The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [32]
"Well?"
"My name is Orphan."
The fat man seemed to consider it. "It isn't much of a name," he said at last.
"That's the name I was given."
The fat man leaned forward. "Ah, but by whom?" he said. "Orphan, after all, is not a name, as such. It is a moniker, a nickname, an alias – a designation. It is a description of what you are. So what was your name before you were–" he coughed a laugh – "Orphaned?"
"Who are you?" Orphan repeated. The fat man's question had hit him like a punch to the liver.
"My name is Mycroft," the fat man said levelly. "What's yours?"
"Orphan."
"No."
The silence between them felt charged, like the air before a storm.
Finally the fat man – Mycroft – stirred. "Very well," he said. And, "Interesting."
"What is?"
"You do not know your own name."
Orphan gently put down the glass he was holding. He was afraid he would otherwise throw it in Mycroft's face.
"Do you?" he said.
Mycroft shook his head. "No. And that, I find, is even more interesting, for you see, I know a great many things."
"You seem to know a great many people," Orphan said. "Vivisectionists, for instance?"
Mycroft sighed. "It is a queer fate that led you down to the basement at Guy's that night. If fate is what it was. Perhaps I owe you an explanation."
"You could start by telling me why you had me followed and then abducted on board this airship," Orphan said.
"You see," Mycroft said, as if he hadn't heard him, "I despise the resurrection men. The thought of grave robbers operating in this city, in this time – it is abhorrent. And yet…" He, too, put down his glass. "Were it not for my brother," he said, "I would have nothing to do with such scum as Bishop and May."
"Your brother," Orphan said, and suddenly the image of the man in the icy coffin rose in his mind, the long and prominent nose, and something about the eyes… He said, "What happened to him?"
Mycroft shrugged and his eyes filled, for a moment, with pain. "I don't know." His fist hit the side-table and made the empty glass jump. "I don't know! I who am the central-exchange, the clearing house for every decision and conclusion, for every branch and department and organ of government – I don't know."
"Is he dead?"
"Yes. No." There was frustration in the fat man's eyes. "He was found. In Switzerland. At the bottom off… the details do not matter. No doubt my secretive brother was on the trail of some conspiracy of crime. But what, or who, he was pursuing, I do not know."
"He was a policeman?"
"A consulting detective," Mycroft said.
Orphan nodded politely.
Then, as the thought occurred to him, he said, "But you suspect foul play."
Mycroft nodded. "Perceptive," he said. "Yes."
"Who?"
Mycroft laughed. It was a short, bitter sound. "Why should I tell you?" he said. But in his eyes Orphan could see that he had already decided that he would. He wondered why the man wished to confide in him – and the thought made him afraid. He did not want the man's secrets.
"Moriarty."
Surprise widened Orphan's eyes. "The Prime Minister?"
"A puppet," Mycroft said, "serving the Queen and her line like a simulacrum. While the job of governing, the thousand and one acts required every hour of every day to make the wheels of empire move in unison, is done by other, more capable hands."
Such as yourself? Orphan thought – but he didn't express it out loud. He said, "Why Moriarty?"
Mycroft shrugged. Weariness formed lines at the corners of his eyes. "Odd hints, careful suggestions. An incidental fragment of data suddenly startling in a field of information where it was not expected." He stopped speaking and his eyes stared into Orphan's. "The Martian probe."
Hot anger burst inside Orphan's skull. Mycroft raised a hand as if to ward him off. "I think my brother was investigating Moriarty's space programme. A programme so secret even I was kept unaware of it. I think he was