The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection Page 5

  Ulysses took a deep breath, gazing to the horizon, the sky purpling with pre-dawn light. "I suppose the original Mandrake managed to fight off the effects at first, at least long enough to get away. He must have fled and then fallen into the river as he tried to escape, but the spores overcame him in the end. And it was exposure to those same spores that eventually did for Old Samson and Nancy the street-walker."

  "While the mimic-Mandrake continued his work under the Amaranth House. But why?"

  "In preparation." It was Nimrod who spoke. "Today is the nineteenth."

  "The day of the official opening," Ulysses expanded, bringing Petunia up to speed, "of the Amaranth House. The great and the good will be here in a matter of hours - politicians, industrialists, foreign ambassadors -"

  "And Mandrake's fungi would have been ready to greet them... Become them."

  "Indeed."

  "But where did they come from?" Petunia asked. "I've never seen their like before."

  "I rather suspect they were grown, genetically-modified in a lab somewhere." Ulysses gave Nimrod a look heavy with meaning. "Could this be connected to Professor Galapagos' work? Could someone be selling his secrets on?"

  "It doesn't bear thinking about," Nimrod said darkly.

  "So what happens now?" Petunia asked, all emotion drained from her by her recent experiences.

  "Now? We wait for my old friend Inspector Allardyce, unfortunately. The Met can take it over from here."

  The three survivors fell into stupefied silence again. From their roosts in the arboretum the birds began to greet the coming dawn with their massed singing. Faintly at first, distance muffling the sound, so that it was almost melodic, another voice joined the dawn chorus: a claxon wail. As it came closer, the siren became more strident.

  Ulysses looked at Nimrod, bemusement written large across his features. "Who called the fire brigade?"

  "So, doctor, explain to me again how the hybrid takes on the form of its victim," the visitor asked as they walked the length of the dungeon sub-level. Illumination was kept low in this place, but there was enough light for the visitor to gain at least a passing impression of the things kept behind steel bars and reinforced glass.

  Something amphibian croaked, huddled in a gloomy corner of its damp cell. In another a droid - constructed after the neo-industrialist fashion - stood motionless, only the faintly pulsing glow of its eye-lamps indicating that there was any artificial life remaining within its metal body. In the next, a red-haired simian, as tall as a man, snorted and howled, gnawing at its own wrist and the manacle attached to it.

  "Well, sir, it would appear that once fully mature the hybrid possesses a basic sentience. However, once introduced to its subject it assimilates characteristics of that subject, in terms of intellect and purpose as well as physical make-up, somehow assimilating and replicating all of this from the target's DNA."

  "Fascinating," the visitor pronounced in his rich baritone.

  "In order to subdue a subject, and make it susceptible to replication, the fungus produces modified spores. The spores themselves are highly toxic, as well as having potent narcotic qualities. Exposure to them ultimately results in death, a symbiotic sub-species of necrotising fungus breaking down the host body. I suppose the original reason for this development was to provide the hybrids with nutrient-rich compost. But, even away from its hybrid parent, this symbiotic fungus continues to reproduce itself by sporing."

  "As we saw for ourselves in Southwark."

  "Yes, sir," the lab-coated scientist confirmed.

  They passed another cell, and the small terrier contained within growled at their passing.

  "The dog's still alive, I see," the visitor commented.

  "We're continuing to monitor it, sir, and considering a more thorough examination by means of a live dissection."

  "Excellent. And here they are."

  The two men stopped in front of the last cell, the visitor peering into the gloom. Inside the maximum-security containment unit was nothing more innocuous than a stack of planting trays, small white bulbs poking through the thick mushroom compost.

  "Do you have a name for them yet?"

  "Well, sir, they've been classified as a plant-human hybrid. As well as the human-animal element and the obvious fungal components, we have identified another half dozen plant species used in their bio-engineering."

  "Yes, doctor, but do they have a name? Something like this needs a catchy name, don't you think?"

  "Well, the team and I have been referring to them as mandrakes, sir."

  "I like it. Mandrakes," the visitor mused, the moniker lingering on his tongue. "Yes, why not? And it's amazing isn't it," he went on, pointing at something else, almost missed at first, rooted in the muck and slime at the back of the cell. "That one looks just like him."

  The partially altered thing stared back at them, silent and motionless, pearlescent eyes glowing green in the semi-dark.

  THE END

  VANISHING POINT

  ~ October 1997 ~

  Hardewick Hall was definitely haunted, of that there could be no doubt. Madam Garside had declared it was so within only a matter of minutes of entering the crumbling Gothic pile, her nose wrinkling as she was confronted by an atmosphere heavy with beeswax polish and camphor. A séance had to be held, she had informed Emilia, to discover why the spirits were restless. That way they could then discover which ghosts it was that were troubling her and lay those spirits to rest, although Emilia was sure she knew who it was who was trapped within the house, unable to escape to eternal rest in paradise. And of course Madame Garside decreed that the séance had to take place on the night of All Hallows' Eve, which was auspicious for such an undertaking, when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest and spirits might more freely cross from the other side, into the land of the living.

  So it was that on the evening of the 31st October 1997, as dusk was drawing on under a sky bruised purple-black with the promise of a coming storm, a group of disparate individuals gathered at the brooding manse in Warwickshire, at the personal invitation of Emilia Oddfellow, daughter of the late Alexander Oddfellow, scientist, inventor and eccentric.

  Seven of them were to take part in the séance itself, with Madam Garside taking the lead, but of course such honoured guests could not be expected to attend without bringing their own staff too.

  Emilia Oddfellow paused before the doors to the Library where Caruthers had gathered her guests to await the arrival of the lady of the house.

  Lady of the house, she thought. That was a term that would still take some getting used to. Her father had been gone these last three months, but still she couldn't quite believe it, perhaps because of the manner of his passing.

  She paused to adjust the cameo brooch that had once been her mother's, pinned at the collar of her high-buttoned mourning dress. Her hands were shaking: she blushed in embarrassment at herself. Then, taking a few controlled breaths to compose herself, she pushed open the doors and stepped into the Library to greet her guests.

  All eyes turned to look at her. She in turn scanned the faces around the room, her heart quickening in excited anticipation as she searched for one face in particular.

  Four men awaited her, their own servants in attendance with them. To her left, sitting in a large, leather-upholstered armchair - which needed to be large to contain his corpulent bulk - was her honoured guest, Herr Sigmund Faustus. He was dressed in the manner of a country gent, wearing a tweed three piece suit. Standing stiffly beside his chair was his personal aide. He was staring at her expectantly, making no effort to hide the fact, his right eye bulging from behind the lens of a monocle, while his left eye was scrunched almost entirely shut.

  Emilia moved on in her observations.

  Trying to look casual, leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece above the fire smouldering in the grate, was a handsome, athletically lean man, his dark hair slicked back with lacquer, nonchalantly balancing a cigarette holder between thumb and the first fing
er of his left hand. On seeing Emilia, a brief smile rested for a moment upon his otherwise dourly aloof countenance. Emilia felt her spirits lift, but his delightfully welcome face wasn't the one she had been hoping for in particular.

  The two remaining gentlemen were standing either side of a partially-unfolded card table between the library's two velvet-draped windows that looked out onto the croquet lawn. On becoming aware of her entering the room, the two of them stopped fiddling with the curious device standing on the table and looked up. Mr Smythe, the taller of the two, had a pinched and pale face, and wore round wire-framed spectacles. His companion, Mr Wentworth, was an unattractive specimen, stooped as if his spine was malformed with a feeble growth of spiky whiskers on his upper lip, the pathetic moustache only serving to make him look like some kind of rodent.

  Both had attempted to dress smartly for the occasion, although Emilia rather suspected that their stained and moth-eaten suits were what amounted to their Sunday best.

  She quickly scanned the room, hoping against hope that she had missed something the first time. Then her heart dropped; he had not come.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," she said, doing her best to hide her obvious disappointment. "Have you all been introduced?"

  "Herr Dashwood, kindly - how do you say? - did the honourables," the corpulent foreign gentleman replied. His voice was higher than might have been expected, with a fluting tone, curiously at odds with his guttural native accent.

  "Thank you, Daniel," she said, addressing the young man at the fireplace, who dismissed the need to be thanked with a wave of his cigarette holder, and then turned back to the German. "Herr Faustus," she said, clasping her hands together in front of her, to prevent herself from nervously fidgeting while she spoke. "Thank you so much for coming such a long way to be here."

  "Not at all, my dear," Faustus replied, tapping the arm of his chair with a finger, as if to emphasise the point he was making.

  "You were always so generous in your support of my father's work. He spoke very well of you."

  "The late lamented Prince Consort was not the only German philanthropist with a desire to help the people of the British Empire, my dear." He spoke to her as if he were an affectionate, although not altogether heterosexual, uncle. "And besides I had a - how do you say? - a vested interest in his work. It shames me greatly that the very project I was funding might have brought about his untimely end."

  Emilia's throat went taught - to hear it put so bluntly like that, even after three months - and she swallowed hard.

  "If there is anything I can do - anything at all - you only need to ask," Faustus added.

  "You are too kind," Emilia replied, blinking away the moisture collecting at the corners of her eyes. "You have done more than enough, already."

  She turned to the curious-looking pair at the card table, and their equally curious device.

  "And thanks to you both, Mr Smythe. Mr Wentworth." She looked at the machine, all polished teak, glass dials and gnarled brass knobs. It looked not unlike the bastard offspring of a wireless radio set and an ornate clock. "You really think this machine will help?"

  "We certainly hope so, Miss Oddfellow," Smythe replied, an excited, slightly manic smile suddenly seizing control of his pinched features. "We still need to carry out a final calibration of the device," he said, a hand straying back to the dials with which he had been fiddling when Emilia entered the room, "but we are highly confident of success."

  "Confident of success," the weaselly Wentworth parroted.

  The library's wall-lights suddenly flickered and dimmed. All eyes were drawn anxiously to the humming lamps and Emilia's heart missed a beat. A moment later, full power was restored.

  "I... I'm very pleased to hear it," Emilia said, feeling that someone needed to say something to dispel the growing sense of unease, but her words didn't seem to make any difference. "I am told that Madam Garside has almost finished her preparations and that we shall soon be able to begin. Please help yourselves to another drink in the meantime."

  Her duties as a hostess dispensed with for the moment, Emilia moved swiftly across the room to the dashing Dashwood at the fireplace.

  "Daniel, how delightful to see you," she said, clasping the young man's hands in her own. "I am so glad you're here."

  "I wouldn't have missed this for the world," he beamed back at her, giving her a wink. He paused, looking around the room. "Any sign of you-know-who?"

  "No, not yet," Emilia said, her carefully composed mask of togetherness wilting for a second, threatening to reveal her true feelings.

  "Come on, chin up. I hate to say it, cuz, I really do, but... Well, I told you so."

  "Yes. Yes, you did, dear Daniel, and I should have listened to you. He's obviously not coming."

  "He could have at least replied to your invitation."

  "I'm sure he's been very busy. I think I read that he'd been involved in that Carcharodon debacle."

  "That was months ago," her cousin chided, good-naturedly. "Stop making excuses for him, Em. He was always letting you down before, and now he's gone and let you down again."

  Someone coughed politely behind her.

  "Um, excuse me, Miss Oddfellow, but if your guests are all assembled, Madam Garside is ready for you now."

  Emilia turned to see the medium's assistant, Renfield, standing behind her. She hadn't heard him approach.

  "What? Oh yes, of course," she sighed, feeling her shoulders sag as disappointment deflated her. "We're ready. Caruthers will just have to join in to make up numbers," she said pragmatically, lowering her voice so that only Dashwood heard what she had to say.

  She moved to cross the hall to the study where the séance was to take place. "This way, please."

  Emilia paused in the hallway - her guests filing past her, led by the moon-faced Renfield into the mahogany-panelled study - and looked longingly in the direction of the front door.

  And then she heard it; the faint purr of an engine and the grinding crunch of tyres on the gravel drive at the front of the house.

  A moment later the sound of the engine died. A door slammed and leather soles were heard trotting up on the steps to the front door. The strident jangling of the doorbell made everyone pause and look round then, and sent Emilia chasing along the corridor, reaching the door before the hobbling Caruthers could get anywhere near it.

  She flung it open.

  "Not too late, am I?" Ulysses Quicksilver asked, flashing Emilia a rakish grin.

  "Oh, Ulysses, I thought you weren't coming!" Emilia chided, grabbing him and pulling him close to plant a kiss on his cheek.

  "You wouldn't believe the traffic coming out of London tonight," he said, pulling away from her. Behind him, his manservant, Nimrod, was extricating his master's luggage from the boot of a Mark IV Rolls Royce Silver Phantom.

  Clasping her hands in his Ulysses looked deeply into Emilia's eyes, his expression suddenly serious. "I was so sorry to hear of your loss," he said. "His passing is a great loss to us all."

  "Thank you," she said, returning his intense stare.

  "How are you?"

  "All the better for seeing you," Emilia said, and pulled him close again. There was a moment's silence between the two of them, which said more than words ever could, and then they parted, as if suddenly remembering that they had company.

  "Ah, Dashwood," Ulysses said, catching sight of the darkly dressed individual at the other end of the hall. "How long's it been?"

  "Not long enough," the other replied, that same aloof glower on his face.

  "Well, I'd like to be able to say that it's good to see you again, but..."

  "The feeling's mutual," Dashwood said, a false smile contorting his facial muscles for a moment.

  "Not now, Daniel," Emilia said with forceful calm.

  "But he can't just walk back into your life like this and carry on as if nothing happened."

  "Daniel, please."

  "Your concern for your cousin is very sweet, Dashwood, but I'm
sure Miss Oddfellow can stick up for herself. At least she could when she and I were better acquainted," Ulysses said, flashing her that rakish grin. "Black suits you, by the way."

  "Now come along, Ulysses, everyone's waiting. This way."

  With everyone seated at the circular table that had been set up in the late Alexander Oddfellow's study expressly for the purpose, the séance began.

  "Spirits, can you hear me?" Madam Garside called, her eyes tight shut, her head held high. "I beseech you, dark watchers from beyond the veil, hear my plea, and answer."

  Ulysses Quicksilver opened one eye and took in the faces of his fellow attendees. Madam Garside sat at the head of the table, a glass and walnut bookcase behind her, her palms flat on the table cloth in front of her. Her bony fingers were adorned with ostentatious rings but Ulysses seriously doubted that any of them were of any real value, the precious stones set within were no more than cunningly cut-glass copies. Her dress was as vulgar as her jewellery, and about her shoulders was draped a shawl, embroidered with silver stars and crescent moons. But the piece which set it all off for Ulysses was the turban she had seen fit to place on top of her head. The green silk from which it had been wound was fastened together with an apparently gold and lapis lazuli scarab beetle brooch, like those cheap knock-offs sold in their thousands to tourists visiting the Nile kingdom every year. She was certainly keeping her options open with such an array of cosmological symbols.

  In the ruddy light of the shuttered Bedouin lamp she had placed on the table in front of her, her overly made-up face took on an appropriately hellish quality.

  "Spirits, heed the call of one who knows you, answer the petition of Madam Garside."

  Ulysses couldn't stop himself from smirking at hearing that, and snorted as he tried to suppress a laugh. He then had to loudly clear his throat to try to cover up his inappropriate reaction.

  One eye suddenly flicked open and fixed on Ulysses. "Spirits!" she said again, her entreaty louder this time, as she tried to bring the séance back under control.