Black Swan (Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow) Read online

  “It’s clear to me now that whenever the ape suffers any sort of technological malfunction, some pre-programmed behaviour has it break off from the fight and – I’m hypothesising here, of course – return to base so that it can be repaired. You know the type of thing, I’m sure. Lovelace behaviour-algorithm: If injured, return to Base. Execute.”

  “So basically, you think it’s running away?”

  “Yes. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “And I take it your definition of ‘safe’ might be somewhat different to everybody else’s?”

  Ulysses didn’t even deign to answer that last quip.

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR AUGUSTE Dupin was just climbing out of the police-cab outside the cathedral of Notre Dame when the rose window exploded outwards in a starburst of whickering crystal shards as something burst through it.

  It was something appalling; something that should not have existed. It was big and black and covered with thick hair, as well as myriad scars. Its muscular body was bound with all manner of electrical cables, its forearms were sheathed inside heavy iron cuffs and every joint in its body appeared to have been reinforced with thick metal screws.

  All eyes were on the devastated window and the creature now dropping towards the cobbled plaza. It only took a moment for instinct to kick in and then the gendarmes hurried to get out of the way.

  The great ape landed on the bonnet of Dupin’s cab. The engine block, axle and chassis buckled under the impact of half a ton of cybernetic gorilla, the back end bouncing into the air.

  The axle snapped and one wheel was sent flying off into the stunned crowd. The other wheel folded in half, the tyre bursting with a loud pop.

  Dupin fell to the floor as he tried to launch himself out of the way. Ignoring the pain of grazed knees and elbows, his attention was fully on the ape. At a blink he took in every minute detail of the beast.

  He saw the blazing red-hot glare in its beady black eyes. He saw the sparking electrodes in its misshapen head. He saw the terribly muscled arms bound with cables and the wires plugged into its massive torso. He saw the forbidding yellow tusks cramming its mouth, and the hands capable of snapping a man’s neck as if it were no more than a twig. The beast was truly terrifying.

  For a moment the primate’s furious glare fell on the Detective Inspector and he felt a knot of primal fear constrict his stomach.

  And then the great ape took off again, the windshield of the cab shattering as the cyborg leapt clear again and landed in the middle of the cobbled square, sending more screaming tourists scattering. Before the shocked gendarmes could train their guns on the monster it was gone, swallowed by the narrow streets and crowding tenements of the Île de la Cité.

  “Jesus Christ,” spluttered the youthful detective sergeant, “what was that?”

  “That, I suspect,” Dupin replied with a chilling calm that surprised himself, “was our killer.”

  “What?” The detective sergeant was flabbergasted.

  “That was the Rue Morgue murderer.”

  “COME ON!” ULYSSES panted, sprinting for the door. “We can’t let it get away. Do you think that velocipede of yours will still fly?”

  Ulysses burst back into daylight to be met by angry gasps of surprise, the clatter of pistols being primed and trained on him, and shouts of, “Stop, police!”

  The dandy skidded to an abrupt halt, automatically raising his hands in surrender.

  “It’s him!” one of the gendarmes at the periphery of the crowd called out. “It’s the Rue Morgue murderer!”

  “It’s the murderer,” came a cry from the crowd.

  “It’s the Rue Morgue killer.”

  “It’s him, did you see? It’s the murderer.”

  Ulysses didn’t dare move a muscle. He shot Cadence a glance and saw that she had her hands up and was staring unblinkingly at the semi-circle of armed officers before them.

  Ulysses couldn’t help wondering what the gendarmes made of the two of them, him looking like a pirate on shore leave and Cadence in her velocipede leathers.

  There was a commotion at the back of the crowd and a police-cab trundled away across the square after the ape. He didn’t fancy the gendarmes’ chances of catching up with the beast.

  As he and Cadence stood there, waiting and watching, a man in a long beige coat with smartly coiffured black hair emerged from the police line and confidently approached them.

  Everything about his manner suggested that he did not fear for his safety. So, Ulysses thought, either he was confident he could take a man wanted for murder in a fist fight, or he suspected what Ulysses already knew – that the dandy wasn’t guilty.

  “You know we’ve been looking all over the city for you?” the man said.

  “I did have an inkling,” Ulysses replied, “but you should have been looking for that ape.”

  Slowly lowering his hands, he offered one to the policeman. This had the gendarmes anxiously re-adjusting their aim on the scruffy-looking individual.

  “Ulysses Quicksilver, at your service.”

  Slowly, not once taking his eyes off the fugitive’s face, the other man took Ulysses’ hand and shook it. The man opened his mouth to speak, but before he could the dandy interrupted him.

  “Let me guess. You must be Detective Inspector Dupin.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did he know that?” spluttered a younger man standing a few paces behind the Detective Inspector.

  “Calm down, sergeant. I would think he read my name in the papers, wouldn’t you?”

  “Any relation?” Ulysses asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “To the famed Auguste Dupin, I mean.”

  “Yes, as it happens.”

  “Well, I suppose I should thank you, Inspector.”

  “For what?”

  “For not having your men shoot me on sight. I take it we have an understanding?”

  “An understanding?”

  “You understand that I wasn’t responsible for the Rue Morgue murders.”

  Behind the Detective Inspector the gendarmes began shooting each other confused glances.

  Dupin fixed Ulysses with a hard, appraising stare.

  “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not the murderer. But I can’t quite shake the feeling that you might yet be able to help us with our enquiries just the same.”

  “So what brings you to Notre Dame on a lovely day like today?”

  “That thing.”

  “The over-grown monkey,” the detective sergeant piped up.

  “I think you’ll find it’s a gorilla,” Ulysses corrected, “or at least it was.”

  “Same difference.”

  “No, not really.”

  “As soon as I heard the reports coming in from the Louvre and elsewhere about a giant gorilla on the rampage I had a feeling I had found what I’d been looking for all along. And you?”

  “Being chased by the aforementioned cyber-ape,” Ulysses said. “An unfortunate side effect of trying to solve the Rue Morgue murders for you, Inspector.”

  “And who might you be, Mademoiselle?” Dupin said, turning his attention to Cadence.

  “Cadence Bettencourt,” she said, lowering her hands, but making no move to get better acquainted with the inspector.

  “Bet-ten-court,” the detective sergeant repeated as he wrote the name down in his notebook.

  “That’s right. Niece to Gustav Lumière,” she added, “the monster’s third victim.”

  “Ah,” Dupin said, his face suddenly lighting up. “So it was you who called in about the ape.” His expression darkened once more just as quickly. “You could have given us your name.”

  “That was my fault, Inspector,” Ulysses stepped in gallantly. “Mademoiselle Bettencourt did that as a favour to me, to give me a chance to try to clear my name.”

  “You could have come straight to us as well,” Dupin pointed out, his face severe.

  “I could, but I was the most wanted man in the city at
the time. Do you really think I would have been able to progress my investigation so quickly if I had?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, there were other complications to take account of as well,” Ulysses went on.

  “And you might yet face charges. Both of you,” Dupin added.

  “For what?” Cadence cut in, indignantly.

  “Endangering innocent lives. Withholding evidence from the police. Obstructing a police investigation,” Dupin said. He turned back to Ulysses then. “You could have killed one of my men up on that roof!”

  “They could have killed me! But thankfully nobody died and now we’re all friends so let’s say no more about it, shall we?” He looked pointedly at the guns still pointing in his direction.

  Dupin turned to the gendarmes, as if only just remembering that they were still there. “Put those away. Now!”

  Reluctantly the officers did as instructed.

  “So, you believe me,” Ulysses said, the relief plain in his voice.

  “I believe you know more than you’ve told me so far,” the Inspector replied, “which actually isn’t very much. I also believe you might also be able to help with the matter of another unexplained death.”

  Ulysses raised an eyebrow at this last comment.

  “Indeed I might, but I would suggest our more pressing problem right now regards the killer gorilla that’s fleeing through the streets of Paris as we speak.”

  “You might have a point there. But what’s the connection?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Between the victims. A penniless composer and this young lady’s uncle.”

  “An acoustician,” Cadence interjected.

  “And you, Monsieur Quicksilver.”

  “And don’t forget the ordinateur auteur,” Ulysses added.

  “There’s another?”

  “Indeed, but one that’s been passed off as a suicide. A certain Pierre Courriel Pascal. But as to the connection... I don’t know. At least, not yet. But the villain of this piece–”

  “Leroux,” Cadence interrupted again.

  “Beware Leroux!” came a croaking electronic voice from within the wreckage of the velocipede. A couple of the gendarmes looked round in surprise.

  “Or so we believe,” Ulysses added. “Anyway, he clearly feared I was close to uncovering the connection otherwise he wouldn’t have risked sending his killer after me in broad daylight.

  “Whatever he has planned, it’s going to happen soon else he wouldn’t have risked exposing himself like that. But he must also believe that we won’t be able to stop him in time and thereby thwart his plan – whatever that might be.”

  “You can deduce all this but you can’t come up with a connection?” Dupin said, sounding like a disappointed school teacher.

  “Actually, I do have one idea.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I think his unstoppable scheme has something to do with the late Roussel’s latest composition, Black Swan.”

  Dupin’s face went dark. “That premiere is today, at the Paris Opera.”

  “But if we can track the ape back to wherever it’s heading, I believe we might be able to stop Leroux before he has a chance to put his plan into operation.”

  “So this Leroux could be anywhere,” the Inspector said.

  “No, not anywhere. He will be wherever that ape is going. And if not him, then his accomplice at least.”

  “You don’t think this Leroux is working alone?” Cadence asked.

  “Hang on, are we talking about Valerius Leroux here, the philanthropist and renowned butterfly collector?”

  “That’s the bastard,” Cadence growled, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “Bastard! Bastard!” came the crowing voice again.

  “But if we don’t catch up with that ape, I fear that when we run into him again – if we run into him again – by then it will all be too late. The damage will have been done.”

  “I have officers in pursuit as we speak,” Dupin said.

  “Begging your pardon, Inspector, but they haven’t got a hope of catching that brute before it goes to ground,” Ulysses said.

  “And I suppose you have?”

  “Do you think that thing will still fly?” he asked Cadence whilst eyeing the velocipede.

  The engineer joined him in his appraisal of the crumpled contraption.

  “If it’s the only chance I’ve got of paying Leroux back for the murder of my uncle, I’ll damn well make sure it does.”

  UP IN THE air, feeling the wind rushing through his hair was utterly exhilarating. Ulysses had enjoyed many an aerial flight before, but nothing quite like this one.

  “Down there!” he shouted over the roar of the wind.

  Below them, Paris was laid out like a street map, their bird’s-eye view allowing Ulysses and Cadence to see things that were denied to the police pursuing the ape on the ground.

  They saw the flashing light of the police pursuit vehicle and heard the wail of its siren as the velocipede purred through the sky above the city, its canvas wings snapping in the wind.

  The police-cab was rattling along a canyon-like street between tall, crowding tenements. It was clear from Ulysses’ vantage point that the gendarmes in pursuit were proceeding through a combination of sheer guesswork and the desperate knowledge that they couldn’t let the beast get away. The truth of the matter was that the cyber-gorilla was now bounding across the rooftops of the city again, having already left the police several streets behind.

  As Cadence swung the velocipede around after the ape, closing with it all the time, the beast suddenly disappeared from view.

  Cadence cursed. “Where did it go?”

  “Down.”

  “Down where?”

  “Down there!” the parrot-simulacrum squawked.

  With the careful application of rudder and aileron, the velocipede commenced its descent.

  Ulysses thought he caught sight of the gorilla once more as it swung itself from a balcony to an alleyway below but then it was gone again.

  Mere moment later, the velocipede was on the ground, at the end of the same cul-de-sac, its tyres finding traction once more on the cobbles.

  Ulysses’ heart was hammering like the pistons of the velocipede’s steam-engine. They couldn’t have lost it; they had been so close!

  Cadence took the velocipede to the end of the alleyway and killed the engine.

  “What do we do now?” she said with a frustrated sigh.

  “What now? What now?” echoed the bird.

  There was nothing there.

  Nothing but the heavy iron disc of a manhole cover set into a steel ring within the cobbles, not quite fully back in place, the muck and grime at its rim smeared with great fat fingerprints.

  “We keep after it, Mademoiselle Bettencourt,” Ulysses said, dismounting from the back of bike and cautiously approaching the manhole. “After all, the game is now, most definitely, afoot!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Old Ghosts

  “OPERA, I WILL admit, is not to everyone’s taste,” the man known variously as Le Papillon and Valerius Leroux said, stopping at the entrance to Dr Montague Moreau’s makeshift laboratory, “but one cannot help but wonder at the melodrama it provokes within its audience.”

  “Far as I’m concerned, going to the opera’s like getting drunk,” Moreau grunted.

  “Really?” Le Papillon sighed. “Do enlighten me, please.”

  “In that it’s a sin that carries its own punishment with it.”

  The anarchist’s house guest had his eyes locked on the monitor attached to the control console in front of him. The grainy image displayed upon it was being relayed directly via the optical feed from the nerves behind the gorilla’s eyeballs.

  “That aside, even the sublime Madame Butterfly will be as nothing compared to the melodrama my own commission will wring from the hearts of every one of this great city’s inhabitants when Black Swan opens on the stage above us in onl
y a matter of” – he glanced at his wristwatch – “less than a quarter of an hour.”

  Le Papillon thought that such a dramatic revelation deserved more than the disinterested grunt the doctor gave it, so absorbed was he with his pet’s progress through the city’s sewer systems. This vexed the butterfly collector. An artist needed an audience, or at least an appreciative comment every now and again.

  “I must admit, I will miss this place,” he said, as he looked around his lair for the last time. His gaze lingered first on his butterfly collection – so proudly, and immaculately, displayed on his study wall – and then the dramatically-altered pipe organ.

  The former had taken him years to collect, catalogue and ultimately display to best effect. If it hadn’t been for the latter he probably wouldn’t have been here now, standing on the edge of eternity, on the verge of creating his greatest artistic masterpiece yet.

  If it hadn’t been for the haunting echoes of his great-grandfather’s private organ recital, here in the bowels of the Palais Garnier, his great-grandmother might never have discovered his lair and found her Angel of Music, hiding his deformity in the subterranean depths.

  The destruction of it all was a high price to pay, but it had all been a means to the end, and only he – with his vision of eternity – could see the bigger picture, could understand how the world would be changed afterwards.

  But what did it matter if his home and all his possessions were lost in the process? Great art always demanded sacrifice, and what he had planned would be the greatest ever created, putting to shame the works of such men as Da Vinci, Monet and Rodin.

  It mattered not. He was an artist, a creator. He would start again, rebuild. After all, where was the challenge, the joy, in maintaining the status quo? Things changed, no matter how hard people struggled to deny it. Things aged, they decayed; it was impossible to halt the spread of entropy. Change was the only constant, chaos the only logical choice in an illogical world.