Not Less Than Gods (17 page)

“But how do you know you don’t like it?”

“Had it before. Disgusting syrupy mess.”

“Perhaps you had the wrong sort. Perhaps this is different. Perhaps it’s wonderful, and you won’t know until you try.”

“Doubt it.”

“Ah, but doubt implies you
don’t
know, doesn’t it?” Bell-Fairfax leaned forward in his chair. “And you aren’t afraid to experiment, are you? I don’t think you are. May I just have the glass a moment?” His voice took on a cajoling quality. He took the glass and raised it to his nose. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply.

“Ahhh. The cherry orchards of Dalmatia. Just a hint of the windfall fruit, beginning to ferment in its skin. A green note, like the leaves bruised by the orchard laborers gathering the cherries. Something ineffable there, unexpected, no heavy jammy sweetness at all.” He opened his eyes and swirled the glass. “And yet, what body. What a crystalline film there, creeping along the rim.”

Holding Ludbridge’s gaze, he took a tiny sip. A long column of ash had formed on the end of Ludbridge’s unsmoked cigar.

“Mm. Oh. What a buttery smoothness in the mouth. What is
that
? Violets? Peaches? Cherries, to be sure, but so subtly . . . and now, fire on the palate. And now, again, the fragrance of the green leaves in the orchard, with the sunlight burning through. And you’ll never know it, if you don’t taste it.”

His voice had dropped, had taken on an eerie incantatory quality. His eyes remained fixed on Ludbridge’s, unnaturally clear and pale, as he held forth the liqueur.
No point being a bloody fool about it
, thought
Ludbridge, taking the glass. He raised it to his lips and drank. The liqueur was exactly as Bell-Fairfax had said it would be, too, delicious, celestial, violets and green leaves and fire, utterly unlike the nasty stuff he remembered. Ludbridge drank it all and set the glass down, smiling at Bell-Fairfax with profound gratitude.

Bell-Fairfax leaned back, white and shaken. He signaled to the waiter to bring another brandy.

“That was extraordinary,” said Ludbridge.

“It was dreadful,” said Bell-Fairfax. “It was wrong. Is
that
what I’ve been doing, with women?”

“What on earth’s wrong about it?” cried Ludbridge. “What you did was bloody wonderful! Here, you,” he addressed the waiter who brought Bell-Fairfax’s brandy. “Another Maraschino,
per favore
.”

“No. No.” Bell-Fairfax grabbed his drink. He knocked it back, avoiding Ludbridge’s gaze. “What are you thinking? You hated the stuff. All I did was—trick you with, with a little poetic language, and—making my voice persuasive.”

“Who cares how you did it, boy? The fact remains that you can do it. This should prove damned useful!”

“No, it shouldn’t,” said Bell-Fairfax. “I swear to you, I never understood before. I only thought I had a certain way with girls. But it’s not a fair advantage, don’t you see?”

“All’s fair in love and war,” said Ludbridge, sprawling back in his chair. He looked closely at Bell-Fairfax, noting in a new perspective his height, his curious features, and remembering other things: his remarkable strength, the keenness of his senses, that remark the radiograph technician had made . . . “By God! What
are
you?”

Bell-Fairfax looked stricken. Realizing his mistake at once, Ludbridge went on: “It’s as though you were naturally born to the work. It was a lucky day for us when Dr. Nennys brought you into Redking’s, my boy.”

“I swear to you, sir, I never meant anything dishonorable.”

“No, no, of course you didn’t. Understand me: we need men with remarkable skills. To think that voice might have been wasted on a
politician or an actor! No, you’ll do very well. I meant what I said about the women, of course, you do realize that?—But we’ll find a much better use for your persuasive abilities. Why use them to become a second-rate Casanova when you could do some
good
in the world?”

“But how, sir?”

“Oh, we’ll think of a way.” The waiter brought Ludbridge’s second glass of Maraschino. He lifted it in a toast and drank. It was not nearly so delicious now, he noted, and thought:
So the effect wears off. Remarkable, all the same.

After dinner that night, Ludbridge sat reading a back number of
Punch
while Hobson made the evening report on the Aetheric Transmitter, and Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove played Beggar-My-Neighbor. At last Ludbridge arose in an unhurried fashion. He spent a while opening and closing the drawers of his trunk, packing items in a capacious leather satchel.

“Bell-Fairfax,” he said, when he had closed up the trunk, “I should change my clothing if I were you. Old trousers, nothing very closely cut. You’ll be rowing some distance tonight.”

“Rowing, sir? Yes, sir.” Bell-Fairfax, rather subdued, put down his cards. He rose and rummaged through his own trunk for suitable trousers and a Henley shirt. Pulling on his braces over the shirt, he inquired: “Anything else, sir?”

“Got a boat-cloak?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Ludbridge swathed himself in what seemed to be a well-worn opera cape. “Pengrove, Hobson, this is your lucky evening; you’ll get a full night’s sleep. We’ll likely be out most of the night.”

“Where are you going?” asked Hobson.

“Hither and yon,” said Ludbridge. “Come along, Bell-Fairfax.”

It was late, the streets largely deserted, and the night was moonless. They found their way down to the waterfront hearing nothing more than the
tck-tck-tck
of a night watchman’s brass-shod staff of office; waiting in a darkened doorway until he had gone past, they hurried to a spot where three or four caiques were moored. Bell-Fairfax stepped down into the nearest and reached up to take Ludbridge’s satchel, grunting in surprise at how heavy it was. Ludbridge sprang nimbly down and cast off.

Bell-Fairfax took the oars and they moved out across the black night water toward Stamboul.

“Where shall we go?” murmured Bell-Fairfax. “The house of the pasha,” replied Ludbridge. “There was a boat landing in the pictures, I believe.” Leaning forward, he opened his satchel and rummaged around in it by touch. A moment later he drew out a pair of goggles and bound them on.

“There!” he said in satisfaction, and drew another pair from the satchel. He handed them across to Bell-Fairfax. “Put them on, please.”

Bell-Fairfax shipped the oars and obeyed him. He lifted his head, staring about him in amazement. “Night vision lenses,” Ludbridge explained quietly, to forestall questions. “With a thermal filter. Ellis in Fabrication came up with them. Really very useful. Let’s continue on our way, shall we?”

“You appear to be on fire,” said Bell-Fairfax, groping for the oars. “You’re seeing the heat of my body,” replied Ludbridge, delving into the satchel once again. He drew out what looked, in Bell-Fairfax’s transfigured sight, like the black silhouette of a weapon of some kind.

“Now,
this
,” Ludbridge said, “is something Bainbridge invented. The, let me see, sixth generation from his original design. Not the greatest range in the world, but within its range deuced effective.” He twiddled with something on the weapon’s side and for a moment Bell-Fairfax saw the heat signature of ghostly red fingerprints defining an unseen dial, before they faded. There was a
click
, and a faint high-pitched whine.

“Why is it black, when everything else is so bright?”

“Because it’s freezing cold,” said Ludbridge. “In fact, I had to bring it
wrapped in a towel in the bottom of the satchel, and the damned thing’s damp from the condensation. Something to be fixed in the seventh model, I devoutly hope. Rather a drawback when a marksman’s weapon makes his hands go numb.”

He made several adjustments, opening out what seemed to be a telescoping rifle barrel and fitting a squat silencing cylinder on its end. Having apparently readied it to his satisfaction, Ludbridge set it in the bottom of the caique and rubbed his hands, which now appeared quite black with cold. “Bah. Ought to have worn gloves. A lesson for you, my boy. I suppose you’re wondering why the gun is freezing cold?”

“I am, yes.”

“Well. What would you think of a rifle that could fire icicles?”

“I would suppose one might be useful, if it existed,” said Bell-Fairfax, after a moment’s contemplation. “It might be more humane. No musket balls for a surgeon to have to ferret out of a wound, because they’d melt.”

“True. Never thought of that. The other advantage, you know, would be that you might shoot a man and, assuming a suitable amount of time had passed before anyone found the corpse, no one would be able to tell quite how he’d died. The icicle would melt. Stab wound, perhaps?”

Bell-Fairfax rowed steadily. “Is there such a gun?” he inquired at last.

“Of course there isn’t. Even if you found a different firing mechanism—for of course the flash of gunpowder would tend to melt your ammunition—what’s to keep your icicle from splintering into a thousand little fragments from the force of the shot?”

“Did Bainbridge find a way to fire a gun without powder?”

“He did. Modified one of Girandoni’s Air Guns. Pre-charged pneumatic firing action. Quiet, no muzzle flash, no heat. Made it sturdier, with a cast air reservoir lined with gutta-percha. Improved the charging mechanism. The ammunition had to be muzzle-loaded pretty damned quickly but they were revolutionary improvements, really. Still shattered the icicle to bits in the firing.”

“Why would it have to be a literal icicle?” said Bell-Fairfax.

“You know, that’s exactly what Carstairs said? Bainbridge was frightfully annoyed with him. He’d had some vision of hunters wandering
in a winter landscape, able to pluck their ammunition from any overhanging eaves or frozen waterfalls they might pass. What convenience, when you’re out after reindeer! But of course the advantages to precast musket balls of ice were obvious, once someone had pointed them out.”

“Did they work?”

“They did not, as it happened. They shattered too. And, of course, where to store them? So Negri was brought in from the Refrigeration project—clever man, grandfather emigrated from Venice or one of those places, made ice creams, you know, so the family had a few trade secrets Negri brought with him—anyway, Negri worked out a freezing-chamber loaded with ammunition, a compact self-powered unit built into the gun-stock, and I’m afraid I can’t tell you how, because I understand very little of why it works.”

“Did that solve the problem?”

“Only part of it.” Ludbridge looked critically at the palms of his hands, which were once again glowing red as coals by thermal perspective. “The ammunition kept perfectly in the refrigerated chamber, but it had yet to make it out of the rifle-barrel intact. So then Carstairs asked if it was strictly necessary to use water ice at all.

“And I’m afraid that at this point Bainbridge nearly quit the project, because he’s a temperamental chap. But Greene and some of the old members had a word with him, and of course once he’d let go the idea of water ice, all manner of possibilities opened up. And, really, if the police inspector finds a corpse with what appears to be a bit of melted ice cream in the fatal wound, he can’t possibly think someone’s invented a pistol that shoots ice-cream cornets.”

“The weapon shoots ice cream?”

“Don’t be absurd! You can’t kill someone with ice cream. Unless you choke them on it, I suppose. Though as it happened, Negri came up with a formula based on one of the old family recipes, adulterated with certain chemical ingredients. Freezes hard as rock and keeps its shape even when it thaws. Only melts when exposed to blood heat.”

“And that worked?”

“No. But it nearly worked. Bainbridge experimented and discovered
that if each bullet is encased in a sort of woven jacket made of—but you don’t need to know what exactly, simply that it’s as fine as spider-silk and dissolves when it encounters any saline liquid, such as blood, and the Society bought the formula from a chemist who was attempting to make an improved surgical suture . . . where was I?

“Ah, to be sure: this silk jacket did the trick, at last. Hiss and pop and down goes your man with a bit of something icy in a vital organ, and the coroner will search with all his might and main, but he won’t find anything more than a sort of pinkish smear in a mysterious wound. Here, isn’t that the mansion to starboard? Pull us up to the end of the boat-dock.”

By the light of the goggles, the pasha’s house glowed green against the darker green of cypress and plane trees, under a bright emerald sky scattered with stars. Distantly there were a few scarlet figures, moving here and there on the terraces of Stamboul: what must be a man leading a donkey, a staggering drunk, a prone figure asleep under a bush.

The caique bumped against the end of the boat-dock and, bracing his palms on the planks, Ludbridge levered himself up and out. Bell-Fairfax, shipping the oars once more, picked up the weapon and handed it up to him, wincing involuntarily at its chill.

“Yes, see what I mean?” Ludbridge murmured, opening out a folding tripod. “Gloves or better shielding for the ammunition locker, either one. Now, where’s the hareem? . . . Ah.”