Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [79]
Maskelyne opened a mahogany box full of silver pins, each with a crystal head of a different colour. He shifted through them carefully, selected one and held it up. A faint blue light shone from the tiny translucent sphere. He listened to the crystal for a moment and shivered.
Suitable payment.
Doctor Shaw was still in the playroom. He had bound his thigh with bandages and was in the process of easing his breeches back on over his wound. He looked up nervously when Maskelyne entered. ‘A high-spirited lad,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I should have kept a more careful eye on my satchel.’
‘Indeed, you should have,’ Maskelyne said.
The doctor’s throat bobbed. He moistened his lips. ‘Give him a spoonful of medicine a day for seven days. That ought to sort him out.’
Maskelyne produced the pin with a flourish. ‘Your payment, sir.’
‘No payment necessary,’ the doctor said.
‘But I insist,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘I’m not much of a collector, Mr Maskelyne.’
‘It’s an alchemist’s pin. Would you like to see how it works?’
The doctor looked uncertain.
Maskelyne approached him and held the pin over the doctor’s wounded thigh. It began to thrum in his hand. The crystal head changed from blue to gold and then finally began to glow white. ‘The Unmer used these to sterilize wounds,’ he explained.
The doctor frowned. He gazed at his wound for a long moment, then touched the bandages tentatively. ‘That’s . . . extraordinary,’ he said. ‘The pain has gone.’
‘Now watch.’ Maskelyne pushed the pin straight into the doctor’s leg.
Doctor Shaw flinched and began to protest, but then he stopped. ‘I feel nothing at all,’ he said.
Maskelyne nodded. ‘That’s because the nerves are dead.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t you feel the numbness spreading along your leg?’
The doctor looked suddenly worried. He pinched the pin between his thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. A look of desperation came into his eyes. ‘What is it doing to me?’
Maskelyne smiled. ‘These pins were the precursors to ichusae sorcery,’ he said. ‘They change one substance into another substance. Brine changes flesh into sharkskin. An alchemist’s pin is far less subtle. It alters the minerals in your blood.’
‘What?’ The doctor seized the pin head and pulled with all his strength, but it remained firmly embedded in place. A strange cracking sound came from his leg. He gave a short yelp. ‘What substance? What’s happening to me?’
‘Are you familiar with starfish, Doctor?’
The doctor’s eyes were wild.
‘When one severs the limb of a starfish,’ Maskelyne said, ‘it simply grows a new one. But the interesting thing is that the severed limb grows into a new starfish. Now, are those two starfish different organisms, or are they actually the same creature?’
‘What?’
‘The Unmer believe that mankind is a single organism,’ Maskelyne went on, ‘that every man and woman is merely a part of the same creature. And when we breed, we create new parts of that same creature, like branches on a tree. So sex is actually asexual – it’s simply the method by which the whole . . . human entity grows. Do you understand?’
‘Help me,’ the doctor said, ‘please.’
‘If you believe that – and there are days when I do believe it,’ Maskelyne explained, ‘then an assault on a child is an assault on the father and the mother, and on every other living person. It’s an attack against mankind itself.’
The doctor stared at him in fear and disbelief. ‘Assault?’
‘You struck my child.’
‘But I meant no harm.’
Maskelyne shrugged.