The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [21]
"Thank you," Orphan said, "I think." And he walked onwards, as the beggar under his arch was swallowed in the fog.
He walked around the great edifice of the station; and it was not long before he reached another arch where, underneath, small glass windows glowed with an internal warmth, and a small door stood waiting like a welcoming embrace, and a small sign hanging above the door said, The Lizard's Head.
EIGHT
Lord Byron's Simulacrum
The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray.
– Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
He pushed the door open and went inside. Heat assailed him, a cloud of tobacco smoke engulfed him, and with them came the sizzle of frying sausages, and the smell of beer that had, over the years, seeped into the very foundations of the pub.
The pub was dark, smoky, and full of hazily seen figures. Orphan removed his coat and looked about him for Irene Adler. He saw a white hand beckoning to him from a booth in the corner, and went to join her, next to a small ship's-window that had fog climbing to it outside like ivy.
"Sit down," Irene Adler said.
She was sitting alone, a half-drunk glass of white wine before her. Her bright, alert eyes had dark rings around. "I'll get a drink," Orphan said.
He went to the bar, paid, and returned with a tall glass. As he sat down opposite the inspector a shadow fell across the table.
He had seen that face before. The black curly hair, the sharp nose, the smooth features: Lord Byron. A youthful Lord Byron, without the ravages of time. "Byron," Irene Adler said. "Please, sit down. Orphan, this is Lord Byron."
Byron sat next to the Inspector, opposite Orphan. He didn't speak. Orphan, captivated – he had seldom seen one of its kind before – studied him overtly.
It was disconcerting. The youthful features, the hair, even the eyes seemed that of a young man, but now, as he examined them, he thought: they are precise and unchanging, the way a doll's are. This was not Byron, the poet, the rebel, who was long time dead. It was a remarkable simulation of a man, yet a simulation all the same, and now that he could see that, could examine him in this way, in an almost intimate fashion, Orphan noticed the way the face moved mechanically from one expression to another, the too-sharp angles of the body, even, when Byron turned his head to look at Irene, the small, tell-tale metal tag that was embedded discreetly in his neck.
Byron turned his head back to Orphan and now Orphan could see that the eyes, too, were unreal: they were glassy, marble-like, devoid of feeling or even true sight. The Byron simulacrum sighed (and Orphan marvelled at the way his chest moved, the way the air travelled through its throat and nose) and said, "I am not human."
There was a silence. Orphan could think of nothing to say in reply.
At last, it was Irene who spoke. She looked across the table at Orphan and said, "Do you remember what happened at the Rose?"
Orphan, looking at her, thought of Lucy.
"Describe it to me."
He shook himself. His mind slipped back to what he had seen. Henry Irving, in his guise as Shakespeare. Beerbohm Tree stepping onto the stage as the Ancient Mariner holding in his hands a heavy, leather-bound folio. Irving opening the book.
The book exploding.
"What happened to Beerbohm?"
Orphan, lost, looked into Irene's eyes. He had not thought of the young actor. He tried to think back, but could conjure no clear image. "Did he not die in the explosion?"
Irene looked down into her wine glass. The Byron simulacrum sat quietly, like a machine that had been temporarily switched off. "What I tell you is a state secret," Irene said at last. "But I think we are beyond secrets now, Orphan." She raised her face, and he could see the deep weariness in her eyes, the moving shadows.
"Beerbohm Tree was found, dead, in an abandoned warehouse by the docks a few hours after the explosion at the Rose. He had been there since at