Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [71]
Maskelyne wiped gore from his goggles and lowered the gun. ‘Clean up,’ he said.
CHAPTER 9
THE HAURSTAF
‘Here,’ Torturer Mara said, ‘is where we made the leucotomy, and here . . .’ he used a glass rod to push a section of the patient’s brain tissue aside ‘. . . is the cavity I told you about.’ The patient gave an involuntary twitch. His hands clenched at his sides, and he made an odd yowling sound.
Sister Briana Marks breathed through her fingers. ‘Well that settles it once and for all,’ she said. ‘The Unmer actually do posses a hole in their heads.’ She squinted at the exposed brain and frowned. ‘It looks like the inside of a chicken.’
Torturer Mara withdrew the rod and plunked it into a beaker, then wiped his hands on his apron. His stained garment was the only thing less than pristine in this operating room. Sunlight poured in through tall windows, gleaming on the white-tiled floor and steel tables. ‘A very different animal to modern man,’ he said. ‘The cavity would have acted like an echo chamber, amplifying telepathic thought. It’s probably a vestigial organ from an earlier stage in the development of their species. It became redundant as soon as the lobular bridges formed.’
‘The Unmer traded their telepathic ability for the power to dispatch matter?’
Mara shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t say traded. That word has uncomfortable implications. Besides, there’s nothing to suggest they were ever telepathic. Empathic, perhaps. The cavity is a rudimentary structure, like the worm-fish lung or the nomio’s spinal ganglion. We think early humans possessed a similar type of brain, but then developed in a different way.’
The patient began to bang the flat of his hands on the table.
‘Must he do that?’ Briana said.
Mara picked up a scalpel and made a small incision in the brain. The patient became still.
‘Thank you,’ Briana said. ‘You’re very deft with that thing.’
The torturer’s smile rearranged every wrinkle on his face. ‘Practice,’ he said.
‘You know what this discovery means?’
‘Well, it explains why they’re vulnerable . . .’ Mara began.
‘No, no, it means I’ve lost ten thousand gilders,’ Briana retorted. ‘Hu is going to parade this in front of his whole empire. He’ll use it to embarrass us.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘How can we possibly be related to these oiks? It sends shivers down my spine.’
The patient suddenly spoke in a loud, clear voice: ‘Kurese, I will not stand. Replace it to me.’ His fingers reached out in the direction of the table next to him, where Mara had placed the sawed-off top section of his skull, still resplendent with its white mane of hair.
Briana made a face. ‘You see that? Half his head off, and he’s still vain.’
‘Shall I patch him back up again?’
‘I suppose you’d better,’ Briana said. ‘Sister Ulla’s girls can still use him as a pin cushion. Staple him up and put him back in the maze.’
The man on the table said, ‘Replace it to me. We will war the Haurstaf.’
‘You’ll sit in a corner and dribble,’ Briana said. ‘Do you think we should give him a haircut while the skull’s off? I suppose he could cut it himself—’ She stopped as she sensed the presence of a third person in the room and turned to see a pretty young girl standing in the doorway with a look of horror on her face.
What do you want?
The girl started. ‘Eh? I’m sorry, I . . .’
We have company, Briana said, driving the words into the young witch’s mind like nails into wood. Torturer Mara is Hu’s own physician. So, under the circumstances, which do you think is the proper form of communication – thinking your words? ‘Or squawking them out like a fat little crow?’
‘Thinking?’ the girl said.
‘You’re not the brightest thing, are you?’
Mara paid them no heed. He picked up the staple punch and the scalp and calmly went to work on the Unmer patient’s head. The girl in the doorway looked positively sick, and it took a moment before she regained enough composure to form a mental reply.
This letter arrived for you, she said, holding out a soiled scrap of folded paper.