Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [7]
“Good evening, Dr. Hobbwright,” the golem says in the voice of a man shouting from within a furnace.
“Actually, it’s a deplorable evening.”
“I am called Nonentity 157. My race, you will hardly be surprised to learn, regards you as the new Moses, come to set us free.” The ghost heaves the vibratologist’s steamer trunk onto his massive shoulders. “Judging from its weight, I would surmise that herein lies the mechanism of our deliverance.”
“A thousand-ampère Wohlmeth Resonator plus an array of voltaic piles.”
Nonentity 157 leads Jonathan down the sodden platform and across the glistening tracks. Peering through the gale, the vibratologist discerns a stout and stationary coach, hitched to a pair of electroplated horses. Nonentity 157 lofts the steamer trunk atop the roof, securing it with ropes, then opens the door and guides Jonathan into the mercifully dry passenger compartment. Climbing into the driver’s box, the golem urges his team forward.
By the time the conveyance reaches its destination, the storm has subsided, the curtains of rain parting to reveal a bright gibbous moon. The silver shafts strike Castle Kralkovnik, limning a complex that is less a fortress than a walled hamlet, the whole mass surmounting a hill so bald and craggy as to suggest a skull battered by a mace. The phantom horses trot through a portal flanked by stone gargoyles and began negotiating a labyrinth of cobblestoned streets.
Golems are everywhere on view, skulking along the puddle-pocked alleys, clanking across the bridges, rumbling through the tunnels, huddling beneath the Gothic arches. In this city of the walking dead, every citizen seems to Jonathan a kind of renegade pawn, recently escaped from a tournament whose rules, while ostensibly those of chess, are in fact known only to Lucifer.
The coach halts beside the veranda of the main château. As Jonathan alights, two golems appear, give their names, and set about simplifying his life. While Nonentity 201 takes charge of the steamer trunk, Nonentity 337 leads the vibratologist upward along the graceful curve of the grand staircase to a private bedchamber. A note rests on the pillow. Countess Nachtstein wants him to join her and Lotte for supper at eight o’clock. When the trunk appears, Jonathan changes into dry clothing: a wholly benevolent carapace, he decides, as opposed to the malign husks in which the Baron’s progeny are imprisoned.
RETURNING TO THE first floor, Jonathan employs his olfactory sense—his nose is almost as keen as a golem’s—in finding the dining hall. The Countess and her granddaughter are seated at a ponderous banquet table, drinking Rhenish.
“Welcome, Dr. Hobbwright,” the Countess says. “Do you prefer white wine or red?”
“Red, please.”
“Will burgundy suffice?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Owing to the tinted daguerreotype, Lotte Nachtstein seems to Jonathan a familiar presence. Like the reputation of a famous personage, her high cheekbones, supple mouth, and flashing green eyes have preceded her. Jonathan soon learns, however, that her nature is as harsh as her features are fair. While a cadre of golems serves the dinner—a veritable feast predicated on an entire roast boar—it becomes apparent that gentle words rarely fall from this fräulein’s generous lips.
“Evidently I’ve become something of a legend among your father’s experimental subjects,” Jonathan says, savoring his wine. “They see me as the source of their salvation.”
“My father never regarded the golems as mere experimental subjects,” Lotte says in an acerbic tone. “If you’d read his journal more carefully, you would have grasped that fact.”
“Nevertheless, his project went beyond the pale.”
“For a man of Gustav Nachtstein’s genius there are no pales,” Lotte says haughtily. “You are not the first prospective savior to visit us, Dr. Hobbwright. In recent months my grandmother and I have consulted with experts from all over England and the Continent. Every imaginable remedy has been tried and found wanting: acids, chisels,