The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle) (25 page)

‘I’m painting an honest one.’

‘Where’s the Machine?’ Moncorvo’s question came so suddenly, it caught both Berwick and Lyle off guard.

‘What?’

‘Where is it? It’s a very simple question.’

When Berwick didn’t answer, Moncorvo said briskly, ‘Lyle’s ramblings imply that it would have to be big - exceptionally big - to generate the power you require. But there is nowhere in the city I can think of which could conveniently house such a structure. So - where is it?’

‘It’s a good question,’ admitted Lyle. ‘I’d like to know too.’

‘Underground,’ replied Berwick quietly.

‘Where underground, exactly?’

‘It hardly matters - your kind wouldn’t be able to get within half a mile of it.’

‘I could,’ said Lyle.

A shadow passed over Berwick’s face, an instant of pain. ‘Would you destroy it, Lyle? All of it, not just the key? It would be ... hard, when you see it.’

‘It’s monstrous,’ snarled Moncorvo.

‘It is misguided,’ agreed Lyle. ‘But where is it?’

‘When Bazalgette built the sewers a few years back,’ Berwick’s voice was distant, still faint with doubt, ‘he was approached by the government and asked, in the course of his works, to extend an extra tunnel underneath the city itself into a space of the government’s design, a complex capable of housing more of the pumps that he was attempting to build to control the flow of water through the system. He agreed - the money was excellent for the project, even if the secrecy was alarming. At high tide, it is hard to get there: too much of what he built crossed through the old sewers which flow into the river. But at low tide, it is possible to go down into the sewers and follow the signs.’

‘What signs?’

‘Markings on the wall. You wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t know they’re there. Two cogs, one inside the other; they look almost like the face of a clock, if you look right, counting down.’

‘I’ve seen that mark before,’ said Lyle quietly.

‘So have I,’ murmured Moncorvo. ‘Is this thing . . .’ a gesture at the regulator, ‘the only one of its kind?’

‘Yes.’

‘And these papers . . . ?’

‘Are the only things which will tell you how to build it? Yes, there are no copies.’

‘And without it the Machine can’t be completed?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘And you are the only one who knows how to finish the design.’

Berwick’s eyes strayed uncertainly to Lyle. ‘I suppose I am ...’

And too late, Lyle realized. He saw Moncorvo, standing next to the table at the end of the bed, standing next to Berwick’s forgotten revolver, and thought,
stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!
and pushed Berwick to one side and made a lunge for the gun. So did Moncorvo, and Lyle knew that if he’d been standing just a bit closer, he wouldn’t have needed to call himself a fool.

 

Lin Zi, when informed that women were not welcome in the house, had done a number of things. The first had been to let out a profound sigh at the absurd rules of society and their cruel and inexplicable restraint and denial of natural biological incentives, emotions and needs, not to mention the lax attitude of some women within the country towards their God-given rights as social equals to men and failure to capitalize on their obvious advantages in life. The next thing she did was to walk to either end of the narrow, squalid street, smiling politely at all strangers she passed by and causing most to run on in uncertainty and fear, just to make sure that the street was
clean
. Clean of anyone else who might have an interest in the little house with its little occupants. The final thing she did was to find a drainpipe that wasn’t made of such thin metal or so rusted away by neglect and the secretions of fungus, and climb it hand-over-hand on to the rooftops above the street. She took a deep breath of slightly cleaner, above-street-level air, tried a cautious step and nearly fell over as the tile under her foot clattered away to the ground below. Sighing, she tried another, picking her way on hands and feet across the rooftops until she judged herself to be directly above the room inside which she could hear Lyle, Moncorvo and Berwick talking in low, worried voices. She stretched back on the sloping, slippery tiles, and listened, quite contentedly, to everything that passed.

When the gunshot came, it was so close and so loud and so immediate, that Lin nearly fell off the roof again, which would never have done, as much for dignity as anything else. And to her surprise, she found that the sound made her angry, which hadn’t been part of the plan at all.

 

A gunshot in the gloom.

Lyle was surprised at how big the sound was in the small space. Certainly, the tight walls should amplify noise, make it shatter through the eardrums and churn the stomach, make it as much of a physical punch as a sense or signal to the brain. But he found it hard to believe that the thin walls, which after all were incapable of keeping out water, cold or wind, were capable of keeping in such a sound. Against something so sudden, violent, unnecessary, all the plans in Lyle’s head suddenly seemed futile and childish.

He felt physical pain, but was surprised not to find himself shot, or indeed hurt in any particular, and cursed his own imagination for running away with itself, so certain of death that it had already provided all the sensation without bothering to check for the proof itself. He knew he had missed the gun, he knew that Moncorvo had caught it and pushed him back in a single sweep, that the push had been weak but enough, because he was off balance and moving too fast, knew that he’d looked into the muzzle and seen the flash, knew that there had been no sound of bullet striking wall, no reassuring flat
thud
, but something entirely softer breaking in its passage.

So Horatio Lyle, not so dead after all, having seen Moncorvo fire, watched Berwick die. And Berwick looked at the blood seeping into the fabric of his shirt, and said, very quietly, ‘Oh. But . . . I thought . . . aren’t we . ..?’

Lyle caught him almost before he hit the floor, with every limb flailing. He screamed at Moncorvo, ‘He’s on your side!
Murderer
, he’s on your side!’

He looked back at Berwick, but the man’s eyes were already wide and lifeless, staring at an invisible point on the ceiling, too much of the white showing around the pupils. His mouth was hanging open as if it was about to drool. Moncorvo put the gun down carefully on the table next to him - where the iron had touched his skin, it burnt, and his arm shook, but Lyle had no doubt he could fire again if he needed to. Moncorvo said, ‘The regulator, please,’ and his voice was hoarse.

Lyle looked at the regulator in Berwick’s fingers, looked at Berwick and carefully laid him down on the floor. ‘Murderer,’ he hissed. ‘He trusted
me
, you didn’t have to ... he was on your side.’

‘A weak man who would have run and been caught,’ replied Moncorvo coldly. ‘Havelock would have found him, and Havelock would have destroyed us. This way, the Machine will never be complete. A man who did not comprehend necessity.’

Lyle tried to speak, and found that nothing in particular came to his lips. He felt he should be screaming some sort of abuse or prayer, either in anger or sorrow, he wasn’t sure which; but that too didn’t seem a good enough response, just somehow too easy and obvious to be real. He knelt next to Berwick and felt the blood pool around his knees and slip around his fingers and didn’t bother to think.

Lyle said again, ‘He trusted me.’

‘And you never trusted me,’ replied Moncorvo. ‘And there you were wise.’

‘He wanted to help! Why the hell didn’t you see that?’

‘He didn’t want to help, Lyle; he simply didn’t want the responsibility of doing what had to be done.’

‘Murderer.’ It seemed the only thing Lyle could say. ‘
Murderer
.’

‘You are wrong, if you think this is
not
war, Lyle. You hypocrite - you hide behind your high morals and lofty judgements, and say that everything is within the law. Is life within the gift of the law? Is the future of a whole people? Can you legislate, Lyle, for two sides who
must
seek to destroy each other, if either is to survive? You coward! You run from what
must
be done, and cower in the blissful ignorance and righteous veil of what
should
be done. I have saved my people! Give me the regulator!’

Lyle plucked the regulator from Berwick’s fingers, and held it out. Moncorvo snatched it away and, in the same sharp movement, threw it hard against the wall. His throw wasn’t strong, but neither was the device; it smashed into dozens of bronze shards and fragments of wire. Lyle watched it bounce down the wall, and felt nothing. Moncorvo said, ‘The papers, please.’

Lyle rolled up the papers, and handed them over. Moncorvo touched their ends to the candle flame. Both watched for a long minute, while the fire caught and burnt its way down to the end of the roll. When it reached Moncorvo’s fingertips, he dropped the last ashes on the floor, and stamped on them to put out their worm-like glimmering edges.

In a distant monotone, Lyle said, ‘If I should happen, for whatever reason, to survive the next few minutes, I will find you and see you utterly destroyed.’

‘Mister Lyle,’ replied Moncorvo, ‘your death is as much a pleasure to achieve as a needful thing to be done.’ He reached out for the gun, fingers curling round the butt.

Lin said brightly, ‘My lord, I want you to consider carefully the effect a bolt of bronze will have on the back of your neck and spinal chord, should my finger happen to slip accidentally while holding this trigger.’

Lyle saw Lin standing in the doorway with a small crossbow. He found to his surprise that at that moment he didn’t care what happened. Lin’s eyes were fixed on Moncorvo’s hand as blood started to seep between the cracking skin where his fingers touched the iron. She said, ‘I should point out that such an impact would cause extensive damage, perhaps severing the spine, almost certainly puncturing your windpipe, and maybe even catching the jugular on its way out - I think at this range it would go all the way through, and probably dent the wall. This would be unfortunate: the cleaning up will be a horrendous task. But I suspect it will be the women who are required to perform it, typical of the patriarchal society within which we live, alas. But however you regard the messiness or even social ramifications of your demise, you may take comfort in the fact that it will be very, very fast.’

‘Miss Lin,’ muttered Moncorvo, ‘you and I are of the same blood. You know that Berwick had to die, for us to be safe; Old Man White knew. If you had not known this, you would not have let me alone long enough to do the deed that you were unable to complete.’

Lin’s smile stayed perfect. Wearily, Lyle heard her say, ‘My lord, the Machine is monstrous, and so are you. These things are not so far apart, in my estimation.’

There was distant shouting in the street, and a clattering too, the artificial
clicker-clacker
of the bobby’s rattle. Lyle wondered who else had heard the gunshot, and whether they also had forgotten to feel in the few seconds after its sound, the mind overwhelmed instead by all those little chemical signals saying,
Survive and run or stay and die
. A small part of his mind clicked into place, which said simply,
This is a bad place to die
. He looked up and saw Moncorvo’s eyes fixed on his own, saw Moncorvo’s blood running down the end of the gun, white and slippery, and knew he was right.

Perhaps Moncorvo saw this in Lyle’s eyes, because his fingers, impossibly, tightened around the gun. He said through clenched teeth, ‘Miss Lin, I have spent an eternity these last few months sleeping on iron floors and surrounded by iron walls, and it has burnt the magic out of me. I am no longer beautiful to the eyes of humans, I am no longer powerful, I am no longer what I was. Lyle did this, and for his death I am happy to die.’

He brought the gun swinging upwards in one simple movement, and Lin pulled the trigger.

 

This is what Old Man White had said to Lin, while Lyle lay sleeping on his couch.

‘This time is a time for humans. For humanity. Our time is long past. We must accept this, and embrace their future, their skills, their souls, their abilities, revel in what they find beautiful, since that which we loved is long since destroyed. The faerie and the Tseiqin will not survive in this world, regardless of what we do - and one day perhaps humanity will be in the same position as us, but today is their day.

‘However, this Machine - this creation of mindless destruction, merciless judgement - is wrong. And if its construction is to be the herald of the new age of humanity, I would rather that it burnt, and those burnt who made it, and those who conceived of it burnt, so that this new world may not be shaped in its terrible image.’

Lin had thought about this, and asked the fatal question. ‘And Lyle?’

Old Man White had shrugged. ‘He may have the knowledge to build the Machine - maybe he lacks the will, but that is a thing which others can provide. I would have humanity survive and grow and prosper, but not so this knowledge. Do we understand each other?’

She had nodded slowly, her eyes elsewhere. ‘Indeed, sir. I believe we do.’

 

The body, that a moment before had been Lord Moncorvo, lay on the floor by Lyle’s feet, his white blood mingling with Berwick’s red, together staining a girlish pink. Lyle shuddered and looked away. For the first time he was starting to feel sick, something that in years of detective work had never really happened, after the first corpse.

There was shouting in the street below. Lin reloaded her little crossbow with a neat
snicker-snack
and said in a businesslike way, ‘If you wish to remain at liberty, Mister Lyle, I suggest you run.’

Lyle looked up with the eyes of a dead man. ‘What exactly were your orders, Miss Lin?’