Текст книги "The curious case of the Clockwork Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Burton gave a curt jerk of his head in acknowledgement and the two men entered the house.

The king's agent said: “Pox found Constable Bhatti, who says he's on his way. The bird has since been racing back and forth between here and Battersea Power Station. Brunel has agreed to assist us.”

Trounce reached up and gingerly felt the big bump on his head. “Ouch! So the Steam Man will fight alongside us rather than against us on this occasion?”

“Yes, although not literally. There are a lot of springs in that lumbering life-maintaining contraption of his. If the mechanism ceased to function, he'd die. Best to keep him out of the enemy's range.”

They passed Admiral Lord Nelson, who, rewound, and with the cactus pistol in one hand and a rapier in the other, was standing guard in the hallway.

“Same applies to him, then,” Trounce said, indicating the valet.

“No,” Burton replied.

“No? But he's chock-a-block full of springs!”

“Yes.”

“So our opponent will stop him with ease.”

“I'm counting on it.”

“What? By Jove, what the blazes are you up to?”

“All in due course, Trounce, old man. All in due course.”

Algernon Swinburne came down the stairs. His eyes were hooded and his jaw set hard. Herbert Spencer's death had affected the poet greatly.

“I've locked the Choir Stones in the safe in your library, Richard. They were giving us headaches.”

“Thank you, Algy.”

The three of them entered the seldom-used dining room. Lord Palmerston, Burke and Hare, and the prime minister's driver were seated around the large table.

“Gentlemen, we have very little time to spare,” Burton announced. He, Swinburne, and Trounce sat down. “Our riposte must be immediate and devastating. Before we put the wheels into motion, though, I feel I should apologise to you all. Our enemy incapacitated me. She exploited a certain flaw in my character, causing it to echo back on itself over and over until it became amplified beyond all endurance. Fortunately, I retained enough of my wits to put myself through the Dervish meditation ritual. It enabled me to transfer my mind's focus from guilt, disappointments, and regrets to something I said to Charles Babbage right at the start of this whole affair, to wit: ‘ The mistakes we make give us the impetus to change, to improve, to evolve. ’ I should have been regarding my own errors of judgement in that light all along, but I wasn't. Now I am. It's a statement, I believe, that can be applied not only to individuals but also to wider society, and is the philosophy that must guide us now, for whatever the rights or wrongs of a workers’ revolution, the crisis currently afflicting London does not have its origin in lessons we, as a nation, have learned. Rather, it has been forced upon us by an external agency, and in relation to a mediumistic divination. We cannot allow it. The woman must be stopped.”

“Our enemy is female?” Palmerston asked.

“Yes. Her name is Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She is a Russian, and she intends nothing less than the wholesale destruction of the British Empire.”

“The devil she does!” the prime minister exclaimed. “What's her motive? What's this about divination?”

“She claims to be clairvoyant. She has seen a future where Britain engages in a great war against a united German Empire allied with Russia.”

He went on to describe the prophecy Blavatsky had shared with him. As he talked, Palmerston's pale, inexpressive face seemed to grow even whiter, his manicured fingers gripped the edge of the table, and his eyes became fixed, as if he'd gone into shock.

“Her intention,” Burton finished, “is to cause such internal strife that Britain is severely weakened in the lead-up to the war. She wants Germany to defeat us without Russia's assistance, so that, once the victory is won, Russia might swoop upon the conquering nation.”

“But why make us the target?” Palmerston protested. “Why doesn't she work her voodoo against the Germans directly?”

“If she does that, she will ensure the continuation of the British Empire. She wants all the Western powers on their knees so that Russia might subjugate them in their entirety.”

“Gad!” Trounce murmured. “Another lunatic interfering with time! Only on this occasion, instead of someone from the future interfering with the present, it's the reverse!”

“Perhaps,” Burton murmured, noncommittally.

Trounce looked at him quizzically. “Is there something you're not telling us?”

Burton ignored the question and lit one of his Manila cheroots. He glanced at Palmerston. The prime minister was sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead.

“We came into this affair, gentlemen,” the king's agent continued, “at the point when Blavatsky gained possession of the Choir Stones, which are fragments of a larger diamond, one of the three legendary Eyes of Naga. She then took advantage of the Tichbornes, both to wrest control of a second, unbroken diamond from them, and to use them as a means to disseminate her call to insurrection.”

Detective Inspector Trounce frowned and scratched his head. “Theft and impersonation I can understand,” he said, “but this black diamond business has me flummoxed. What's the connection between the stones and the public disorder?”

“The Eyes project a subtle electrical field that can influence a person's mind, causing, in certain types, a profound sense of dissatisfaction. They can also magnify a mesmeric directive. Blavatsky used the Choir Stones to control Arthur Orton, to enhance his natural ability to sway opinion, and to entrance people into believing that he was Roger Tichborne. Once the crowds who came to see him were captivated, she used the greater power of the unbroken diamond to incite them to riot.”

“And the wraiths?” asked Trounce.

“A stroke of genius on her part. You know how obsessed the Rakes are with spiritualism and the occult. With her credentials, there was no difficulty in gaining leadership of the faction. She took control and soon had them all walking abroad in their etheric bodies.”

Palmerston took a deep breath, as if coming out of a trance, and said: “Their what?”

“The etheric body, Prime Minister, is that part of you which exactly matches your physical dimensions and characteristics but is comprised of rarefied matter. It connects your corporeal self to the spiritual realm.”

“The soul?”

“No, it is more a component of material existence. It exactly duplicates your bodily self-perception, even down to the clothes you are wearing.”

“Twaddle!”

“Many, especially those of a scientific bent, believe so. Nevertheless, there are wraiths roaming London, and they are doing so because through them Blavatsky can amplify the black diamond's emanations.”

There came a knock at the door and Constable Bhatti stepped in. He gaped when he saw Palmerston, and gave a clumsy salute.

“I-I understand you requested my presence, sir?” he stuttered, looking first at Trounce, then at the famous explorer.

“Yes, come in, Constable,” Burton said.

“Thank you, but-um-there's a rather extraordinary-looking chap outside. A Technologist. He says he's here on behalf of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

“Ah, good! That was quick! Would you usher him in, please?”

Bhatti nodded, stepped out of sight, and returned moments later with a short, plump, blond-haired individual who introduced himself as Daniel Gooch.

“Ah ha!” Bhatti cried. “I thought I recognised you! You're the rotorship engineer!”

Gooch bowed his head in acknowledgment. Though dressed conservatively in pale-brown trousers, white shirt, dark waistcoat, and a top hat-which he'd removed and was holding-he was also wearing a bizarre contraption slung around his shoulders and buckled over his chest and around his waist. It was nothing less than an extra pair of arms, mechanical and intricate, multijointed and with a number of different tools arranged at their ends-very similar, in fact, to Brunel's limbs. Two thin cables ran from the harness up to either side of Gooch's neck and were plugged directly into his skull, just behind his ears.

The metal arms moved as naturally as his fleshy ones.

“Mr. Brunel sends his regards, gentlemen,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly. “He apologises for not attending in person, but his size rather limits his access to dwellings such as this. Besides, he's overseeing the manufacture of the item you requested, so felt it best to send me as his lieutenant.”

“You're very welcome, Mr. Gooch,” the king's agent said. “And thank you for getting here so swiftly. Please, pull up a chair and join us. You too, Constable.”

As the new arrivals settled, Burton gave a brief recap.

Palmerston then said: “So our enemy's motive is to change the course of the future war, and she shared with you a vision of the conflict. Just how clear was the-er-hallucination, Captain Burton?”

“If anything, it was too clear, sir. My brain is still struggling to process all the information. It was as if I saw events from the perspective of a person who'd lived through them.”

“And you say the war will be fought with Technologist weapons on our side and Eugenicist weapons on the other?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. And this Blavatsky woman has the ability to pull one solid object through another?”

“That's correct. She did it with Brundleweed's diamonds and with Sir Alfred Tichborne. What have you in mind, sir?”

Palmerston's hands curled into fists. “The night before last, the traitor Richard Spruce vanished from his prison cell. Its door was still locked. Its one small, barred window-which was too small for him to crawl through anyway-had not been tampered with. There were no escape tunnels or any other means of egress. He simply vanished.”

“You suggest that Blavatsky yanked him out through the wall?”

“It's likely, don't you think? If the Germans are going to employ eugenically altered plants as weapons, then, in light of the current situation in Ireland, Spruce seems the obvious source of their future scientific knowledge.”

Burton ground his cheroot into an ashtray. He nodded.

“Yes, you're probably right. Do you think he's made it out of the country?”

“I fear so,” the prime minister grumbled.

“We have Eugenicists disappearing left, right, and centre, too,” Gooch added. “There seems to be an exodus under way. The Technologists have lost a lot of extremely skilled scientists.”

“Then it's begun,” Palmerston hissed. “Christ almighty, the war against Lincoln's Union we can just about deal with, but a war against the Germans and Russians-!” The prime minister held a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Anyway, one thing at a time. The country is on the brink. Our labourers are running rampant and the dissent is spreading fast. I've called in the army to protect the palace and Whitehall, but a large number of troops are absconding or becoming openly mutinous.”

“It's the same at the Yard,” Trounce murmured. “Lord knows how many men are AWOL at the moment.”

“So what are we going to do about it, Captain Burton?” Palmerston asked. “How do we nip this atrocity in the bud?”

Burton rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. He tapped his knuckles against his chin and said nothing for a beat. Then: “As dire as they may be, I think we can take advantage of our current circumstances. Firstly, Trounce, take one of my velocipedes and race it over to Scotland Yard. Speak to the chief commissioner and muster as many men as you're able. They need to be in place by midnight-”

He spoke for a few minutes more. Trounce nodded, gave Palmerston a halfhearted salute, and departed.

After Burton heard the front door slam shut, he turned to Burke and Hare.

“I require something that you two have in your possession. I need you to fetch it now, without delay.”

He told them what it was.

Burke turned to Palmerston and said: “With your permission, sir?”

“Absolutely. Go.”

“And bring back another carriage for the prime minister,” Burton called after the two men as they departed.

He turned to Palmerston's driver, who'd been sitting through the discussion with a bemused expression on his face.

“What's your name, sir?”

“John Phelps.”

“Tell me, Mr. Phelps, can the mobile castle outside be driven with just one steam-horse?”

“Aye, sir. No trouble, she'll just eat up coal twice as fast.”

“Then, if your employer permits it, I'd like you to drive Mr. Swinburne, Constable Bhatti, my valet, and I to Battersea Power Station this evening.”

Phelps looked at Palmerston, who nodded.

“Very well, sir.”

Burton next addressed the Technologist: “Presumably, you have your own vehicle, Mr. Gooch?”

“I drove here in my Folks’ Wagon. I'll return the same way.”

“Very well. Before you depart, can I call upon you to assist Constable Bhatti?”

“Surely. With what?”

Burton gave a lengthy explanation-during which Swinburne started whooping with delight-and finished by turning to Bhatti: “Do you think you can do it, Constable?”

“I'll give it my best,” the young policeman answered. “It's a case of removal and replacement rather than dismantlement, so we should be able to avoid the dangers. As for the rest of it, I'm sure Mr. Gooch will spot any errors I might make.”

“It's not exactly my field of expertise,” Gooch said, “but I'll do what I can, and Isambard can check the work over when you get to the power station.”

“And what of the task I've set Mr. Brunel?” Burton asked. “Do you think he can supply what I need?”

“Your request was certainly unusual, Captain-especially when communicated through a foul-mouthed parakeet-but it's not a difficult thing to design and Mr. Brunel is the best engineer in the world. He'd prefer to power it by steam, of course, but every single valve in a steam engine employs a spring, so that rules it out. Your alternative is-shall we say– eccentric? But it's feasible, and Isambard had already finished a blueprint when I left him. He has all the manufacturing power of the station at his disposal, so I assure you he'll provide what you need in good time.”

“Excellent,” the king's agent responded. He turned to his assistant. “Algy, tonight we're making our peace with the Steam Man.”

The poet, who'd spent the past few minutes with a huge grin on his face, now scowled. “After the way he treated me last time we met I'd rather kick the blighter right up the exhaust funnel!”

“Quite so.” Burton smiled. “But let the past be the past. For now we have to concentrate on saving the present!” He stood and paced up and down restlessly. “We have to hurry. I want to move against Blavatsky in the small hours of the morning.”

“Why then?” Palmerston asked.

“Because the human mind is at its lowest ebb during that period, sir. We know the woman is at full stretch. I want her exhausted. On which point: Algy, run up to my bedroom. You'll find a vial of Saltzmann's Tincture in my bedside drawer. Bring it down. We're all dog-tired, but if you, Bhatti, and I take five drops each, it will keep us alert for another twelve hours or so.”

“Smashing!” the poet exclaimed excitedly and scampered out of the room.

Palmerston drummed his fingers impatiently. “I'll not sit here in the dark! What in the devil's name are you playing at, Burton?” he demanded. “Explain your intentions!”

“There's no time, Prime Minister. As soon as Burke and Hare return, I recommend that you make a swift departure. Mr. Gooch and Constable Bhatti will be fully occupied with their project, while Mr. Swinburne and I have a great deal to arrange.”

“In other words, I'm surplus to requirements and in your way?”

“I wouldn't have put it quite like that, sir. I would point out, however, that you are the prime minister, the country is both at war and in the midst of a crisis, yet you are sitting in my dining room.”

Palmerston shot to his feet with such suddenness that his chair toppled backward to the floor. He glared at Burton and said slowly, in an icy tone: “There are limits to my patience, Captain. You are developing an unfortunate habit of addressing me with a marked lack of respect. I was warned before I employed you that you're an impertinent rogue. I'll not take it!”

Phelps, Bhatti, and Gooch glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“You gave me a job to do,” Burton said. “I intend to do it. If you are displeased with my conduct, you can release me from my duties immediately and I'll get back to writing my books while the country becomes a republic, Germany gathers her strength, and Russia waits in the wings.”

A tense silence filled the room.

No one moved.

Palmerston cleared his throat. “Get on with it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door opened and Swinburne bounded in.

“I say!” he shrilled. “I'm much more resistant to that Russian cow's emanations when I'm drunk. Do you think I should down a few brandies before we proceed?”

C harles Altamont Doyle was extremely confused. Two-or was it three?-days ago, he'd awoken slightly before dawn in a strange house and had stumbled down the stairs and out of the front door.

He'd walked aimlessly, enveloped by chaos. People were overturning vehicles and smashing windows, setting fire to shops and attacking one another, chanting something about the upper classes and a conspiracy of some kind.

His memory failed him. The past few hours were nothing but an alcohol-fueled blur.

He wandered through the mayhem and the rioters left him alone.

The fairies, however, did not.

They danced at the periphery of his vision, whispered in his ear, and followed him wherever he went. He cried and screamed for them to stop hounding him. He reasoned and demanded and begged.

They ignored his pleas.

He staggered into the Bricklayer's Arms on Bedford Street, intent on imbibing his tormentors into oblivion. Drink, when taken in copious quantities, always worked. Fairies, he'd discovered, were particularly allergic to burgundy.

The pub was heaving with all manner of lowly types but that didn't matter because in recent weeks the working classes had looked with great favour upon the Rakes. As one man had said to him: “You hoity-toity types need teachin’ a blimmin’ lesson, mate, but since you be one o’ them Rake geezers, the only fing what I'm gonna teach yer is ‘ow ter git legless!”

Glass after glass was purchased for him. Doyle emptied them assiduously, and the next thing he knew he was waking up in a doorway halfway down a dark, mist-swathed alley.

How much time had passed? He didn't know. He could hear shouts and screams and violence in the near distance.

He went back to sleep.

The fairies came skipping into his dreams.

“It is in thy blood to see us,” they told him. “It was in thy father's and it is in thy sons’.”

He awoke again. Hauled himself upright. Staggered onward.

“God in heaven,” he slurred. “Are they going to plague my boys, too?”

Young Innes already showed signs of levelheadedness. Perhaps he would resist his tormentors, but little Arthur-dear little imaginative Arthur!-how would he cope?

The memory of his children and his wife and his inability to keep them brought the tears to his eyes. He began to weep and couldn't stop.

Time, chopped and jumbled, went by. Streets tumbled past. Smoke. Steam. Turmoil.

Doyle found himself in another grubby backstreet and another filthy tavern. As before, a boisterous crowd willingly financed his raging alcoholism.

Despite the wine, the fairies started to skip around his feet again. Either they were getting stronger or he was getting weaker.

He drank and walked and drank and cried and drank and ranted and, quite suddenly, Big Ben was chiming midnight and he was aware of his surroundings.

Clarity!

There was something he had to do, a place he had to be, an urge he couldn't defy.

Doyle found himself on the outskirts of the Strand. It was closed off and secured by a police cordon. Access and egress were impossible from Trafalgar Square in the west all the way to Fleet Street in the east.

He had no idea why he wanted to get onto the famous thoroughfare but the determination to do so was all-consuming.

Kingsway and Aldwych were blocked, as were the various roads abutting the main street from the north and those leading up to it from the Thames, to the south. Only Bridewell Alley had been overlooked, due, perhaps, to its extreme narrowness and the fact that it was clogged with rubbish.

Doyle slipped into it, tottered along its length, and lurched out into the wide street beyond. The Strand had once been among London's most glamorous playgrounds but now broken glass crunched underfoot and many of its buildings were gutted, blackened, and windowless.

It was teeming with thousands of Rakes and wraiths. The latter, Doyle was used to. He himself had ventured out in spirit form on countless occasions in recent months. The corporeal bodies, though, unnerved him. Their milky eyes, bluish-grey skin, and dragging walk spoke of the grave. Indeed, the air was heavy with the cloying odour of putrefying flesh.

He kept his eyes downcast and shoved his way past them until he reached a grand old edifice, undamaged by the rioting. Only vaguely aware of what he was doing, he stumbled into the opulent structure and ascended five flights of stairs. He banged on a door and entered.

Fairies darted between and around his ankles.

He sat at a table.

His hands were gripped.

Someone said, in a dry, husky voice, something about the greater good of mankind.

“The greater good of mankind,” he chanted, like an automaton. Then: “Freedom! Liberation! Anarchy! No God!”

“Thy shackles are unbreakable, soft skin,” a fairy whispered.

“Leave me alone,” he hissed, then aloud: “Rules must be broken! Propriety must be challenged! The status quo must be unbalanced! True liberty!”

“Slave to oppositions!” the fairy mocked. “There are but two eyes in thy head! Will the third not open for thee?”

The Russian woman materialised, just as she'd done many times before.

“Go forth, apostles,” she said. “Liberate the downtrodden and the oppressed.”

She reached out to touch him.

He knew what would happen, and he knew it had happened too many times before. This time would be the last. After so many separations, he was too exhausted for the rejoining.

He tried to say no.

He failed.

Her nebulous finger brushed his forehead.

Time distorted and space warped out of shape.

Somehow, impossibly, he was in two places at once.

He shuffled along the Strand, feeling heavy and sodden and empty and lonely and mindless and lost.

He also drifted, amorphously, elsewhere on the thoroughfare, and the Russian woman's force of will resonated like a church bell through what little substance this aspect of him possessed.

A fairy floated before his two sets of eyes-the corporeal ones and the formless ones.

“Thou hast fulfilled the role assigned to thee. Recurrence, not transcendence, shall come,” it tinkled.

“Leave me alone, you bloody lizard!” he snarled.

He wondered at his own words.

Lizard?

At the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand, Commander Krishnamurthy, his entire face mottled with bruises after his ordeal at Tichborne House, squinted through the dense atmosphere and addressed a gathering of constables.

“Now then, lads,” he said, “who's got a headache?”

More than half the men raised their hands.

“Me too. And let me tell you, I've had quite enough of it. So tonight we're going to sort it out. However, I'm afraid that, for some of you, the headache is going to get worse before it gets better. We're close to the source of the public disorder that's been disrupting the city these days past, and, whatever it is, it's going to wheedle its way into your brains to try to make a defector of you. You all know fellow constables who've gone absent without leave to join the rioters-”

The men muttered an acknowledgment, and one of them growled: “Bloody deserters!”

“No,” Krishnamurthy objected. “Their minds are being controlled-and, as I say, over the next few hours, it's likely that the same thing will happen to some of us.”

“No, sir!” the men protested.

“We have to be prepared for it. We don't want to be adding ourselves to the enemy forces, hey? So here are my orders, lads, and I pray I never have to tell you to do anything like this ever again: in the event that you notice one of your fellows supporting, or beginning to support, the opposition, take out your truncheon and clock him over the head with it!”

The constables looked at each other, perplexed.

“I mean it!” Krishnamurthy said. “If needs must, render your colleague unconscious. Knock him out! Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” came the hesitant responses.

Krishnamurthy knew that not far away, at the top of Kingsway, Detective Inspector Honesty was giving the same speech to another gathering of constables, though probably in a rather more concise fashion, while in Fleet Street, Detective Inspector Trounce was doing the same.

The three groups of policemen were each about a hundred and fifty men strong. Much smaller teams were guarding the various minor routes into the Strand.

Krishnamurthy estimated that a force of a little over six hundred constables had congregated around the area. From what he'd seen so far, he suspected that at least four times that number of Rakes lurked inside the police cordon.

“Is this really all we can muster?” he muttered to himself. “I knew the force was haemorrhaging men but I'd no idea it was this bad!”

He peered into the rolling ground-level cloud. There was a full moon somewhere above, and its light gave the mist a weird and deceptively bright silvery glow. However, the shadows were dense, and, with most of the street's gas lamps destroyed, visibility was far worse than it seemed.

Sergeant Slaughter approached, stood beside him, and noted: “If it's not one thing, it's another, Commander.”

“What do you mean?”

“This murk, sir. There's been a lot fewer vehicles on the streets what with the rioting, so where's the bally steam coming from?”

“Hmm, that's a very good question!”

“Then, of course, the steam got mixed up with the smoke from the fires, so we got this dirty grey soup. But most of the fires in this area burned themselves out a good while ago. So, again, Commander: where's it coming from?”

Krishnamurthy suddenly became aware that his breath was clouding in front of his face.

“By jingo!” he exclaimed. “I hadn't realised! The weather's on the turn!”

“Crept up on us, didn't it!” Slaughter said. “The end of the heatwave, and about time, too. Except, it looks like the change has brought on a London particular.”

“Fog!” Krishnamurthy spat. “Curse it! That's exactly what we don't need!”

He heard the chopping of an approaching rotorchair.

“One of your squad, Commander?” Slaughter asked. “He's taking a risk, isn't he?”

“He'll be all right as long as he stays this side of the cordon. We're at the edge of the danger zone. If he flies past us and over the Strand-” He made a gesture with his hand, indicating something plunging downward.

“Hallo! He's landing!” Slaughter cried.

The miasma parted and men ran out of the way as the rotorchair descended, dropping like a stone and only slowing at the very last moment before lightly touching the cobbles and coming to rest. A man, wearing the Flying Squad uniform and with goggles covering his eyes, clambered out of the contraption and ran over to Krishnamurthy.

“Hello, sir!” he said, with a salute.

“Hallo, Milligan. What's the news?”

“Not good, I'm afraid. The rioting is most intense to the east of here, especially around the Bank of England, which is up in flames. As if that's not bad enough, the circle of disorder is fast approaching the East End.”

“Blast it!” Krishnamurthy whispered. He removed his peaked cap and massaged his temples. Once the madness touched the overcrowded Cauldron, all hell would break loose. If the East Enders began rioting, London would be lost.

“Milligan, gather together the patrols in the north and west and have them join you in the east. If it becomes necessary, fly low and use your pistols to fire warning shots at the rioters. Shoot a few men in the leg if you have to! Anything that might hold them at bay for a while.”

“Yes, sir!”

Milligan ran back to his machine, strapped himself in, and, with a roar of the engine, rose on a cone of steam and vanished into the fog. Seconds later, the chopping of the rotorchair's wings suddenly stopped, there was an instant of absolute silence, then the machine dropped straight back down out of the cloud and smashed into the road.

Krishnamurthy clutched Sergeant Slaughter's arm and looked at him with an expression of shock.

They ran to the wreckage. Constables joined them. The flying machine had turned upside down before hitting the ground. Milligan lay beneath it, mangled and dead.

Wordlessly, Krishnamurthy squatted and closed the man's eyes.

“What happened?” Slaughter asked.

“It seems our enemy has expanded the no-flying zone.”

“By the Lord Harry,” the sergeant muttered. “They must realise we're here.”

Krishnamurthy glanced back toward the Strand. “Damnation!” he said under his breath. “Come on, Swinburne! Hurry up!”

Charles Doyle was dead and he knew it.

Only the Russian bitch's force of will was keeping his carcass moving, his spirit self-aware.

Her words vibrated and throbbed in his mind: “Break free! Cast off your chains! Rise up and overthrow!”

They cut into him, were magnified through him as if he were a lens, then radiated outward, receding into the far distance, where they touched other astral bodies and were bounced farther on.

If only he could press his hands over his ears, block out that voice!

A tiny man with moth wings fluttered in front of his face and sang: “Prepare thyself!”

He tried to bat the fairy away but his hands were either without substance or too heavy and slow, it wasn't clear to him which.

A part of him coiled and writhed through the atmosphere near the Fleet Street end of the Strand, while the other part dragged itself along the pavement of Kingsway.

He was overwhelmed by a voracious hunger. It was not for food, nor even for alcohol. No. This rapacious craving was for the fulfillment of life!

For how long had he been tormented by this lack? His entire existence, it seemed. The opportunities he'd missed or wasted! He'd been so cautious, so afraid of making a mistake, that he hadn't done anything-instead, he'd escaped into the bottle, and now it was too late!