The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [57]
"Adam Worth," the Bookman said. "Quite an ingenious, ruthless criminal. I assimilated him some years ago, following his theft of the Duchess of Devonshire – ever seen that painting? quite marvellous – from Agnew & Sons. He already had an extremely successful network of criminals working under him – in fact, I believe your friend at Scotland Yard once called him the Caesar of crime." "My friend?" He felt a sudden chill.
"Come, Orphan," the Bookman said. Moving again. Orphan felt too tired to try to follow him with his eyes. Yet he was aware of the movement. "Let us keep no secrets between us. Even now Inspector Adler is keeping watch over the entrance to Payne's. She's had you under surveillance ever since you left Guy's Hospital. Didn't you know that?" The Bookman laughed, and said, "Of course not. She is very good. She felt – quite rightly, of course – that you could lead her to me. Mistakenly, though, as it turns out – by the time she realises you will not come out and makes her move, she will be able to find nothing."
The chill he felt spread, numbing him. "What do you mean?"
The Bookman's answer did not give him cause for relief. "You'll find out."
"Why?" Orphan said. Real bewilderment made him belligerent. "Why kill Lucy? Why bring me here?" Then the words of the suited man – Adam Worth, he thought – came back to him, and he said, "The Martian probe."
"Yes," the Bookman said.
"It keeps coming back to that," Orphan said. "But why? Why destroy it?"
"Because it was not – is not – a probe," the Bookman said, and his voice was very close now, almost caressing, issuing behind Orphan's shoulder. Orphan sat very still, as if, by his stillness, he could fool the Bookman into moving away. "It is a beacon," the Bookman said.
His voice was low and soft, whispering directly into Orphan's ear. Something scaly and inhuman touched his shoulder, and he almost jumped.
"A beacon," the Bookman said. "To be carried into space by the design and engineering of humans, but for a purpose of which they know nothing. Think of it, Orphan," that awful voice said, "think of a great cannon booming, a cloud of smoke, heat torching the ground below as the cannon fires, shooting its cargo into the atmosphere, and beyond. Into the coldness of space. To float alone amongst the stars – isn't that poetic?"
"Yes," Orphan whispered, paralysed by the Bookman's touch. What was he, he thought, desperately, helplessly – what strange, alien being had trapped him here, to speak to him of poetry?
"Poetry has its own irony," the Bookman said. "The probe would reach space, but it would not head to Mars, to explore its arid deserts and its false canals. Instead, it will spread out dishes like the opening petals of a flower. And it will begin to broadcast a poem out to the distant stars. In the language of the creatures you, in your ignorance, call Les Lézards. Do you know what message it will carry, Orphan? What poem will make its way into galactic space?"
He could feel the Bookman behind him, a shadowy presence made solid, made real and threatening beyond anything he had ever imagined. He whispered, "No," and heard his own voice come back to him, not recognisable as his own.
"It will be a song of surpassing beauty," the Bookman said. "And it will be a poem of summons. It will whisper of the beauty of this world, of Earth, of its blue oceans and green lands, of its abundance of life, its riches, its minerals and fuel and rare metals. A world ready for the taking. A world already half-subdued." Something like a lizard's tongue, yet different, hissed in the air beside his ear, tasting the words. "Come, it would say. Come, our brothers and sisters. We have been lost for a long time, but now we are found. Come to this world we have taken for ourselves,