The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [56]
"Look," the Bookman said, his face colouring in anger. "You don't seem to understand what is at stake here. I thought you would be sensible. Us humans need to stick together, to–"
But Orphan was no longer listening. He stood up, pushing back the chair, and stalked off beyond the streetlamp, into the outlining darkness.
"Hey, where are you going?" the Bookman shouted after him.
Orphan turned back. "You're another simulacrum, aren't you?" he said. Then he pulled out the Peacemaker and shot the Bookman in the chest.
EIGHTEEN
The Bookman
Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate
– Thomas Burnet
"Bravo," said a voice. It wasn't the man who had spoken. He was lying on the ground on his back, with a hole in his chest. Like Jack, he was bleeding sparks. Lines of light ran underneath his skin and gave him an unhealthy, eerie glow.
Orphan turned to the darkness and said, "Show yourself."
The voice sounded amused. "I'd be afraid you'd shoot me too," it said. "You've become awfully proficient with that gun awfully fast." There was a sigh, long and heavy like a wave. "So you have come at last."
Orphan squinted into the darkness. He felt unnerved. Something was moving there, a shape he could not quite make out, large and malevolent. He said, "Where is Lucy?"
"Nearby," the voice said, and Orphan felt his heart quicken; he took a deep breath, exhaling the air slowly to try to calm himself. He said, "Release her."
"So you have come at last," the voice said again, and again, there was the sense of deep amusement coming from it. "Descended to the Underworld to bargain with the lord of death. But what, Orphan, do you have to bargain with?"
"Show yourself," Orphan said again. He felt suddenly like a small boy, lost, his voice weak and lonely in the immense dark. The Bookman was toying with him.
The Bookman laughed. Then he said, "I can give you Lucy back. Alive again. Better than alive. But for what price, my young poet? Do you think you can just wander in here like a lost figure of myth and demand your love back?"
Orphan looked into the darkness and saw only moving shadows. "What do you want from me?" he whispered into the dark.
"Ah. Good." A movement, and a disturbing sense of something like a giant insect, multi-legged and with too many eyes. "You are seeing reason."
"Why did you kill her?"
The voice returned to him from the other side of the square now, and he turned to it. I'm bound to him, he realised. For Lucy I will serve him.
"I began to tell you, when you killed Mr. Worth," the voice said, sounding surprisingly peevish. "You leave quite a trail in your wake."
An image of Jack lying on the floor came unbidden into Orphan's mind, and he felt his heart constrict. "Will you…?" he said. "Could you fix him? Jack?"
"I could," the Bookman said. Moving again. Circling around Orphan, like a hunter who had closed on his prey. "I might. Should I?"
"He was my friend," Orphan said. As the words left his mouth he thought again of Jack. He had taken him in, at Payne's. He had cared about him. And Orphan had shot him. Suddenly he felt disgusted with himself. And angry.
"I know," the Bookman said. "Ironic, isn't it? You see, I could bring him back if I chose, but how would Jack react?" The voice sighed, a gust of wind that stroked Orphan's cheek. "He never knew he was a simulacrum."
The Bookman laughed. In the distance the waves rolled against the shore. On the table undrunk tea sat cooling. On the black-and-white squares a man lay dead.
Orphan felt tired, old. He sat back in his chair. So Jack really was his friend. "Please," he said. "Bring him back."
"First Lucy, now Jack?" the Bookman said. "What will you give me?"
But Orphan had played that game before. Ever since that night by the Thames he had played a riddle-game, his opponents changing