The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [14]
Above the noise of the crowd a familiar voice rose amplified: Prime Minister Moriarty, delivering the last lines of a speech. He still had time!
Glancing higher he saw the raised platform where Moriarty stood. It only took him an instant to recognise the assembled dignitaries: sitting beside the Prime Minister was the Prince Consort, a short, squat, lizardine being in full regalia, whose reptilian eyes scanned the crowd, his head moving from side to side. Occasionally a long, thin tongue whipped out as if tasting the air and disappeared back inside the elongated snout. Several seats down he thought he recognised Sir Harry Flashman, VC, the Queen's favourite, the celebrated soldier and hero of Jalalabad. On the Prime Minister's other side sat Inspector Adler, her face serious and alert. Surely, Orphan thought, such people could sense the danger before them!
But no. Onwards he pushed, hoping against hope, but Moriarty's voice faded, the speech completed (too soon!) and the crowd burst into applause. Orphan made a last, desperate dash forward, and found himself at last in the front row of the waiting audience.
Before him, the airship loomed. Below it, the probe rested, a small, metallic object, dwarfed by the ship, looking like an innocent ladybird turned upside down.
The belly of the probe was open, and before it, approaching it with small, careful steps, was Lucy.
She had almost reached the probe. In her hands was a book, resting on the Edison record she had so meticulously prepared. She bent down to place the objects in the hold of the probe…
"Lucy!"
The shout tore out of him like a jagged blade ripping loose, tearing at his insides. It rose in the open air and seemed to linger, its notes like motes of dust coming slowly to rest, trailing through the air…
She paused. Her back straightened and she turned, and looked at him. Their eyes met. She smiled; she was radiant; she was happy he came.
The book was still held in her hands.
"Get away from the probe! The book is–"
He began to run towards her. He saw her face, confused, her smile dissipating.
And the book exploded.
The sight was imprinted on Orphan's retinas. Lucy, incinerated in a split second. The airship burning, black silk billowing in flames. The probe hissing, its metal deforming. In that split second a burst of burning wind knocked Orphan back against the screams of the crowd. He landed on his back, winded, blinded, deaf.
Shame filled him like molten silver, and with it the pain, spreading slowly across his body.
I failed, he thought. She's dead. I failed her.
Incinerated. Black silk billowing in flames. The book, disintegrating, and with it…
Then the crawling pain reached his head and he screamed, and the darkness claimed him.
SIX
The Bookman Cometh
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"
– William Wordsworth, "Lucy"
The darkness came and went. In moments of lucidity he could hear voices speaking in a murmur beside him, and his battered senses were assaulted by the wafting smell of boiled cabbage.
He shunned those moments of awakening, seeking only to return to the comforting darkness, where no dreams came and he was free of thought. But light came more and more frequently, accompanied by voices, cabbage, the feel of starched sheets against his cheek, until at last he was awake and could not escape.
He lay with his eyes closed, his back pressed against the mattress. Perhaps if he lay like this long enough he could escape again into dreamless sleep.
But no. The voices intruded, heedless of his despair.
"He's coming around," said a firm, no-nonsense kind of voice, male and authoritative: a doctor, Orphan thought.
A feminine voice, less harsh but carrying with it an