The Great Game (18 page)

  "There's been… a situation."

  "We need you to go on a bit of a journey."

  "You won't be alone, of course."

  "We're recalling most agents."

  "You've been trained well. As well as can be."

  "We want you to go to Europe. To the home of the lizardine race."

  "Others are heading to Asia, Mexica, the South Seas–"

  "We need to guard our interests–"

  "The world is changing, boy. We do not intend to be caught unawares–"

  He sat there, the conversation washing over him, overwhelming him. The chiefs, almost not looking at him directly, their words in the air. All to impart the importance of his mission on him.
This is why you are here.

  "Danger in the stars–"

  "Old artefacts, awakening–"

  "Go, boy. Winnetou will brief you."

  A hand on his shoulder. Pulling him up. Smoke in his eyes, the stars, like the moon, bright above. Drums in the distance, the sound of chanting, the smell of burning tobacco–

  "Come on."

  Winnetou led him away, amidst the tents.

 

And now he was waiting at the docks, for a ship to take him, across the sea, to the island where Les Lézards ruled.

  To find out…

  What, exactly?

  He remembered vividly the events of the World's Vespuccian Exposition, in ninety-three…

  
The spinning wheel, which they now called a Ferris Wheel, after its inventor, moving against the starry night sky… Houdini had been dressed as a fakir, his skin darkened by sun and cosmetics… performing magic there, in the avenues of the White City, illuminated by electric lights… Tesla himself had been there, lightning wreathing his body…

  
Houdini watching – the woman from France, the agent, he was told, of the Quiet Council… She was formidable.

  
Milady de Winter. Hunting a murderer in both cities, the Black and the White, in that place called Chicagoland… and hunting something else, also. A mysterious object, a lizardine artefact…

  
The Emerald Buddha. An object of mythical resonance. Discovered in the Gobi Desert, centuries before, a jade statue in the image of a royal lizard. Carried by a man. If he had a name Harry didn't know it. He was designated, simply, as the Man on the Mekong.

  
But he had come to Vespuccia, had crossed the sea, and come to the White City – supposedly to offer the statue to the highest bidder. But that had been a ruse…

  
The White City had been plunged into darkness. High overhead, on the axle of the Ferris Wheel, two tiny figures: the Man on the Mekong and Milady de Winter. And the wheel spun, faster and faster, until the space within it was distorted, and strange, alien stars had appeared…

  
The wide avenues of the White City were filled with screams… bod
ies fighting in the darkness to escape… There had been a terrible voice, filling the night, only it was not in the ears, it was in one's head… a cold, impersonal voice, speaking no language but directly into the mind itself, filling it with the horror of infinity.

  
And up there, on the wheel, a third figure, climbing – the killer de Winter had come to find, a man mutated and made grotesque by the power of the statue. That awful voice, speaking:
Initiating target parameters. Stand by to receive
. A struggle up there, and in the space beyond the wheel, that alien space, something moved…

  
The voice saying:
Gateway open. Coming through–

  
A scuffle, and the killer flying into the space inside the wheel, the statue in his hands, opening–

  
And the voice, saying,
Gateway sequence interrupted! Explain!
And a mental shriek that burned through the brain, and everyone down below clutched their ears, trying to block it, and the voice saying,
Gateway linkage shutting down.

  
And something had come through the gateway, from that alien space inside the wheel. A dark, saucer-shaped vehicle, hovering in the air…

  
Then it was gone, like a mirage, like a bad dream.

  He should have known, back then, that it wasn't any kind of ending.

  
It was out there, somewhere
. An alien vehicle, an alien intelligence directing it. Where did it go?

  And that had not been the worst of it. No.

  The worst of it had been that, fifteen minutes later, Harry had died.

 
 

 
 
 

Would the ship never come?

  In the harbour, there on the Long Island, a plethora of ships: Arab
baglahs
, Chinese junks, a French steamer, three Aztec longboats, trade ships from west Africa – from the Kong and Dahomey and Asante empires – a couple of Swahili cargo ships, three lizardine tea-clippers, and others: sailboats, dugouts and steamships all crowded in that harbour, coming and going, but the ship Harry was waiting for wasn't there.

  No whalers. Whale-hunting was punishable by death across the Lizardine Empire and, through bilateral agreements, beyond it. Like human slavery, it belonged in the days before Les Lézards. Were they, Harry wondered now, not for the first time, truly enemies of humanity? Many argued over the centuries that the coming of the lizardine race had, by extension, benefited humanity, had stopped some of its more heinous actions. And yet, was it right to let an alien race rule over you?

  Harry felt ill at ease. For he knew one… being, at least, who did
not
think it right, and who had made it their life's mission to oppose the royal lizards.

  But he didn't want to think about that. Did not want to think of Roanoke, any more than he did of that awful moment in the White City…

 

Even after it was over, after that alien space within the wheel had disappeared, when the screams of the passengers in the wheel's cars had stopped, when that alien vessel had disappeared, flying at high speed away from the White City, even then chaos reigned.

  The White City: a marvel of an age, a brand-new city erected especially for the Fair, enormous buildings, wide avenues, a multitude of visitors–

  Plunged into darkness now, and fear, and uncertainty–

  People running through the streets, trying to find a way out–

  And others taking advantage of the situation.

  
The White City had been filled with the criminal class. Not just that killer Milady de Winter had been sent to catch, the man they called the Phantom, who had called himself H.H. Holmes, perhaps in mockery of the great detective… There were cut-purses and pick-pockets and confidence men (and confidence women), tricksters and robbers, and in the darkness even those who had not come to the city to commit a crime could be tempted, nonetheless, to take advantage of the situation.

  
Harry had walked in the dark, as lost as the rest, trying to locate de Winter, trying to gather information for the
Cabinet Noir
, that secret organisation that was the Vespuccian equivalence of Les Lézards' Bureau…

  
So intent that he did not notice the movement behind him, did not quite hear the snick of a blade–

  
The man had smelled of sweat and stale tobacco and gin. The blade flashed, once, in the moonlight–

  
Harry remembered the surprise, more than anything else, more than the pain – the surprise and the hurt of it, which was somehow worse, and then it flamed through him, and he tried to breathe, or scream, but no sound came, and he gurgled, helplessly, and sank to his knees, blood gushing out of his throat, and the man's breath was very close to him, he stood behind him, supporting him as he fell, almost gently…

  
He was dying, Harry had suddenly realised, and it made him want to cry. He wasn't ready! He was not yet twenty years old! What would his mother say? It couldn't be happening, not to him, not like this–

  
The man had rifled through his pockets and had come away with the money and everything else. Then he ran. Shouts in the distance, but Harry's hearing was going, and he could see nothing now, and would never see again… He felt the life slipping away from him. He could have cried.

  
He died.

 

Harry paced the docks. Swahili sailors speaking in a beach argot with Melanesian islanders, Lenape officials supervising the offloading of cargo, porters loading up bags of coal onto the French steamer. Harry's mission was simple: go to London, find out what you can, try to stay alive. It almost made him laugh.

  
You will be briefed further upon landing.

  They needed him to track down Babbage. Lord Babbage, who had not been seen these five years or more. Who, for all intents and purposes, could well be dead.

  But Harry knew even death was not always an end…

 

He had woken with a gasp. Air, cool blessed air, came into his lungs. He cried out. He was lying on the floor, in a doorway. The electric lights were burning again, and an air of gaiety filled the White City.

  Harry put a hand to his throat. Nothing there. No cut, no blood–

  He was alive.

  Slowly, he sat up. He looked about him. What had happened?

  Again, he felt himself. Nothing. No injury, no pain…

  Had he dreamed it?

  He stood up. He felt fine…

  Something was very wrong.

  The memory was too real.

  And, when he checked his pockets, his belongings were gone.

  So he really had been robbed.

  Had he just taken a knock on the head? Had he hallucinated dying?

  A sudden sense, of being watched.

  He stepped into the street. It was as if nothing had happened.

  He knew he should report it to his superiors.

  But he never did.

 

And I was wrong, he thought, pacing the docks. I was wrong not to.

  But it was too late now.

  And there was the ship, coming in.

  The
Snark.

  Harry thought it was a strange name for a ship.

  And now it docked, and the gangplank was laid down, and the captain descended. A young man, even younger than Harry. Quite jaunty. When he saw Harry he smiled, and extended his hand.

  "You're Houdini?" he said. He had an enthusiastic, almost boyish smile. "I saw you on stage, in Fort Amsterdam –" a small town in the vicinity, built by the European refugees on leased Lenape land – "you were very good."

  "Thank you," Harry said. He found himself returning the smile. "Captain–"

  "London," the man said. "Call me Jack." He smiled again. He smiled easy. "Dad's an astrologer," he said.

  "Mine's a rabbi."

  London slapped Harry on the back. "Come on up!" he said. "We're heading to my namesake town, are we? My band of desperadoes usually sails hereabouts, but I'm guessing the Cabinet Noir wanted someone to keep an eye on you." He laughed, but Harry, this time, did not return the feeling.

  
Was
London there to keep an eye on him? Did they know?

  Did they suspect?

  He followed the captain up the gangplank and onto the deck. "Maybe you could perform for the boys," London said. "Later."

  "Be happy to," Harry said.

 

It was partly that strange event at the World's Vespuccian Exposition that had led Harry, a year later, down to the island of Roanoke.

  Officially, he was on a mission for the Cabinet Noir. Strange, unexplained phenomena have always plagued that part of the world. The Roanoke themselves now shied away from the island. Back in the day they had leased it to one of the earliest groups of refugees fleeing the lizards' rule, but that small colony had disappeared, and the events surrounding that disappearance were never adequately explained.

  Harry remembered it as a happy time. He performed sleightof-hand, close-up magic routines, the sort of magic that required no heavy equipment but whatever was to hand. For a while he abandoned coins or cards completely, preferring to use natural materials: making a stone disappear, making water appear out of a leaf. Magic that required no language, a visual kind. From the Roanoke he learned of the creature they called, somewhat uneasily, Coyote.

  Coyote was known and revered across Vespuccia; but for the Roanoke the name had evolved a different meaning. Was it a recent thing? Harry tried to find out – "Yes," some said. "No," said others. Stories were confused. Some said Coyote had been seen for centuries. Some dismissed the stories altogether.

  "Was Coyote behind the Roanoke Colony's disappearance?" Harry asked.

  No one knew. The subject made people uneasy.

  "It steals people," one told him. "In the night."

  But others said that, no, it brought people back from the dead.

  They told the story of one man who had died and was resurrected by the creature they called Coyote. The man had been killed in battle.

  "What sort of battle?"

  "Oh, a disagreement of some sort," they told him. It had been one of those wars between villages, long ago.

  "What happened to the man?" Harry asked.

  "He had been shot, several times. He died."

  "And then?" Harry asked.

  "Three days later he was spotted, alive, without a scratch on him. Riding his horse under the full moon. He was never seen again."

  "Just stories," someone told him. But Harry was uneasy.