for sentimental, rather than practical reasons. A good thing. That sentimentality was the only reason I had a light source on my person at all.

I waded forward through the cramped tunnels, up to my ribs in unpleasantly warm sewage, holding the torch above my head to avoid getting it wet. As I've said, it was old, and I had little desire to test the limits of 1890s waterproofing.

I could tell there was someone down there with me. The psychotic. I could hear him breathing when I held still. It was steady, but ragged, and loud.

Was that how my own breath sounded? I'm not proud of it, but when challenged or when someone I care for is threatened I have the propensity to slip into a frightful red rage, a fury knowing neither intellect nor mercy.

What would Doctor Teague make of that, I wondered. Would she shrink from me in revulsion? Regard me with fear? Or approach me with a psychiatrist's intellectual detachment. I didn't know which possibility was worst.

I continued slogging, trying my best to track by hearing, trying my best to keep track of where I'd turned when the pipes made a junction. Patterns were Bartleby's forte. His was the eidetic memory. I did not fancy getting trapped down below, but I seemed to be making progress. Or at least, the ragged breathing was getting louder.

The galvanic torch fizzled. I thumped it with the heel of my other hand in an affectionate sort of way, and the light flickered. When had I last changed the galvanic cells? How much charge did they hold? It flickered again, I thumped it again, and the light went out.

For just a moment.

And then it went back on again.

I did not suddenly see the madman there, lunging out of the filth, a manic gleam in his eye. I did not see the glint of his knife as he attacked. I was not suddenly assaulted by a miraculously appearing horror because of a moment's distraction.

This time.

I did spot him, though, or rather his shadow. The dun of his filth matched the wall next to which he huddled quite well.

He remained still as I approached, and though I could hear his breathing, he did not move as I prodded him.

"Sir," I said.

He did not respond.

"Sir." I prodded him again.

No response. Whatever malady he suffered left him insensate.

It was going to be a devil of a time getting him back up the pipe.

***

After taking the opportunity to shower off both myself and the mystery psychotic, I had the inmate guards summon Bartleby and Doctor Teague to join us in Director Paddock's office. A vaguely man-shaped stain was left in the carpet where the body had lain, but my catatonic friend didn't respond to it.

"Do you recognise him?" I asked as Doctor Teague gave the man a quick examination.

"Yes, it's Doctor Vogle," Doctor Teague reached out to his arm. "Doctor Vogle? Joost? Do you know where you are?"

Doctor Vogle reacted violently to her touch. I moved more quickly, pulling her away and interposing myself between the two of them, taking a powerful series of rabbit kicks to the lower ribs for my trouble. Slipping between two kicks I brought the broad of my forearm across his throat, pinning him to the ground until he stopped struggling.

"He's a fair sight different from when he'd examined me before." Bartleby said, unbothered by the sudden outbreak of violence. "What's wrong with him?"

Teague stared at the pair of us, shock naked on her face. "Depends on the day. He suffers from alternating fits of mania and melancholia. This appears to be one of his melancholic phases."

"He was down in the tunnels below the baths," I said.

"Good Lord," Bartleby said. "However did you find him?"

I turned back to the stain on the floor so that Bartleby couldn't read the lie on my face. "I heard him below. In the tunnels."

"Ghastly!" Bartleby said. "But a man like this – I can see him a killer. It's a pity we can't question him."

I bit my lip. "Perhaps we can?"

"I'm afraid he's entirely unresponsive in this state," Doctor Teague said. "And with the trauma he's been exposed to--"

"That he's been exposed to?" Bartleby scoffed.

"It doesn't matter who the perpetrator was," Teague said. "Violence is one of those great stresses on the human psyche."

"He was lucid enough when examining me."

"With a case like Doctor Vogle's you can sometimes see a delayed reaction to the stress, as his mental defences collapse in a cascade. There's no telling how long he'll stay in this melancholic fugue. Coaxing him free of it is a matter of weeks – months – of therapy."

"There's no time," Bartleby said.

"There's no need," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I've had the opportunity to read up on Director Paddock's machine in his journal," I said. "His therapy, you may recall, is predicated on interacting with a subject's dreams. Even in his fugue state, we should be able to reach Vogle's thoughts through the Director's dream apparatus."

"You found the Director's notes?" Teague asked.

"You can't have had time to read through them," Bartleby said.

"I've skimmed them." Questioning me on a matter of technology? Alton really should know better. And science is science, even when that science is the pseudoscience of psychology. "Enough that I believe I can interface Mr. Vogle's dream-scape."

Everyone save Vogle slowly turned to look upon the mass of brass and electrodes that was Director Paddock's magnum opus.

"Connecting your brain to his... it doesn't sound safe, James."

"It absolutely isn't." Teague grasped my hand, her flesh cool against mine. "The Director himself only used it with outside supervision, and he had hundreds of hours of practice."

I closed my fingers around hers. "Then it's fortunate I've got you to watch over me as I descend into madness," I said.

She turned away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I really don't see another way to question Vogle."

Bartleby stepped to Teague's side. "I don't like it any better than you, but James is right. He usually is, about this sort of thing."

"It's not anywhere near safe," Teague said in a near whisper.

"It's not," Bartleby said. "But I've never known a man with a greater knack for technology. If anyone can discern the workings of Paddock's dream machine, it's James."

Doctor Teague did not look relieved.

We strapped Vogle into the reclining chair of what Paddock had christened the Somatic Communion Engine.

"The way it works is fairly innovative," I said, sitting on the stool next to Vogle and securing the chin-strap on the metallic dome that covered my head. "It reads the electronic activity of the restful mind and relays those impulses into the therapist's sensory cortex. In this way I can perceive the inner workings of the patient's psyche."

"Electric impulses to the brain doesn't seem like a sound idea," Bartleby said.

"Paddock's notes indicate that it is a perfectly safe process," I lied.

"James, I urge you to reconsider," Teague said. "There's got to be another way."

"I am afraid not. Scotland Yard's deadline draws nigh."

"But it's almost certainly Vogle. All the evidence supports this."

"Not conclusively."

"There is enough doubt," Bartleby agreed. "If we hand the Met one of the patients, they will be all too eager to accept a culprit. The man will be hanged within the month, guilty or no. Even though my father would be satisfied and the inmates safe, do you want to condemn one of your patients to such a fate? When there's even a chance he might be innocent?"

Teague turned her face from him. "No."

"Then I do what I must." I said, my hand reaching for the toggle that would activate the apparatus and send me into a madman's mind-scape.

***

It was as though a switch had turned off the world. My flesh felt nothing, my eyes saw nothing, I could hear nothing. The machine's sensory input had replaced my own, and for the moment, it had nothing to tell me. I'd call it darkness but it wasn't even that. It was absence. It was void. Time ceased to pass in a meaningful sense, as without reference it was not to be measured. I could not even count my breaths, my heartbeats.

And then oblivion rippled.

I found myself seeing the world through Doctor Joost Vogle's eyes. He was standing in an infinite plane that seemed constructed from equal parts the asylum and what I assumed was the small Dutch town that he'd grown up in. Cobblestone streets became the speckled linoleum of the asylum hallways without warning, and rural homes the size of closets stood next to expansive hallways longer than the Thames. Dimly glimpsed figures moved among it all, little more solid than smoke, in the shape of orderlies, professors, patients, and townsfolk Joost had known.

Most solid among the phantasms was Joost himself, an idealised version of the dreamer. He was younger by almost a decade, his red hair clean rather than matted, his fair skin unmarred, his teeth closer to white than yellow. This was who Joost saw himself as, who Joost still believed himself to be. Who he still was, on the inside at least, dressed in an outfit that seemed equal parts evening-wear and patient's raiments.

I watched as he drifted through his dream-scape, a ghost among ghosts. The landscape was mutable, melting and flowing and building itself back together around him, creating its own disjointed passage out of whatever thoughts flitted across the surface of his brain.

All around me unreality reigned, causality giving way to symbolism. Birds flew backwards across a meringue sky, while pools of blood gathered in spiral shaped hollows. Worse yet, it wasn't even my own symbolic lexicon these forms drew from. Paddock, in his notes, had bemoaned the lack of a collective human symbolic language. Each person's dreams were their own country, each patient an entirely new discipline, and I didn't really have the time to specialise in Joost Vogle.