Camera Obscura (10 page)

  He dreamed about his father, the steam presses at their shop, the smell of freshly laundered clothes. He dreamed of vegetables in oyster sauce and was nearly sick again, in the dream, though he usually loved the dish. The idea of food was nauseating. The voices, for some reason, agreed with him.

  The voices accompanied him into the dreams. Like old uncles, unable to shut up, narrating stories from so long ago no one knew or cared any more. In sleep he walked through a grey haze, a land of crazy jagged shadows, straining his eyes to see beyond the mists that seemed to always hover, like a screen, before his face.

  The voices talked about prime numbers. They seemed excited about numbers, and he had the feeling that, just as he was walking through this alien landscape, the voices were walking through his own mind and sampling the little world inside, like a group of travellers on a self-important sightseeing mission.

  He slept and woke and crawled to the stream and tried to drink the water. He felt parts of his body acutely then, strange pains in his arms, in his legs, cold and heat travelling across his torso, like ants – but they were not ants.

  He did see ants. He lay and watched them walk in a long single file, an army of ants, but when they came near him they neatly avoided him, forming a crescent moon around him and disappearing into the undergrowth beyond. His entire world shrank to the stream, the tree he lay against, the seemingly endless army of patient marching ants. Beyond that world were only nightmares – his father's corpse, the silent assassins, the endless grey mists behind which were voices.

  We can help you, the voices said, talking about diagnostics routines and recalibrating bone structure, cell augmentation and establishing a two-way interface.

  Help me do what? he said, or thought he did, forgetting he mustn't acknowledge the voices or he would have to acknowledge his own madness.

  Whatever you want. Power, riches, love, fame, revenge.

  Make me, he said, and closed his eyes, feeling the currents running up and down his body, the fever growing stronger inside him, consuming him until his mind was a grey and endless fog – make me into a gun.

 
 

 
 

 
 

One moment she was asleep, and in the next her eyes opened, staring at the darkening room. Listening. The house around her, familiar sounds, but trying to discern – what?

  There. The creaking of a beam where one shouldn't have been audible. Listening. There it came again, and now she had no doubt – someone was creeping along her own version of a nightingale floor.

  She reached for her gun. It was never far.

  And now she waited.

  Footsteps, so cautious as to be inaudible – but for the sounds of the house, as known to her as the streets of her childhood, every sound a warning, and lack of sound an even greater mark of danger – sleeping in the tenements, abandoned houses, in places where the rats formed an advance guard, where every footstep out of place spelled threat and risk. Early on she learned to always have at least one avenue of escape – and never assume a place was safe.

  The world wasn't safe. She waited, her finger on the trigger of the gun.

  When they came through the door they were very quick and very quiet and she fired twice.

  They moved so fast!

  It was impossible to escape a gunshot – wasn't it?

  And now they weren't there at all.

  Two bullet holes in the wall. Two black-clad shapes–

  She tensed, the gun steady, trained on the dark doorway. A voice from the darkness, in English – "We only want to talk."

  The accent strange, a voice from somewhere distant in the Lizardine Empire's domain. She said, "You have a strange way of going about it," and rose, still slow, waiting for the opportunity to fire.

  "We… apologise."

  "Show yourselves."

  To her surprise, they did. Two robed, hooded figures, the cloth black, the faces under the cowls impassive.

  Young. A girl and a boy, their arms raised before them, empty – and now they did a curious thing: they put their hands together before them, palms touching, and bowed. "Milady de Winter," the girl said, "we wish only to talk."

  "Then why break in?"

  They hesitated, exchanged glances. "We tried to knock," the girl admitted, a small smile playing briefly on her face. "There was no answer. You have no servants?"

  "We are all but servants of the state," Milady said, and was gratified to see the two looking confused. She gestured with the gun. Neither of them, she noticed, had in any way acknowledged her nakedness. Though come to think of it, the boy did look a little nervous… "Turn around," she said. "Go to the lounge. I'll join you in a few minutes."

  Again, the bowing, the joined palms. "We shall wait," the girl said. The boy said nothing. She grinned at him, and he blushed.

  Good.

  They did as she told them. She closed the door and went to her bathroom and ran the water. The shower revived her. She dressed, applied a touch of make-up. It was early evening, she saw. Outside the windows the light was waning, night returning to the world.

  When she entered the lounge they were standing there, faces turned toward her. The room was spacious, large windows letting in the last of the day's light. Sofas, chairs, a few things collected in her travels, statues from Dahomey, a warrior woman with a spear standing in one corner, a poster for Barnum's Circus on the wall, next to the late Lord de Winter's portrait. She lit a gas lamp, sat down, crossed her legs. "Who are you?"

  Hesitation. And now the girl said, "I am Mistress Fong Yi of the Yunnan Shaolin School."

  Milady: "What?"

  The girl, confused, looking again to her companion. "I am Ip Kai of Wudang."

  Milady: "What?"

  A sigh. Milady said, "Just sit down."

  They did, settling into the sofa opposite. "We represent an association of societies. I did not expect that you would have known of them. Our masters are somewhat… private."

  "We're from Qin," the girl said.

  "Chung Kuo," the boy said.

  "The Middle Kingdom," the girl said.

  "China," Milady said, in English.

  "Right," the girl said.

  They smiled at each other.

  "And we're here because of something that was stolen from us many years ago," the boy said.

  "An object of some value to us," the girl said.

  "And which we have been tasked with guarding."

  The girl, looking apologetic: "It's a job."

  Milady: "Tell me about it…"

  "Our masters have recently learned that the object was…" She searched for the word. The boy said, "Active."

  "Active. Yes. There is great danger–"

  "There is
always
great danger," the boy said. The girl shrugged and snapped something in what Milady took to be Chinese.

  "And you believe this –
object
– has now been smuggled into Paris?"

  Yi shook her head. "No. But
something
has."

  "A part of it, perhaps," Ip Kai said. "Though our masters were not clear on whether that was even possible. However, they sent us to investigate."

  "But you're – you're kids!"

  "I could kill you with one finger," the boy said – not boasting, a statement said quietly. Milady said, "I'd like to see you try."

  The girl, Mistress Yi, spoke to him again in Chinese. "What did you say?" Milady asked.

  "I told him to stop boasting."

  Again, they smiled at each other. The boy looked irritated. Yi said, "We are trained in certain clandestine forms of the martial arts. These are coupled, or have been, with the power of this object. It gives us a certain… edge."

  Like dodging bullets? She was going to say it was impossible, then thought of the killer in the alley, the way he had taken bullet wounds as if they were mosquito bites. "I'm listening," she said.

  The girl shrugged. "We have not been able to find it. Yet. And now there are others searching."

  "We wanted," Ip Kai said, "to establish where you belonged in this hunt."

  "We were surprised by your involvement."

  "Well, perhaps not
surprised
. We thought someone like you would become involved–"

  "You are not police."

  "Yet you have authority."

  "The object must be destroyed, Milady de Winter."

  For the time being, she would give them no answers. "Can you tell me what it is?"

  They exchanged glances. "We don't know," Yi said.

  "We believe it was implanted into the courier's stomach by his master," Ip Kai said.

  "We must all have masters," the girl said with a sigh.

  "It has to be destroyed," Ip Kai said. In one fluid motion, both he and the girl stood up.

  "Perhaps," the girl said, "you could pass that along to your Council."

  And then – she wasn't sure how – they were gone.

  All this – for a message? There were others searching, the girl had said… but how many? One thing was sure, she thought sourly, rising. Pulling the cord that would ring, down below, for her silent coachman to arise. While she slept, others had combed the city.

  And had been unsuccessful, she thought.

  And though they were looking still, yet she had one advantage, she thought, and she smiled slowly as she left her house.

  
She
was Lady de Winter.

 
 

 
 

The coach took her back to Pigalle. It was early still. On the Boulevard de Clichy people were strolling, and did so casually. It was too early for the night trade. She went into the same bar she had been to the night before and ordered coffee, a plate of food. She scanned the room but did not see the shortlegged artist.

  He had been at the Clockwork Room when Yong Li went there… and he had been right here when Madame L'Espanaye was brutally murdered on the other side of the wall. She did not believe in coincidences. Her food came and she ate, an omelette with mushrooms and cheese, fresh bread, a salad, rounding it off with a croissant and jam and another coffee. The bar was half-empty. She signalled to the man behind the counter.

  "Henri?" he said. "He's not been in tonight. Probably still asleep."

  "Comes in regularly?"

  "Here? Not often. To tell you the truth, he doesn't often have money. And I don't think much of his paintings. Sometimes he gets people to buy them, for drinks. Not me, lady. I've got taste."

  "Where can I find him?"

  The man shrugged.

  She paid and left. She went down the street – bars, cafés, nudie shows, the mechanicals, hostesses, the freak show, the torture room, brasseries, the Moulin Rouge. The artist was in none of the places she tried. No one knew where he stayed. No one seemed to care. She saw some of his early artwork hanging, here and there. Vivid, energetic pictures of can-can girls, bill posters of the kind Barnum would have liked, an alive sort of art that changed, suddenly, at the last address.

  She went into the Moulin Rouge.

  That ridiculous windmill, turning lazily… doormen, stripped down to the waist – big guys. Wearing masks – green mottled faces with great big bug-eyes. She said, "What the hell are you supposed to be?"

  The doorman on the left, West African accent overlaying his French: "Welcome to outer space."

  She stepped through the doors.

  The music hit her almost physically.

  The sound of pistons, the whistle and blow of steam. The drumming of coal being shuffled. A manic sort of sound, rhythmic, wild and yet ordered. The screech of train wheels on the track.

  Welcome to outer space–

  The room was black. Stars covered the ceiling. Bug-eyed monsters slithered throughout the room. On the stage, a mechanical girl. Steam billowing around her. A girl made of metal, with a silver face. She stared – not an automaton. A girl made to look like one. And now the dancers, more of the green masks, green flesh, writhing on the stage, green breasts and steam and stars.

  Welcome to outer space–

  She stared. Even though it was early the room was busy. There was a tentacled machine behind the bar, arms moving like a carousel, serving drinks. But again, not a machine, only the semblance of one. She approached the bar and the machine separated, bare-chested boys behind the façade. She thought of L'Espanaye's description of the Clockwork Room. The Moulin Rouge, it seemed, was mocking it.

  "What can I get you?"

  The man behind the bar had a nice smile. A boy, really, good-looking and knowing it. She said, "I'm looking for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec."

  "Not seen him." Leaning over. "He doesn't come here often any more."

  But he used to, she thought. She wondered what had changed, and why the artist was no longer frequenting his old haunts. The boy behind the bar said, "Moon Rocket Punch–" looking into her eyes.

  "Excuse me?"

  "That's your drink."

  "I don't know what that is."

  He grinned. For a moment the group of men behind the bar came together again, the tentacled alien swirling, and then a glass was before her, a long tall shape filled with a purple bubbling brew.

  She took a sip. It wasn't bad.

  "Do you know where I can find him?"

  "Have you tried the thirteenth?"

  Girls approaching the bar, taking a break. Bare breasts painted silver for the one, green for the other. They lifted up their masks and asked for drinks.