The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [23]
After a moment, Orphan said, "What rumours do you hear?"
Byron raised his head and his fingers tapped a gentle rhythm on the tabletop. "That there are others, like us and not. That there are other, alien beings, not human nor mechanical, but something of both." He shook his head. "A storm is coming, Orphan. A great storm that travels over the sea and lashes the waves into submission, whose origin is one island and its destination another. We believe…"
He fell silent.
"Believe what?"
"It is of no importance."
"Please," Orphan said. The simulacrum smiled. "I do not know who, or what, the Bookman is," he said. "All I know is that he is bound, whether in love or in hate – and the two are often merely two aspects of the same emotion – with Les Lézard. And the story is told that – like love and hate, perhaps – the Bookman too has an opposite. Perhaps another aspect of himself. Who knows? Is he real? Is the Bookman?"
"He killed… he killed Lucy."
"Ah, empirical evidence," Byron said. "Yes. Again, I'm sorry."
"What do you believe?"
Byron laughed. It was a grating, harsh sound. "We believe in the Translation," he said.
"Translation of what?"
"The translation, perhaps, of us all. Goodbye, Orphan." He stood, then, pushing his chair back, his movements stiff and unnatural like those of a toy. "But what your part in this is, if any, I do not know."
He made to turn away from them. But Orphan stopped him, rising and putting his hand on the simulacrum's shoulder. "Please," he said. "Who can I turn to?"
Byron turned to him, and for a long moment they stood facing each other, unmoving, Orphan's hand resting on Byron's shoulder.
At last Byron turned away. Orphan's arm dropped to his side. The simulacrum began to make his way towards the door, his steps slow and heavy and mechanical.
Halfway he stopped, and turned back. Orphan watched him, the fine, pale, manufactured face looking back at him as if seeking an answer to a different question. Then it changed, as if a corner of a picturepuzzle had become suddenly clear to him, and he smiled and said, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried across the room, "Ask the Turk."
NINE
At the Cock-Pit
A forum there is for debate,
A Fives Court for milling in fun, Sirs,
A Parliament House for the great,
With a cock-pit for cruelty's sport, Sirs.
– John Ashton, The Treats of London
Orphan walked home across the bridge, deep in thought. When Byron left he had finished his drink and thanked Irene Adler. They barely spoke, each of them isolated in a separate pool of thought. He wanted again to ask her who she had lost, but thought better of it when he saw the expression in her eyes. Instead, he rose from the table and made his way outside, where an icy fog had settled over the city like a pale northern invader.
His footsteps barely echoed as he walked across the bridge. He could see no living thing, as if the city was deserted, and he was alone in it, the last living man left in a ghost town. Even the whales were silent. To save Lucy, he thought, I must find the Bookman. But where do I start? He missed her, with a terrible urgency that surprised him even as it hurt. They were bound together, he and her.
When he reached the Strand he thought he heard a soft smooth sound coming from above his head and, raising it, glimpsed for a moment the movement of a velvety darkness low in the skies. An unmarked black airship, he thought, and almost laughed to himself. It was a fanciful idea, one of Jack's. He continued past St Martin in the Fields, and thought