The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection (Pax Britannia) Read online

  "Yes, sir."

  "Drop that one off with Dr Methuselah. Tell him I'll pay his usual fee."

  "Yes, sir. And then shall I return for you? Or should I wait for you to call?"

  "We'll see, shall we Nimrod? It's such a pleasant day, and the sky is such a warming shade of yellow today, that I might make the most of this Indian summer and enjoy a stroll along the river. I can always take the Overground from Kew. I'll let you know."

  "Very well, sir. You think you'll find the answer you're looking for here?"

  "Where else would one come with a question about plants other than to the botanist boffins at Kew Gardens?"

  Ulysses exited the Silver Phantom and, engine purring, the sleek automobile pulled away from the kerbside. Passing through the vine-leaf wrought gates he approached the visitor turnstiles. Flashing the contents of a leather cardholder he was admitted immediately and, on asking for the Director, was directed towards the newly constructed Amaranth House. The construction work on the latest of Kew's majestic glasshouses was complete, as was much of the internal planting. All that remained now was for the last coat of gleaming all-weather emulsion to be applied by the team of gardeners and automata that had been set that task, and for Director Hargreaves and his cadre of loyal horticulturalists to finalise the arrangement of the specimens exhibited within.

  Since the chaos and near-anarchy of the Queen's 160th jubilee celebrations, a matter of only a few months ago, all appeared to be well within the realm of Magna Britannia once again. The greatest world-spanning empire the world had ever known still held firm, thanks in no small part to Ulysses Quicksilver himself. With the apparent wiping out of the Darwinian Dawn, official functions were continuing again. The latest was to be the opening of the new Amaranth House, which would contain some of the world's rarest and most specialised plant specimens. The press was full of it: in two days' time, a whole host of the great and the good were due to attend, including the new Prime Minister. Ulysses' own invitation had been waiting for him when he returned from the first and last voyage of the sub-liner Neptune. Queen Victoria herself would not be attending on this occasion and, considering what had happened the last time he had taken up such an invitation, Ulysses was thinking of giving the event a miss as well.

  Passing a battered tanker that, from the pungent reek coming from it, contained an enormous quantity of weedkiller, Ulysses crossed the threshold of the grand glazed double doors and entered Amaranth House. He found Professor Hargreaves, the current Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens inside, directing his staff in their positioning of a potentially deadly - and hence currently bound - Patagonian Mantrap. He was a beanpole-thin man in later middle age, his thinning grey hair parted in the middle and slicked down with a generous amount of hair lacquer. His twirled grey moustache had been equalled carefully tended and he observed the world through blue-tinted spectacles. It was humid inside the glasshouse and, having removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, the Director was really getting stuck into the work himself. Picking his way past wheelbarrows of compost and busily painting automata-drudges, Ulysses approached the team of horticulturalists seeing to the repositioning of the large spine-mawed plant.

  "And make sure its trapper tendrils have been pruned right back before the opening. We don't want the new PM becoming a tasty morsel for Audrey here, do we? This is one auspicious event we don't want going with a bang," he was saying as Ulysses approached.

  "Do you name all your plants, Director?"

  Professor Hargreaves turned at Ulysses' interruption and glowered at him in annoyance. "What? No, of course not. Only the larger specimens. The gardeners simply bastardised the Latin name of this one and, well, it seems to have stuck. She does appear to have something of a personality, as do all the semi-sentient carnivorous specimens."

  "It seems to me that you're making rather a fuss of what is, as I understand it, in South America considered to be a pernicious weed."

  "This isn't simply some common or garden triffid or vervoid, I'll have you know. The Patagonian Mantrap is on the verge of extinction, thanks to Man's total disregard for the green heart of this planet. There are only two that I know of in the entire country. The work we do here at Kew is vital to the ongoing survival of these rare and most beautiful -"

  "And deadly," Ulysses threw in.

  "- plants in existence." Hargreaves went on without breaking his stride. "Anyway, who do you think you are butting in here like this? Who admitted you?"

  In response, Ulysses dextrously took out his leather cardholder, flipped it open and, just as deftly, put it away again.

  "Oh," Hargreaves said in surprise, despite himself, "you. I've read about your exploits in The Times. Rather a lot of fuss over some attention-seeking derring-do, if you ask me."

  "Yes, that would be me. Ulysses Quicksilver at your service."

  "Mr Quicksilver, I am sure you can appreciate that I am a very busy man. There is still so much to do in preparation for the opening and so little time to achieve it all in."

  "I appreciate that, Professor," Ulysses said, a fixed smile on his face, "but you must understand that I would not trouble you if it were not a matter of the utmost importance. This won't take long."

  "Very well then, what can I do for you?"

  "I have need of your expert knowledge." Ulysses delved into a jacket pocket and took out a plastic evidence bag containing one of the two puffball fungi he had taken from the dead prostitute. "Can you tell me what species of fungus this is?"

  Professor Hargreaves took the bag from Ulysses and examined it intently for a few moments, turning it over in his hands, pulling at the plastic to examine the pockmarked skin of the specimen more closely. After a few moments consideration, he handed it back to Ulysses.

  "Where did you get this?" he asked sharply.

  "Have you ever seen anything like it before?" Ulysses asked the Professor.

  "No, I have to confess that I haven't."

  "Would any of your staff be able to help?"

  "No," Professor Hargreaves answered far too quickly. "If I can't help you, they most certainly won't be able to. My knowledge of plants is unsurpassed."

  "Would you like to keep the sample for a closer examination?"

  "No, Mr Quicksilver, I would not. As I have told you already, I am particularly busy at present and do not have time to follow wild goose chases. If you won't tell me what's so special about this specimen then I'm afraid I can't help you any further. It must be some kind of aberration, a mutation, that's all I can tell you."

  "Thank you, you've been most helpful." Ulysses turned to leave but then paused, taking in the wonders of the new glasshouse around him. "I hope the opening goes well."

  Professor Hargreaves watched the dandy leave, an unflinching scowl knotting his features. Sure that the nosey intruder had gone, he left his men filling in the soil around the writhing Audrey's snaking roots and hurried off to another part of the glasshouse.

  He found Assistant Director Mandrake working, as always, in the semi-gloom of the fungus beds in the basement level of the Amaranth House. Here plants which thrived on the forest floor beneath the light-blocking canopy of the rainforest or in the dark sinkholes of the South American jungle plateaux, were tended in conditions that mimicked their natural environments. It was hot and dark down here, the atmosphere heavy with the smell of leaf-mould and wet loam.

  "Mandrake, a word."

  "What is it, Director?" the younger man asked, putting down his trowel. He too was in shirtsleeves as he worked in the stuffy heat, his black hair plastered to his head with sweat.

  "We've had a visit from one Ulysses Quicksilver, an Imperial agent."

  "Why would one such as he be interested in our work here?" the other asked innocently.

  "He isn't. He wanted my opinion on something. He showed me a specimen - a fungus. I don't know where he got it from but it looked very familiar. Greeny-grey with an epidermis like dead flesh."

  Mandrake said nothing, but simply l
ooked at Hargreaves with something akin to mild curiosity.

  "You know what I'm talking about."

  "Do I, Director?"

  "You damn well know you do. It looked very like the specimens I've seen you working with recently down here." Hargreaves scanned the dark, dank space. "Where are they? What have you done with them? Where have you moved them to?"

  Mandrake fixed him with piercing pearlescent green eyes. They seemed almost luminescent in the gloom beneath the glasshouse. His skin was pallid and white from a lifetime working away in the darkness where the necrotising plants grew.

  "You're right, of course, Director. It's time you knew everything."

  "What is it you've been busying yourself with down here while the rest of us have been striving to get everything ready for Friday's official opening?"

  "Let me show you," Mandrake said, moving towards an iron door at the other end of the sub-basement. "This way."

  Professor Hargreaves joined his assistant at the iron door. The smell of damp and mould was even stronger here. Mandrake forcibly pushed the handle down and opened the door. "Please, after you."

  Professor Hargreaves stepped through into humid darkness.

  "Where's the light switch?" he asked.

  In place of an answer, the door slammed shut behind him and he heard the grate of bolts being thrown on the other side.

  "Mandrake? What the hell are you playing at?"

  Hargreaves froze as something wet and spongy to the touch grabbed hold of his hand in the darkness. Then the screaming began.

  Without any warning, without any wailing of sirens, the fire brigade arrived within the warren of slum tenements and decaying wharfs of Southwark. A gleaming brass and red-painted fire engine rumbled to a halt outside the Dog and Duck and its crew silently went about their business, extending the ladder atop the vehicle and unrolling hoses with practised efficiency.

  One of the helpful individuals from the crowd who had aided Ulysses Quicksilver earlier that day approached a fireman kitted out in full protective gear - fire-retardant coat, re-breather helmet and protective boots. The fireman went about his business, ignoring him.

  "Where's the fire?"

  The hulking fireman remained silent and quietly carried on unrolling the hose in his hands, giving nothing away.

  IV

  Scorched Earth

  On the morning of the eighteenth of September, Ulysses Quicksilver returned to the scene of the prostitute Nancy's demise, but things were not as he had left them the day before. He had returned in hope of finding more clues to help him resolve both the mystery of her death and of the curious fungus, but something else entirely that he had not anticipated was waiting to greet him.

  The area had been ravaged by fire the night before. The Dog and Duck was nothing but a blackened shell, the streets around it sooty and blackened by flames that had been hot enough to melt the surface of the road and crack the bricks of buildings. Southwark was thick with a bitter charcoal smell. Wisps of grey smoke still rose from the burnt-out tenements. The fire had been intense but short-lived.

  The area had been cordoned off in the wake of the fire, just as it had been following the prostitute's gruesome death. The eager young bobby, who had accompanied Sergeant Sheldon the first time Ulysses had passed this way, was protecting the ruins from looters and heedless passers-by. It seemed that Sheldon was not prepared to entrust this task to the automaton-Peelers that had been drafted in from Scotland Yard.

  "Good morning, constable," Ulysses said, beaming despite the obvious devastation around him. "What's been going on since I was last here?"

  "Good morning, Mr Quicksilver, sir. It happened last night, when everyone was in the Dog and Duck."

  "Everyone?"

  "All the regulars, I mean."

  "Everyone who might have come into contact with Fungoid Nancy, you mean."

  "Well... I hadn't thought of it quite like that myself, sir. But now you come to mention it."

  "A bad fire was it?"

  "I think the fire service described it as 'intense'. They were here in no time and got it under control as quickly as they could."

  "Good to hear you can rely on London's noble fire brigade, eh?"

  "Yes quite, sir."

  "What of the prostitute's body? Was it moved before the fire broke out?"

  "It's funny you mention that, sir. The fire swept through the area not long after you were last here, Mr Quicksilver. There hadn't been time for the arrangements to move the body to be completed."

  "Is that so?"

  "Yes, sir," the constable went on, the word 'confidentiality' apparently missing from his copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. "Strange case, wasn't it?"

  "Indeed," Ulysses agreed, "and getting stranger all the time." Ulysses cast his gaze around the wasted ruin of the street, as if somehow a more intricate inspection would give him some further insight into solving this mystery.

  "And who'd have thought it? Two in one week, like that."

  Ulysses' gaze fixed on the affably smiling policeman.

  "I beg your pardon, constable. Two?"

  "Yes, sir. The first one was pulled from the Thames down by Southwark Bridge last Sunday. A man it was, well, what was left of him."

  "I don't believe it," Ulysses muttered to himself. "Allardyce must have known about it. Two cases in a week and he didn't think to share that little nugget of information."

  "I'm sorry, sir. Would you be meaning Inspector Allardyce?"

  "Know him do you?"

  "Well, of course, sir, but -"

  "What can you tell me about him?"

  "Inspector Allardyce, sir?"

  "The first body. You said it was a man."

  "Oh, yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well, seeing as how it's you, Mr Quicksilver, I can do better than that. I can let you see the body if you like. It's still in cold storage down at the station. I'm guessing no one informed your bosses to come pick it up."

  "Then take me there forthwith, constable!" Ulysses exclaimed, the grin back on his face, excitement sparkling in his eyes. "It would appear that the game is afoot once more."

  "Do you have any idea who it could be?" Ulysses asked, staring down at what had once been a man of medium build and medium height with shoulder-length black hair, dressed in an unremarkable black suit.

  "No, sir. No one's been in to identify the unfortunate gentleman."

  As far as Ulysses could see, physical identification would be a near impossible task. It seemed that every square inch of skin was covered with the same grey-green puffball growths that had ravaged Nancy the prostitute.

  "And no autopsy has been carried out either?"

  Ulysses' breath clouded in the chill air of the morgue. The atmosphere was thick with the clinical smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant that Ulysses equated with death. Wisps of misty vapour spun in the vortices of air currents created by the cautious movements of the constable, Sergeant Sheldon and the dandy.

  Sergeant Sheldon had left Ulysses to open the body bag himself, which he had done with incredible care and only after donning medical gloves and mask. However, none of the puffballs spored on opening. In fact they appeared to have already spored and were now entirely shrivelled, looking even more like dead flesh, as if they were dying back, their rapid development having consumed every nutrient provided by the host body, like a malignant, rampaging cancer.

  "Far as I'm aware, he's not even been reported missing," Sergeant Sheldon said, "so I doubt anyone's looking for him anyway."

  "Most interesting," Ulysses said, using a pair of tweezers to pull open one side of the dead man's river-ruined jacket. "And no one thought to check the dead man's body for any personal effects that might reveal his identity?"

  "His pockets were checked. He had nothing on him."

  "Then what do you call this?" Ulysses challenged, extracting a sodden, folded piece of paper.

  "Well I'll be damned!" Constable Harris swore.

  "I thought you said you checked the pockets!"
Sheldon snarled.

  "Exactly how incompetent is Her Majesty's Metropolitan Police trying to be? Is there some incompetence award you're going for?" Ulysses flashed the constable a look of contempt that made him physically recoil. "Most Appallingly Slack Police Procedural Practice in a Borough Station?"

  "I... I don't know how that was missed, Mr Quicksilver," Sheldon apologised, a look of thunder on his face.

  "Because nobody dared look that closely, fearing that whatever did for this poor wretch might be the end of them. That's how! Let's take a closer look, shall we?" Ulysses said, his anger abating and his natural curiosity coming to the fore again.

  With the aid of the tweezers he managed to separate the sodden sides of the folded vellum. Despite the efforts of the Thames, the ink of the handwritten missive was still just legible.

  "What does it say?" Sergeant Sheldon asked.

  "Well, the gist of it is this," Ulysses replied. "The addressee is one Garic Mandrake, and it is signed by - if I am not mistaken - the eminent botanist and out-spoken critic of Magna Britannia, Auberon Chase, condemning the former's immoral work. He doesn't go into details, unfortunately, but he does state that he wants no part in Mandrake's brand of, and I quote, 'botanical terrorism.'"

  "Bloody hell," was all the ashen-faced constable could manage, reeling at the revelation that, like as not, the forgotten corpse in the cold store was mixed up in some plot against the stability of the Empire. In the wake of the Wormwood Affair, everyone took talk of terrorism very seriously, from members of the public to those in authority over them.

  "It seems likely to me that for the dead man to be carrying such a letter about his person, until it may be proved otherwise, we should take this corpse to be that of Garic Mandrake. Would you not agree?" Without giving Sheldon or the constable the chance to reply, Ulysses went on, into his rhetorical stride now. "And, by extension, one could safely surmise that perhaps Auberon Chase had something to do with his death, or at least knows more about it than we currently do."