The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination Part 28

"He solves problems," Harry said.

The photographs on the walls doc.u.mented the professor's exploits- the images were monuments to his work. A history of the last two decades, even: the strange, looping coils and pocked hull of the Aetherian craft where it crashed in Surrey; the rows of canvas tents housing the hundreds of workers who built the ware houses and laboratories around the site; Ernest Carlisle directing the project, leading a team of white-coated a.s.sistants like a general commanding an army. Harry drew closer to one photograph in particular, startled by its familiarity. She had a print of the same photograph in an old sc.r.a.pbook. George probably had one as well.

The event, twenty-odd years ago, was Dr. Carlisle's first public demonstration of his adapted Aetherian mechanism. He'd fitted a train engine with an Aetherian propulsion device- it would triple the power of a coal-driven steam engine, with none of the smoke and soot. The royal family had gathered to watch, bestowing their approval of the project by their presence.

The engine itself was the backdrop, its alien bra.s.s couplings and broilers projecting, an unearthly glow emanating from them like halos, visible even in black and white. On one side, apart, stood Dr. Carlisle in his prime, stretched and haughty, hand resting on a nearby strut, almost caressing it.

A s.p.a.ce stood between him and the family: the Queen, solemn in her mourning, and her vast tangle of progeny. Harry's parents, arm in arm like they always had been when photographed or painted together, looked resigned to her eyes. And why not? The world and realm were changing before them, and this engine was proof of it. Their five young children gathered around them, as vibrant and proper a brood as any parents could hope for. The youngest, five-year-old Harry, though she hadn't acquired the nickname yet- clung to her brother George, who seemed very straight and proud at the age of nine.

A surprising number of people in the photograph had died since it was taken. Harry's father, the Crown Prince, for one. Her oldest brother Eddy, which made proud George the Crown Prince now. On the other hand, her grandmother the Queen showed no sign of fading.

Dr. Carlisle caught Harry studying the image.

"You've grown up very well, my lady. I remember you, from the day that photograph was taken. You hid every time I tried to speak to you."

The little girl in the picture wore her brown hair in tight curls, tied back with a velvet ribbon. She wore a white dress and lace-trimmed pinafore, shined shoes peeking out underneath. Chubby and shy, she gripped her brother's hand. She remembered George trying to urge her forward.

Now, she was tall and straight, a proud lift to her chin, auburn hair gathered back and bound, topped by a simple hat, secured in a corset and rose-colored silk gown, with all its fashionable layers and b.u.t.tons. And she never hid.

"That was a long time ago," she said.

"Not so very long, when you've lived as long as I."

"Strange, isn't it, that you should still live when so many who were there that day have died." She dropped the hook and hoped he would bite.

Carlisle's tone was far from offended. He sounded amused. "My dear, are you implying something?"

The cheek of him. He spoke so to her because there'd be no repercussions.

She said, "If you could have continued your research, what would you have done? What further horrors would you have concocted?"

"That's a useless question," Carlisle said. "I believe I received a message from the Almighty that my research had run its course, and that to continue further was to invite disaster."

It was hard to argue with the interpretation. Disaster had already accepted the invitation.

"It seems to me," Harry said, "that once you learned everything you could from the Aetherian craft, you would next turn to the pi lot. But you found more than you expected, didn't you?"

Marlowe reached a timid, placating hand. "Your Highness, this isn't why we came-"

"I want to hear him say exactly what he thought would happen," she said, brushing Marlowe away. She was repeating fables from penny dreadfuls. There was no plague, no extraplanetary conspiracy against the Empire, no Aetherian miasma that killed the Crown Prince and his eldest son and thousands of others. It had only seemed very much like it. They had died years later, her father a.s.sa.s.sinated and Eddy of flu, both unrelated to the accident at Woking.

But that accident, a horrific event borne of one man's hubris, was more than enough reason to treat Carlisle with contempt.

Carlisle frowned. "The body was thoroughly dissected. The notes published. I'm sure anyone has learned anything they're likely to learn from the beast."

"I don't believe you," Harry said.

Carlisle narrowed his gaze. "Does your grandmother know you're here?"

"I have a letter with the royal seal."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"What did you save, Doctor Carlisle? What did you learn of Aetherian biology that you didn't tell anyone?"

"My lady, I spent many days in a very uncomfortable room with men more powerful and clever than you asking me such questions. Why do you think you'll learn what they did not?"

She smiled, adding a tilt to her head that showed off the fashionable trim on her hat. "My charm."

Marlowe lay the portfolio on the table before Carlisle. "I'm terribly sorry, Doctor. When Her Highness agreed to procure permission for me to see you, it was on the condition that she accompany me. She a.s.sured me she could control herself." He threw her a glare. Playing his part.

"What's your connection to the family? Are you a schoolmate of her brother's or such?"

"Just so," Marlowe said. "My only concern here is a mechanical problem I've been attempting to solve- an air compression system for providing breathable atmosphere at high alt.i.tudes. I'm sure you know that the airships based on your designs are reaching thirty thousand feet now." He began producing pages, schematics, charts.

Carlisle still watched Harry.

"Your Highness," Marlowe said. "Perhaps you'd rather wait in the parlor."

"Yes," Carlisle added. "Perhaps you should."

Dismissed, she turned and stormed out of the room, careful to act as if she wasn't used to opening and closing doors herself.

The manor house didn't seem much altered from official accounts. The lieutenant had said most of the house was shut up, which made sense given Carlisle's condition. But it didn't mean anything. If anyone could find a way to climb stairs in a wheelchair, Carlisle would be the man. She commenced exploring.

The dining room had an air of abandonment- Carlisle took his meals elsewhere. The table was set like a museum piece, covered with a red damask runner, a vase filled with dried flowers placed in the middle. There was dust on the flowers, and the rug around the chairs was unscuffed, as though they'd never been pulled from the table.

At least the hinges on the double doors didn't squeak. She pa.s.sed through a foyer, through another set of doors, and here were a set of stairs leading down. Neither the stairs nor the railing were dusty. So the cleaner paid special attention to them. Or they were used often.

As Harry descended, she retrieved the hand lantern- another Aetherian mechanism derived from Carlisle's research- from the pocket tucked into a pleat in her skirt.

The door at the base of the stairs was locked. From the opposite pocket, she drew out her lock picks and set to work. Defeating the mechanism took longer than she expected; this wasn't the door's original lock. While the rest of the house had been all but embalmed, the lock had been replaced with a complex modern version. Fortunately, her tools weren't those of a common burglar. In a few extra heartbeats, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.

The air inside smelled of alcohol and preservative.

She waited a moment, for a trap door to open under her feet, for poison darts to spring from the door frame. But nothing happened. If Carlisle really were hiding something, his traps would be more nefarious. His laboratory would be better hidden, wouldn't it? On the other hand, no one had any reason to think he ever went down here- the man couldn't walk with out a.s.sistance, after all. At least, that was what they all believed. Easy enough to maintain such a fiction.

Briefly, she worried about Marlowe, alone with the man upstairs.

Perhaps Marlowe was right and she was letting her fears get the better of her.

Harry switched on the lantern and closed the door.

The glow revealed gla.s.swork first, pale light reflecting off the smooth surfaces of beakers, flasks, slender piping secured to wooden stands with clamps, all arranged on the large table in the center of the room. This was where servants would have eaten in the house's old days. None of the equipment seemed to be in use- the gla.s.sware was all dry, a gas burner was cold. She might have made an excuse for why it was here: this was simply storage. When Carlisle had been situated in the house, his scientific equipment had been put here, locked away because he would not need it. But none of it was dusty. Not even the cupboards along the room's sides. She brought her lantern close, swept it along the table and sides of the room, studying what details revealed themselves.

The table also held a microscope, with trays of slides beside it. She drew out several, hoping the labels would give her insight, but they were only numbered. The samples on them might have been some kind of tissue- translucent pink splotches that could have been anything. A nearby cupboard contained more slides, racks and racks of them. A second cupboard held flasks of liquid, jars labeled with the names of various solvents and acids, other tools of a biologist's or chemist's trade.

This might have been all innocent hobby. He had been studying the internal structures of worms. But she didn't think so; somehow, he had access to the bas.e.m.e.nt, perhaps via a secret elevator, and he was still experimenting. She didn't have the expertise to know toward what purpose the efforts were directed, but she could record this evidence and have him arrested- again. And sent to prison this time, not this polite fiction in deference to all he had done in his former life.

She would only have to explain why she'd come here at all to her brother. He could make excuses to anyone who questioned her. Likely, she wouldn't be mentioned at all.

With her small notebook and pencil in hand, she began to record an inventory. Marlowe would know what to make of it. In fact, he should probably come have a look at this himself if they could manage it.

It was the angle of light from her glowing lantern that revealed the irregularity in the wall by the cupboard full of microscope slides. A tiny gap in the paneling wavered. In full lamp light, the slight shadow would have been invisible. Perhaps this was Carlisle's hidden elevator. She had to take off her gloves and needed several moments of testing to find the catch that opened the secret panel, revealing not an elevator, but a wall of narrow shelves, filled with gla.s.sware.

The light of her Aetherian lantern glinted off of rows of two-gallon jars, dozens of them, all filled with murky liquid. The sour reek of formalin hung about them, enough to make her cover her mouth and nose with her hand. And yes, inside the jars floated preserved creatures. Her imagination tumbled. Aetherian specimens rescued from the wrecked ship perhaps? If so, Carlisle had kept them very secret.

But no . . . She'd seen photographs of the Aetherian pi lot's body and the engravings diagramming the autopsy. She'd even studied some of the speculation that followed, regarding what other Aetherian creatures must be like, derived from the pi lot's physiology and using Mr. Darwin's theories.

These specimens were nothing like that. They were far too familiar, in fact, despite some grotesque mutations. Pale, furless, smooth. Curved backs, large heads, arms and legs tucked in. Just small enough to cradle in her arms.

They were infants. Newborns and slightly older at the very most. Harry held the lantern closer, to study the bodies, the faces of these horrifying creatures. The mutations that distorted them weren't normal- if mutation could ever be called normal. Expected grotesqueries would include extra limbs, fused limbs, scaled skin, and so forth.

Several of these had fleshy, thorned tentacles extending from their skulls to their bellies. Some had metallic armored plates covering their heads, glinting bronze by the lamp light through the murk of preservative. Some faces had been distorted, elongated, the teeth fused and eyes bulging from sockets so that the body appeared alien. Others had limbs with too many joints that bent the wrong way. In their way, these alterations, these details that she tried to examine from a scientific, unemotional perspective, were familiar, like a certain famous photograph and set of autopsy diagrams.

These were Aetherian mutations, wrought upon human infants.

Were these accidents or experiments? And what had Carlisle been doing with them?

She had an irrational thought to drench the room in kerosene and drop a match, destroying it all, eradicating the horror. Then throw Doctor Carlisle into the inferno. An untempered response, to be sure. How much more satisfying to prosecute him in a court of law. That was the only way to learn what Carlisle was trying to do here, and where the unfortunate infants had come from. Harry wondered where their mothers were.

Marlowe needed to see this. She went back up the stairs, not bothering to close the door behind her.

No one had ever come down here. Why should they, when Carlisle could never navigate the stairs? How many dozens of officers before Bradley had declared so, confidently? Nevertheless, Carlisle had managed to find a way down the stairs.

Marlowe was still with Carlisle in the library. He'd led the old man into making sketches of some Aetherian principle or other, and they bent together over the table, studying the page before them. When she rushed through the doorway, they looked up.

For all that she was practiced at deception- putting on masks and behaving in a manner consistent with those masks- she could not face Dr. Carlisle and pretend that she had not seen what she had. Marlowe, of course, knew something was wrong the moment he saw her. Lips pressed with concern, his expression asked the question.

She felt more sure of herself, with Marlowe standing by. She could face Carlisle, her breathing steady despite her rage. But her stillness, the flush in her cheeks, gave her away. Carlisle frowned.

"Where have you been?" Dr. Carlisle asked. "Making sure I haven't stolen any of the silver?"

"I suppose I could tell you I've been in the garden like a good little girl."

"You've seen the laboratory." She nodded. "You came here at all because you guessed I was hiding something."

"We came for exactly the reason we stated," Marlowe said. "For information. We just didn't trust that you would tell us all you knew. By Her Highness' silence, can I judge you're hiding quite a lot?"

She had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could find her voice. "Marlowe, would you be so good as to have a look in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

With a last glance at Carlisle, he left the room. She followed, gesturing ahead to show him the way.

The wheels of Carlisle's chairs creaked on the floor as he pushed himself along to follow them.

"I know what you think you've found, girl. But I warrant you haven't a clue what you saw. Your unsophisticated mind cannot possibly comprehend."

She gritted her teeth and ignored him.

Marlowe stood at the top of the stairs. "Harry, how could he even get down here?"

"I don't know, but he has. Go and see."

"Doctor Marlowe, I a.s.sure you, the girl speaks nonsense." Carlisle's voice echoed after them as they descended.

"Take my lantern," she said, her hands fumbling as she handed it over at the base of the stairs.

She'd left the unholy cupboard open. It was the first thing he saw, the rows of jars, the dark eyes of the creatures within peering through translucent flesh.

"Oh, my G.o.d," he murmured.

"This is an invasion!" Carlisle shouted from the top of the stairs. "You have no right!"

"I have every right, as a loyal subject of the Crown," she called back.

Marlowe said, "I wouldn't have thought this was his doing because of the stairs, but he's all but claiming responsibility, isn't he?"

"What now?" she asked him. "What do we do? I started to write an inventory, but this . . . seems a bit beyond that."

"I want an explanation," he said, and turned to the stairs.

Which Carlisle was descending.

He'd left the wheelchair, but he wasn't walking. Slithering, perhaps. Creeping. Seeping. His legs had become something else, some kind of boneless limb that he'd kept hidden under the blanket all this time. The pseudopod stretched forward, long prehensile tendrils grasping, reaching ahead of him to pull him down the steps, balancing against the walls to either side. His torso rocked atop them, like a man learning to ride a bicycle. Carlisle held the wall for balance as he lurched toward them.

Marlowe drew his pistol from the holster hidden at his back, under his jacket. Harry stumbled away and tried to think. If the bas.e.m.e.nt had a speaker box, perhaps she could call Lieutenant Bradley. But no, the guards thought the room shut up, a speaker box never would have been installed.

"It's a matter of time," Carlisle said, explaining, lecturing. "Ten years ago, I tried to do it all at once, but I've learned that it's a matter of time, careful injections, a little every day-"

"What are you saying?" Marlowe aimed the pistol at him, but Carlisle seemed not to notice.

"The promise of Aetherian biology!" Carlisle said. "Just as our machines have become more than they ever would have, so can we!"

"And what about them?" Harry said, pointing at the cupboard of dead children.

Carlisle filled the door, his alien limbs spreading around him like some grotesque anemone. "They are products of the first experiment."

"You mean the accident?" Harry said, disbelieving.

"Everyone thinks I was making a weapon, and that's why all those people died, but that is not it at all, I had no interest in weapons. I was trying- I was trying to improve."

"Improve?"

"I paid the women for their partic.i.p.ation; it was a simple transaction."

"You mean you paid them- and took their children from them?"

"It hardly mattered, as you can see not a single one survived."