The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [109]
"Hey!" he said, shouting to the prone figure in the other cell. "Are you awake yet?"
There was no reply. He called again, then, getting an idea, ran the flask against the bars.
The noise was tremendous. It beat at his headache like a drum, and he stopped.
The figure in the bed shook, moved, and a head finally half-emerged from underneath the filthy blanket.
"I'm sorry," Orphan said, a little untruthfully, "I didn't mean to wake you."
The figure under the blanket stared at him, dark face wreathed in shadows. Eyes blinked. Then the face emerged further, coming into the dim light, and said, "You!"
And Orphan reeled back and was aware of the pounding of blood in his head, and grabbed the bars of the cell to stay upright. He stared at the face.
The face was his own.
"What?" Orphan said, and "Who–?"
"You," the figure said again, and rose, and came close to the bars separating them from each other. "You utter bastard."
Orphan stared at him in mute shock. His own face stared back at him. His own body – and he looked at the other's thumb and saw that it was whole.
His own body. His own face. But – different, somehow. A deep weariness seemed etched into that face, all youthfulness gone from it. It was dirty, covered with grime, and in the eyes there was a bafflement, the stare receding from anger to a sort of vacant, dull gaze.
"What are you?" he said, whispered, and then again, a shout that echoed in that still, dark place: "What are you!"
"I am Orphan. I am the orphan." The other – the other him – sat down on the bed in the other cell. They were like mirror-images: Orphan sat down too. "I am born of no mother or father. I am like Eve, made from Adam's rib. Adam's thumb." He giggled. "I am the messenger. I am the translator. I am the words that lie inside the binding and wait to be awakened. I am you. You stole me from myself."
He sounded crazy.
"I don't understand," Orphan said, but then the image of the Binder, crazy spider creature on his hideaway island, returned to him, and the Binder's words. "This will hurt," the Binder had said. And then he chopped off Orphan's thumb. Take it down to the growing vats.
Aramis, saying, Will it work? The Binder – Perhaps. For a little while.
"He made a copy of me?"
The other him laughed, whooped, rose from the bed and banged on the bars, startling Orphan. "I am the King of England!" he shouted. "And I am returned, bow to me!"
"You know?"
"I know all." And then the storm passed and the other Orphan sat down again, and Orphan saw how pale he was beneath the dirt. The eyes looked at him, weary, tired, lost. "I can hear it. It speaks to me. I can't shut it up!"
"What happened to you?" Orphan said.
"You," the other said. "You happened. You took my life from me. I should be King! I thought you might have died on that island. I hoped you did. I guess you – we're – just too lucky." And he laughed again, a sound like crying. "How did you get back?"
"By submarine," Orphan said. "The – the Nautilus – it was a submarine under the clipper."
"A submarine. It must have been comfortable."
"Not very."
"You had food, drink?"
"I almost died on that island!" Somehow, the other made him feel guilty.
"Better had you died."
"How… how did you come to be here?"
The other laughed. "He sent me," he said. "He pulled me out of the vat, naked, covered in slime. He was in my brain. I could hear the drums beat, and I could understand them. They spoke, a web of sound, of meaning, woven over that entire island. And he was in my head, showing me who I was. William son of Mary, future King of England. And then he took it away from me and gave me nothing." He lay down, curled into a ball. "He made me into a tool," Orphan heard him say. "A tool like he once was…"
Could it be possible? The Binder had somehow made a copy of him? And then he thought – why not? Was that not what the Bookman, too, did? "What happened then?" he asked. He tried to hold in the feelings the other aroused in him: guilt, inexplicable