Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (65 page)

He ran from those halls, still a child, onto the deck of the HMS Benbow with a toy sword and pistol, watching as his friends and countrymen bombarded Benin. They stormed the beaches, his cap-gun firing musket rounds, his wooden sabre drawing red-ribbon blood, his fellow child-sailors howling war crimes and stealing sweets from the children of West Africa, leaving burning corpses in their wake.

In his vision Teague became Queen Victoria herself, impossibly tall and gaunt, watching him passively at first before leaving him alone in a ruined city drowning in blood – first it was Benin, then it was London.

He told none of this to his companions, simply offering them a weak smile.

***

Alton stood before his father, his real father, his greying asylum-committed father. "It's Teague. It has to be. She murdered Paddock when he discovered the nature of her treatment, and released the lot of you to cover her tracks."

"Doctor Teague," Dennis repeated. "Loni. I find it hard to... no. No, I know it must be so."

"Were you a patient of hers?" Alton asked, wondering if his father had undergone the same hellish experience.

"No. Not me. Others. They speak highly of her methods. Will Scotland Yard accept this?"

"Not willingly, but I don't see what choice they have."

Dennis folded his hands. "If they accept Doctor Teague as the guilty party, then we will stand down. I will accept whatever punishment is due me."

"They won't be kind, father. You did make them look rather foolish."

"Kindness is in short supply, boy. But I am a Bartleby, and I will not deny my faults or seek to avoid what my deeds have brought me."

Alton felt what might have been admiration for the old man.

"Go, then. Consider yourself released. Save these poor wretches, Alton... so many have taken advantage of them for so long. Bring them... bring them a taste of justice. Just the once."

***

The man from the home office was considerably less congenial after hearing the detective's report.

"Are you quite sure?" Johnson asked. "Doctor Teague is a respected academic and medical professional."

"E's just trying to save his sot of a father," Inspector Abel said.

"We're certain," Alton said. "The nature of her treatment. She drugged me, for the love of god. I should say that her motive is fairly clear."

"I'd dare say that an altered state of consciousness is no stranger to Mr. Alton Bartleby," Able said. "What've you got beyond the testimony of the mad and the drug-addled?"

"There's bound to be fingerprints on the knife," James said. "And likely in the blood on the control panel. I am quite sure both will belong to Doctor Teague."

"There's blood all over the asylum," Abel said. "Circumstantial at best."

Johnson leaned back in his camp chair, hands across his belly, and let out a long sigh. "It's enough to warrant a search of Doctor Teague's quarters for further evidence of wrongdoing."

"Oh, but sir--," Abel said.

Johnson glared at the man. "Take four men, Mr. Barlteby, and Mr. Wainwright... where's Mrs. Bartleby?"

"Fiske, please," Aldora said, stepping forward from behind the man.

"Good heavens. You should bell the cat, Mr. Bartleby."

"She'd claw my eyes out were I to try it, sir," Alton said with a twinkle in his eye, playing to the man's prejudices.

Aldora didn't quite roll her eyes.

"Perhaps it would be best for you to return home?" Johnson turned in his chair to address her. "If insufficient proof is discovered at Teague's home, then I'll have no recourse but to send the Metropolitan Police in to settle matters."

"Our matter of settlement is not for a Lady's eyes, Missus," Abel said.

"I would assume not," Aldora said. "Might I accompany my husband and the officers to Doctor Teague's home?"

"I cannot imagine why."

"Oh, you know." Aldora gazed at the opposite end of the pavilion tent. "I can see to it that her household is out of the way during the search. Being a woman and all that."

"Excellent idea," Johnson said. "You've got a sharp one here, Mr. Bartleby."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Off with you, then."

"Yes, sir."

20 September, 1911 - 9:15 pm

I knew that someone was waiting for me in my laboratory by the way that the lock felt loose when I opened it. There's a trick to it, you see – you've got to lift up and hold when you turn the knob, or the casing loosens. It would be trivial to fix, but I rather prefer knowing when Bartleby's been down below mucking about. So I can repair the damage his curiosity does before it blows up into my face.

I knew that it was Doctor Teague because, honestly, who else was it going to be?

"Doctor," I said, descending the stairs. I could hear her sobs. "Loni. What are you doing?"

"James," she stepped into the light of my lantern, more dishevelled than she had been when we'd first met. Her golden hair was almost mane-like, its curls wild, the hem of her dress tattered and torn, muddied by her passage from the asylum back to my lab.

"What have you done?" I asked.

She came to me, tears cutting through the soot the rain had left on her face. "I've gone and ruined everything, haven't I?"

"You've killed a man. Ended your career. Endangered countless lives. And for what?"

"You have to understand!" she said, the heat from her sorrow soaking my shirt as she attempted to bury her face into my chest. "My life's work – the use of psychoactives in therapy. I've seen you – I've seen this place. I know you understand! Nothing is more important than the work. Nothing!"

And the thing was, I did understand. My work was all consuming. It devoured any chances I had at a normal life, at personal relationships beyond those who didn't let my idiosyncrasies and eccentricities drive them away. I didn't mind. Only those who remained were true companions, and I had no use for the superficial.

"You were the one, the one who'd been hurting the patients." I put Paddock's journal on the table. "He came to confront you about the abuse, and you murdered him."

"I can't help it, I--" she faltered, "Sometimes I just get so angry. I can manage it, keep it under control, let it out in short gasps to punish the patients when they won't cooperate, but when Arthur threatened to expose me, threatened to take my research before the courts, it... it was just too much!"

"So you killed him."

"I didn't mean to! I was talking to him, and then the knife was in him, and I was holding it."

"What did you expect to accomplish?" I asked. "Why did you come here?"

"For you!" she said. "I know you felt this connection we share. Our love for the work. You understand it. You understand me."

She turned to face the stairs, pressing herself into me. "You can help me get out of London. Get me a change of clothes. Onto an airship headed for the continent. Join me. We can leave London, James, leave England and its pedestrian morality for Bavaria or Prussia or somewhere anti-intellectual morality won't get in the way of the purity of our science!"

"Our science?" I pushed her away. "Doctor. You have done nothing but betray your "science." Psychiatry is a profession to help the wounded of mind, men like Vogle and Earm and Dennis Bartleby. You... you used them. You betrayed them. You betrayed science, your calling, everything you worked for in order to support your pet theory."

She seemed shocked. "James, what are you saying, I--"

"What I am saying, Miss Teague, is that you are a poor scientist and a discredit to your profession. You're more a danger than the patients you've been hurting."

A wordless scream issued from her lips, and she rushed towards me, hatred and venom in her eyes.

I didn't see the knife in her hand until she was withdrawing it from my flesh, sticky crimson along its blade.

In Which Alton Bartleby Saves the Day

Aldora stopped halfway down the steps into the lab, her eyes on the still form of James Wainwright in a spreading pool of his own blood.

"Oh, you've done it now, haven't you." Her eyes flickered towards Doctor Teague, standing above the fallen engineer, knife still in her hands.

"This is all wrong!" Teague sobbed. "This has all gone so wrong! Why does this keep happening to me?"

Aldora continued down the steps, moving slowly, heedless of the way that Doctor Teague was pointing the knife at her. "Do you mind? I'd like to check on my husband's partner to see if I'm to kill you or simply hurt you very badly."

"I didn't mean to--" Teague started. "I never meant to... I thought he understood! I thought I could trust him!"

"Oh?" Aldora didn't even look at the woman, instead kneeling next to James, her pale skirt hungrily soaking up his warm blood. "And why's that?"

"He wasn't like the other men! You know! You know what it's like!"

Aldora stood, her face still. "What do I know?"

"I know you. Alton and I spoke of you. Before and after he was drugged. You're like me."

Aldora scoffed. "I should dare say not."

"No!" Teague practically shook. "You are! A woman, a woman forced to hide herself, forced to play a man's game, forced to placate these fools in their world, by their rules. And you don't! You refuse! You let them think you're weak, that you're a pathetic mewling cow, that you're simple."

The doctor passed the knife to her off hand and ran half-way around James towards the other woman.

"And you accomplish so much. You are so much. You travel the world, you've saved London, you've saved them, all of them, and they still think of you as a simple beautiful creature. Like me! I've got a doctorate! I'm a pioneer in my field! And every time, every man, every one has
forced
me to use my body to get ahead. Like my education isn't enough! Like
I'm
not enough!"

"Did James do that?" Aldora asked.

Teague faltered, glancing at the body on the floor next to her. She fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face, arms around his immobile form. "Oh god. Oh no. No. James. James never looked at me that way. He respected me. Respected my mind. Why couldn't you just come with me, you big damn fool? Why couldn't you just be there for me?"

"Because you're nothing," Aldora said.

Teague looked up at her. "What?"

"You think you understand the first thing about him? About James?" A ragged emotion broke through her voice for the first time. "You don't even... nobody understands him. I don't understand him. My husband, perhaps, but even he underestimates the man."

"I didn't mean to--"

"We found your plants, you know."

Teague looked up at the gentlewoman.

"The police. They searched your home. They found your plants."

"I knew they would."

"I found your journal."

Teague froze.

"Oh, don't worry. I didn't let them see it. Not yet. But I read it."

"You don't understand."

"Oh, I understand. You think us similar? You disgusting creature. You think you're like me? Because we're in some sisterhood of the oppressed? We both use the misconceptions of men, Miss Teague, but you -- you become what you think will let you take advantage of them. You become their little conquest to get ahead, and then feel guilty about it and reimagine yourself a victim. You think you're strong? You think that you draw strength? You're nothing, you little worm. The first man comes along, genuinely respecting you, and you kill him because he won't give you what you want.

"Because that's your true nature. You're not strong. You're just a killer."

Loni Teague screamed, picking up the knife, rushing towards Aldora. The woman shifted, ready to catch her.

There was a sudden blast, and Loni crumbled at her feet.

Aldora whirled to see her husband walking down the steps, smoking pistol in hand.

"I could have stopped her," Aldora whispered. "She didn't have to die."

Alton looked down at James's still form, a coldness in his eyes. "Yes. She did."

21 September, 1911 - 12:15 am

"I'm so sorry, James," Bartleby said.

I waved him away. "It's not that bad. Not like I've never been stabbed before."

"Don't say it like you're proud." Doctor Bendis harrumphed as he closed his black bag. "And this time she nicked your liver."

"Livers are one of those things that get better," I said.

"They also bleed a lot. You need rest." The doctor turned to Barlteby, then paused and turned to Aldora. "Make sure he stays in bed."

I lay my head back down, staring at the ceiling of a bedroom I rarely slept in. My mind flickered briefly to my laboratory, where even now Scotland Yard's finest were tromping around, collecting what they laughingly called 'evidence' and the body of Doctor Teague, all while damaging my equipment and nicking whatever they felt they could get away with. "I'll behave."