The Missing Adventures - Evolution Part 20

There were about a dozen tanks in the room that contained various forms of aquatic life. Sarah recognized a baby seal mewling in one tank. Another contained a dolphin that looked rather the worse for wear. Several others gave off the pungent aroma of formaldehyde and contained various organs and portions of internal anatomy.

There was one person in the room with her, regarding her with a mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and interest. He was a tall, slightly chubby man with dark hair untidily brushed. He had piercing blue eyes and an almost cherubic face.

'I'd ask you to explain that comment,' Sarah finally answered him, her voice thick and still speckled with pain. 'But I doubt I'd like the explanation.'

'Probably not,' the man agreed readily. 'Dear me, Miss Smith, your inquisitive nature has really caused you trouble this time, hasn't it?'

'Oh, I'd say it was about par for the course,' she replied. The strength was returning to her tired muscles now. If she could just keep this man talking long . . . What? Maybe she could break the handcuffs with a mighty tug? Fat chance. She wondered what the time was, and whether Alice had managed to convince her father of the need for action. If she stalled long enough, maybe help could arrive. Besides that, there was always the Doctor. Sarah doubted he'd be too far away once the action began. But would he be close enough to do her any good? 'Speaking of which, just what is the course?'

Her captor gave her another of his happily innocent smiles. 'Miss Smith, you have a terrible habit of wanting answers to questions you shouldn't even be thinking about in the first place. Haven't you ever heard the old saying about a little knowledge being dangerous to your health?'

Sarah grunted. ' " If a little knowledge is dangerous",' she quoted, ' " where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?" ' She gave him a thin smile. 'Thomas Henry Huxley.'

'Oh, very good!' the man approved. 'You have quite a wit about you.' He shrugged. 'Of course, it is about all you do have about you. And, speaking of danger, you are in it, and I am not. I suppose that makes me the man that you refer to.'

'And what makes you think I'm in danger and you aren't?' asked Sarah, putting on the most innocent expression she could muster. She didn't really expect it to fool him for a second, so she wasn't too disappointed when he laughed at her.

'Oh, you really are something special!' He shook his head sadly. 'Miss Smith may I call you Sarah? "Miss Smith"

sounds so formal.'

'Oh, by all means, let's dispense with formality,' Sarah answered. 'I'm not one to stand on etiquette. A step-ladder, maybe, but not etiquette. And what do I call you that's polite in mixed company?'

'My name is Ross, Sarah.'

'Ross?' She narrowed her eyes and peered hard at him. 'You wouldn't happen to be related to a Colonel Edmund Ross, would you?'

'He is my brother.'

'Ah.' Some of this was starting to make a strange kind of sense to her now. 'And what do your friends call you?

a.s.suming you have any, that is.'

'All men have friends, Sarah. Mister Breckinridge, for example, is a very good friend of mine. I allow him to call me Percival.' He smiled at her. 'I imagine I could extend that courtesy to you, too, while you are still with us.'

'Charmed,' Sarah replied. 'I'd shake hands, but it's a trifle difficult right at the moment.' She studied her captor with interest. This was definitely a man whose elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor. 'Percival, what are you up to here?'

'My, my, my,' he chided. 'Curiosity killed the cat, Sarah. And I'm afraid it's going to kill you, too.'

'Can we drop the corny literary allusions?' Sarah begged him. 'If you intend to kill me, where's the harm in telling me what I've got to die for?'

Ross shrugged. 'Why not? Immediately, you have to die because I sent those two blockheads after a dead body and they brought me back two live ones instead.'

Well, that was something. 'Kipling's still with us, I take it,' Sarah asked.

'For the time being, yes.' Ross gestured to the large cylinder at the end of the room. 'As soon as that chamber has been vacated, he'll probably end up in there. I'm not entirely certain that the process will work on someone who has so evidently pa.s.sed the point of p.u.b.erty as Master Kipling, but if it kills him then it saves me the bother of having to see to the task personally. And if it doesn't kill him, we'll have another worker.' He patted her gently on the arm. 'You, my dear, are obviously considerably past the age of p.u.b.erty yourself. The process would definitely kill you which is, I'm sad to report, your fate anyway. But it would also damage your internal organs, which would be a terrible waste.'

Sarah's mouth was definitely on the desert side of dry right now. 'Yes,' she agreed, trying to sound flippant. 'I'd hate to see my organs go to waste. You know what they say about a mind being a terrible thing to waste.'

Ross laughed, genuinely amused. 'Oh, you are a one, Sarah. It's a shame that you'll be staying with me, albeit in a number of small containers. I really would have liked the chance to spar with you a little more.'

'Well, you can't have everything,' Sarah managed to joke. 'You may have my body, but you'll never have my mind.

Unless you intend to pickle that, too.' She was trying very hard to avoid thinking about his promises. 'But aside from the fascination of taking my liver out on a date, why do you want my body parts so badly, Percival?'

'For my work, Sarah,' Ross explained. He gestured toward the cylinder and the merboy within. 'As you can see, I've managed to create my own rather unique lifeforms. I believe you came face to face with a number of my creations over the past few days?'

'Yes.' She shuddered. 'Mutant hounds, killer seals and a rather pretty young mermaid.'

'The tip of the iceberg,' he a.s.sured her. 'Here in this laboratory, I have the means to achieve fusion of different animal species, combining their traits to form prototypical creatures that before now existed only in the imagination. Thanks to me, mermaids do exist.'

Sarah shook her head. 'I can't quite bring myself to believe this is just a hobby for you,' she said. 'I mean, most people just take up collecting b.u.t.terflies or stamps for a pastime. Are you just doing all this because you can?'

Ross looked shocked. 'Sarah,' he chided, 'how petty you must think I am! Though I must admit that part of this is merely the desire to see what limits I can break. But my experiments do have a n.o.ble end: I am creating separate species of human beings that will take mankind beyond the oldest boundaries imposed on our species. My merfolk are the first if we don't include that dreadful hound-boy, which was unplanned but I hope to create more very shortly.' He waved his hands in the air like a comic-opera sorcerer. 'Imagine crossing human beings with cheetahs, for example, and creating a race with the endurance and cunning and prowess of the major cats. What warriors and athletes they might become! Or taking a simple bat and making from it winged beings that could ride the air currents and really fly! Isn't that a project worthy of great imagination?'

'It's certainly great something,' agreed Sarah. 'B.S., mostly. You can't be serious.'

He glared at her, his good humour vanishing in an instant. 'How can you say that after what you've witnessed?' he asked. 'My powers are quite real. The merfolk are alive, their bodies stable, and they are viable. Do you understand what that means?'

'Yes,' agreed Sarah, impressed despite herself. 'That they can have children when they mature. And that they will breed true.'

'Precisely. They can breed true. If I were to step aside now, the merfolk would continue to live and grow. I have done what no man has ever done before: I have created a new breed, a new genus, as my legacy. I have achieved what n.o.body has even dreamed of before least of all that obnoxious, overbearing older brother of mine!'

'I suppose it's partly my fault from the beginning,' Colonel Ross admitted. 'Everything Percival has ever done in his miserable life was an attempt to either prove that he was better than me or else to try and hurt me for being what I am.'

'And what are you?' asked the Doctor carefully. 'If you're merely a military man, I'm a humbug. You remind me a little of a Brigadier chappie I know.'

Ross sighed. 'I've been attempting to avoid answering that question since I arrived here, Doctor. But in the interests that seem to have linked us, I have little choice left to me now, do I?'

'None at all,' the Doctor replied cheerfully. 'If I don't like or don't believe your replies, Doyle and I will truss the two of you up here and mark you "Do Not Open Till Christmas".'

Doyle privately wasn't sure that the Doctor's threat could be carried out quite that simply, but it appeared that Ross had already made his decision anyway.

'I am a special agent working directly under the command and authority of Her Majesty Queen Victoria,' he answered.

'It is my job to investigate those matters that lie outside of the conventional. Since the reports were first received about a monster hound on the loose on the moors down here, I've been working to track down the guilty parties.'

Doyle's eyes went wide. 'You can prove that claim, I take it?'

'Don't be an idiot, man,' replied Ross, his voice edged with weariness. 'In this line of work, how long do you think I'd last if I carried papers that proved I was under explicit orders of the Queen herself? Quite frequently I have to operate outside of both the law and this country.' He nodded at the Doctor. 'I think your friend knows I'm telling the truth.'

'I'm inclined to believe most of what you said,' the Doctor agreed. 'As I say, you have the same manner as the Brigadier about you.'

'Brigadier?' asked Doyle, out of his depth. 'What brigadier?'

'I'll explain later,' replied the Doctor. To Ross, he added, 'But I don't believe that shooting the hound was under explicit orders from anyone. There was no need to kill the poor creature.'

Ross shook his head. 'Doctor, you do not seem to understand what my brother is capable of. I am attempting to eradicate every last foul deed he has perpetrated.'

'Are you indeed?' asked the Doctor coldly. 'Well, let me give you fair warning, Colonel: if you attempt to eradicate a single one of those merpeople he has somehow managed to create, I shall take great delight in feeding you to his seals piece by b.l.o.o.d.y piece. Do I make myself perfectly clear?'

'Indubitably.'

'Good. I'm so glad we understand one another.' The Doctor abruptly smiled. 'Aside from those misguided attempts to cover your brother's tracks, you seem to be a reasonably decent sort of chappie.'

'Well, I'm still considerably in the dark here,' Doyle protested. 'What has looking for your brother and his manufactured monstrosities got to do with staying at Fulbright Hall? The whole family seems convinced you were planning to loot the blasted place.'

Ross shrugged. 'A misunderstanding. Alice overheard me giving instructions to Abercrombie, and managed to misinter-pret them. True, Abercrombie is a thief and a scoundrel, but in this line of work, it would be difficult to find a better part-ner.'

'Thanks a lot,' muttered Abercrombie. 'Talk about being d.a.m.ned with faint praise.'

'But what were you doing at the Hall?' persisted Doyle.

'I first latched onto these experiments of my brother's in London,' Ross explained. 'There he had set up an inhuman laboratory to experiment upon living creatures. He's long been fascinated with the concept of improving on the works of Nature. He read Darwin's On The Origin Of Species On The Origin Of Species while in college, and decided that natural selection was an inefficient means of advancing change.' while in college, and decided that natural selection was an inefficient means of advancing change.'

'So he's elected to try unnatural selection,' muttered the Doctor.

'Precisely.'

'But how does he achieve this?' mused the Doctor. 'Technology on the Earth in this time period is certainly not up to anything on the order of change that he's managed. What is he doing?'

'I really have no idea how he works the technique,' admitted Ross with a shrug. 'Science is a background study for me. I know enough to get by on my missions, but little more. Percival is, in fact, the genius where that is concerned.'

'Genius my foot,' snapped the Doctor. 'What he's doing is beyond impossible.' He sighed. 'I suppose I shall have to ask him his laboratory methods myself. What else?'

'Well, his experiments cost a great deal of money,' explained Ross, 'and he was financing some from the proceeds of ah, the production of extremely fine replications of the official currency.'

'Printed his own,' Abercrombie put in helpfully. 'd.a.m.ned good queer it was, too.'

'Quite,' agreed Ross dryly. 'Well, we destroyed his presses, but by the time I was certain that was done, he had fled. I had seen his first experiment, that poor unfortunate hound, and when the reports of a gigantic beast on the loose reached me, I knew it had to mean that Percival had begun work again in this vicinity. The problem was deciding where.

'Since he needed a good deal of cash for his work, and there was no chance he could be printing it this soon, I knew he must have found someone to back his schemes. The only two people in this area with sufficient wealth were either Sir Edward Fulbright or Breckinridge.'

'Ah!' Doyle exclaimed with satisfaction. 'And you chose to investigate Sir Edward first.'

'Precisely. A foolish error, which has caused a good deal of trouble and inconvenience for me.'

'But why him?' asked Doyle. 'Surely Breckinridge was the most likely suspect?'

'Yes,' admitted Ross. 'And to my mind that made him less likely. You see, Percival employed a pair of a.s.sistants in London named Raintree and Brogan. Both men are currently employed as security officials at Breckinridge's factory. I reasoned that Percival planted them there as bait to lure me from the correct scent, since it was otherwise ludicrously obvious where he was.'

The Doctor couldn't restrain his laughter any longer. 'Oh, wonderful,' he said between gasps. 'Your devious little mind overlooked the obvious because it was obvious. I'll bet your brother is chuckling about that still.'

'He probably is,' agreed Ross shamefacedly. 'There was another reason, also. I could gain simple entry to Fulbright Hall because my old college chum Roger Bridewell had become engaged to Sir Edward's only daughter. I told him enough of my suspicions to make him willing to do anything to clear the suspicions against his future in-laws, so he managed to get me invited to the Hall. I'll admit that I was not the most popular guest they've ever entertained, but I did manage to confirm that Sir Edward was innocent of involvement. That left only Breckinridge.'

'And so you elected to break in here tonight to check on your suspicions,' the Doctor finished for him.

'Yes. I realized that you were going to come here eventually. I had to beat you to the mark, I knew, but you seem to have antic.i.p.ated my moves.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Sheer dumb luck, if that's any consolation,' he admitted cheerfully. 'I had planned to be here later, but Sarah has managed to force my hand.'

'Sarah?' Ross frowned. 'What has she done?'

'Managed to get herself captured by your brother, at a guess,' the Doctor answered.

Ross went white. 'Then we had better end this conversation and get inside fast,' he said. 'My brother needs three things for his experiments: young children, who become the victims of his changes; animals, from which he makes the extracts to affect those changes; and third, he needs fresh corpses, from which he extracts human elements. These he uses on living animals, giving them humanoid speed and wits. I fear that Sarah is about to become the late Miss Smith and that shortly afterwards, various portions of her will find their way into various other species of creatures.'

Interlude 3 Ross ave you ever been to Limehouse, Sarah?' asked Percival Ross.

'H 'No more than I've been forced to,' she admitted.

'Understandable.' He seemed almost adrift in the sea of his memories. 'I always found it a loathsome place. Its name comes from the lime kilns that burn there, and you can really have no idea what a dreadful stench they produce. And the wh.o.r.es that patrol the streets there painted Jezebels whose faces would fall apart if they washed off the layers of make-up they wear. And men who seem to be engaged in discovering the limits of human endurance when it comes to preserving their livers in alcohol. A disgusting place, the cesspit of the planet. I was there for three years.'

Sarah managed a cheeky smile. 'You can always tell a man by the company he keeps,' she quipped.

'Most droll,' Ross answered. 'I had little option, though. I needed a place where I could procure subjects for my experiments without too many questions, and a place to dispose of my failures without arousing too much concern. I founded what I liked to call a Charity Hospital though the patients mainly contributed to me through their deaths. I used this as a cover for my experiments and probed the vast unknown areas of evolution, without notable success. Until, one day, the answer came to me in a flash.'

'Take up gardening instead?' suggested Sarah.

'No, I speak of a literal flash, Sarah.' He smiled at her. 'A star fell on Limehouse. The locals called on me, since they were terrified that the heavens were visiting divine vengeance on them. If G.o.d Almighty had done so, I couldn't have been too surprised, but it was nothing quite like that . . .'

As my carnage arrived at the place where the so-called star had fallen, I immediately realized that I was in the presence of something from vastly outside my limited sphere. The star had descended amidst some old warehouses that had been abandoned down by the river. Flames illuminated the night, burning with preternatural splendour and defying all efforts by the terrified residents to douse them. The women were gone and the men were panicking. They were ready to believe that the flames were the product of Old Nick himself, I think. Several wounded people had crawled out of the area, where vaga-bonds spent their miserable nights waiting for the dawn of bleak days.

It fascinated me, because I had never seen anything quite like this before. Despite the fears of the locals, I could see that what I was confronted by was certainly not celestial in nature at least, not in the sense of the word that they chose. But there was something inside the broken buildings that lived, because I could hear a strange screaming. It was a little like the cry that an animal in mortal pain makes shortly before it expires, a sound I've heard many times in the past.

Steeling myself, I walked carefully into the damaged area. Fires burnt all about me, consuming even the bricks themselves. Yet there was surprisingly little physical heat, and I possessed barely more than a faint sheen on my skin as I entered the area. The greenish glow of the flames made everything appear supernatural, but I felt that at the heart of this mystery lurked something considerably more mundane.

I was, in fact, utterly wrong. Oh, I admit it freely: I was out of my depth at the start. I came across shattered and blazing chunks of metallic substances, and strange, broken instrumentation of a kind and order that I could not even begin to comprehend. It started to dawn upon me that I was in the presence of some kind of transportation device. A flying cab, if you like. It had suffered some calamity and come crashing down to the Earth. I realized that I was dealing with neither demon nor angel, then, for neither such creature could require a conveyance to move across the heavens. Excitement mounted within me as I pressed forward.

In the centre of the area of destruction lay the core of this conveyance. It had once been large and circular, like a flying dish of some sort. Little of the outer sh.e.l.l was intact, however. That was clearly the source of the strange metals and instruments that blazed about me. The interior of the craft had suffered no less damage, but it was still in one piece. After a moment in which I fought off the noxious smoke fumes from the craft, I began to make sense of what I was witnessing.

Do you recall the line from the Book of Revelations: 'There was war in Heaven'? The evidence that this was true lay before me. The star cab that lay there had been damaged in some great battle fought way above our world. In its death-throes it had crashed to the Earth and lay there before me, burning with a strange fire. There had been a war and here was the loser, a broken conveyance, along with its expiring driver.

I had never seen any creature like this before. It resembled a jellyfish somewhat, being almost shapeless and gelatinous, but it was far too large for any such beast. It was some four feet across, and the source of the screaming sound I had followed to this spot. That this was no mere animal was apparent, because it was as burnt and damaged as the cab itself, yet it was moving with volition and purpose. Its not skin, but whatever held the being together was blackened from the crash, and it had to be in grave pain. Yet it had somehow formed a portion of its body into some kind of tentacle, and it was tearing apart a portion of its craft in search of something it desired badly.

This monster had no eyes, and yet it seemed to sense me nonetheless. I cannot say that it turned, but somehow I knew that its attention was focused on me now, while it had not been aware of me before. The tentacle that it had been using wavered, and then gestured toward a portion of the craft as yet untouched by the fires.