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  “Some sources say that, having formed the golem’s body from the soil, you must dance around it whilst speaking a combination of letters from the Hebrew alphabet and then use the secret name of God, ultimate creator of all things, to bring it to life. Others say that you write the Hebrew word for ‘truth’ upon its forehead, or that you write God’s holy name on parchment and place it in its mouth, to animate it. But only one who strives to approach God, and so gain some of God’s wisdom and power through that pursuit, could ever attempt to create one.”

  “So basically, what you’re saying is, the only person who would be capable of such a thing would be you?”

  “But I swear on the Torah scrolls that I have done nothing – nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “But have you considered that someone else might have set this Golem rampaging through Limehouse with the express intention of making others believe that you had?”

  The Rabbi looked at him aghast. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out,” Ulysses said, giving the old man what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “And to answer your question, we first need to answer this one. Who would have something to gain from starting a turf war in the Limehouse distric – Ahhh!”

  Ulysses’ sixth sense flared a split second before the first resounding crash shook the building.

  “What was that?” the Rabbi gasped.

  It felt like an omnibus had driven into the side of the synagogue.

  Ulysses tensed, ready to spring into action, the migraine pain in his head subsiding now that the danger had actually presented itself.

  A second crash set the lights and the ner tamid swinging in front of the Ark, sending showers of ancient dust cascading from the rafters. From somewhere within the synagogue there came the sound of breaking glass.

  “What is going on?” the Rabbi panicked, suddenly losing his cool. “Was this all a ploy? Were you merely a distraction?”

  There was another crash that shook the building to its foundations.

  “I promise you, I’m nothing to do with this,” Ulysses shouted over the thunderous, wrecking ball impacts.

  “Then what in God’s name is it?”

  Ulysses looked at him darkly. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jack be Nimble

  “GOD IN HEAVEN!” the Rabbi exclaimed as yet another booming crash shook the synagogue, sending more dust falling in clouds around them and crazing the plaster on the north wall.

  Ulysses leapt between the Rabbi and the shuddering wall, pushing the old man back out of what he hoped would be harm’s way. Holding the shaft of his cane in his left hand, he grasped its bloodstone tip with his right.

  “Stay back,” he said firmly, his pulse quickening, that familiar itch at the back of his skull warning him of imminent danger.

  His mind was awhirl. He didn’t truly understand what it was that was on the other side of the wall. Although he believed the synagogue’s unseen attacker was the golem, he didn’t really know what the golem was. His automatic reaction had been to draw his sword-cane, but would that actually be of any use against whatever it was that was smashing its way through the temple wall? The only other weapon he had about his person was his pistol; would even that be an effective means of defence?

  And then, with a great convulsive heave, the wall bulged inwards and came down.

  From out of the cloud of plaster and brick-dust that came rolling towards them in the wake of the wall’s collapse, something barrelled its way into the synagogue, splintered lathes and pieces of shattered rubble tumbling from its carapace. The scratching dust gusted into Ulysses’ face, forcing him to close his eyes and throw an arm up to protect himself, but he was unable to prevent himself from inhaling a great lungful. His mouth filled with the taste of chalky plaster, his throat clotting with a sticky paste of saliva and powder.

  Ulysses could hear the golem crashing towards them, sending pews flying left and right as it hurled the crushed furniture of the synagogue out of its way.

  Ulysses staggered backwards and tried to see what it was that was ploughing its way towards him, its pile-driver footfalls shaking the floor beneath his feet.

  Through the billowing clouds Ulysses saw a dreadful gaping maw, furnace heat distorting the air before it and eyes that blazed like headlamps piercing every corner of the gloomy building wherever they turned.

  And then there was the noise, a grating, bellowing roar, like the ferocious roar of an engine-firebox and the grinding of heavy iron gears.

  A fist like a wrecking ball spun out of the obscuring dust and, even as Ulysses threw himself out of its path, it connected with his body, the force of the blow whirling him round over the monster’s head, sending him flying backwards through the air, to land a good twenty feet away in a pile of rubble, broken plaster and sundered lathes.

  Ulysses lay there for a moment, his rapier blade still gripped tightly in his right hand, the scabbard of his cane still in his left, listening to the sounds of destruction sundering the stillness of this place of prayer, waiting for the pain to work its way from his back to his fingertips in the sting of pins and needles.

  Slowly he pushed himself up into a sitting position, his head still spinning, a fine white shower of plaster dust falling from him with every movement he made.

  He could see the golem more clearly now but he couldn’t see the Rabbi.

  The golem picked up a hymnal store in the massive fingers of one huge hand and hurled the bookcase across the synagogue, sending it whirling over Ulysses’ head, missing him by mere inches.

  The creature was colossal. It was at least eight feet tall, and just as broad across its armour-plated shoulders. Assuming the posture of a hunched prop forward – only one made from what looked like baked clay – it barrelled forwards with all the power of a battering ram.

  The golem passed beneath the ner tamid, the hanging lantern scraping across the broad span of its shoulders. In the unsteady flicker of the flame, Ulysses saw now that it wasn’t made of clay but that its carapace was in fact constructed from interlocking plates of ceramic. Through gaps in the behemoth’s armoured shell Ulysses saw the heavy metal endo-skeleton of an automaton chassis.

  The Limehouse Golem was a robot-drudge.

  It looked like it had originally been commissioned to enter dangerous environments, such as burning buildings – some kind of search and rescue droid. Its huge hands were no doubt designed to move heavy objects such as fallen roof beams. Its eyes were blazing halogen lights, powerful penetrating beams to aid in its search and rescue work. But although it might be making a thorough search of the synagogue for survivors, rescue clearly wasn’t what was on its mechanical mind.

  As Ulysses scrambled to his feet, the golem-droid’s head rotated upon its neck bearings, the powerful beams of its eyes blinding him as he struggled to clear his tear-obscured vision. With a grinding of internal gears it gave voice to a throaty roar and turned towards him again, stomping forwards on legs like reinforced steel foundation posts.

  In an instant Ulysses was moving, scrabbling over chunks of wall and broken brick to put as much distance between him and the automaton as possible.

  As he made his bounding run across the rubble-strewn floor, he sheathed his sword-cane; it wasn’t going to do him any good here. He had battled fungoid replicants and artificially-engineered chimerae with it, but it wouldn’t help him against this opponent. His initial doubts about the effectiveness of his gun were well-founded too now, so the pistol remained holstered in its harness under his arm.

  If the Silver Phantom had still been parked outside, he was sure he could have found something he could have used against the droid in the boot of the car. There was still a pocket Gatling gun in there, under a tarpaulin. Even the grappling-gun he had last used in his pursuit of Uriah Wormwood’s zeppelin the last time he had been in this part of town would have been better than nothing.

  But given the current situati
on and his woeful lack of an appropriate weapon, what could he do? How could he fight the Limehouse Golem – a two-ton, eight-foot tall ceramic and steel monster – mano a automatono?

  What could Ulysses do other than flee? Besides, somewhere amongst the piles of rubble and pulverised pews lay the Rabbi, and for all Ulysses knew he was still alive. The least he could do for the wretched old man was to lead the monster away from the synagogue to somewhere it couldn’t do any more harm.

  He darted and weaved as he ran through the building, scampering between rows of still standing pews, around in front of the Holy of Holies, hearing the guttural, furnace-roars of the droid bellowing behind him – almost believing that he could feel the scorching heat of its breath on his back – and the splintering of wood being destroyed as it came after him. In this way, he led the automaton back to the gaping hole in the wall through which it had entered the synagogue.

  The chill night air blowing into the fusty sanctuary caught in his lungs, giving him another adrenalin kick as he emerged into the street, trailing plaster dust, and came face to face with the crowd of passers-by who had collected around the hole in the wall.

  Ulysses stumbled to a halt, momentarily startled at encountering the curious denizens of Limehouse. In his hurry to get away from the golem-droid, he hadn’t stopped to think that there might be others around who had witnessed its attack.

  The crowd were just as surprised to see Ulysses. Several of them gasped and one woman couldn’t stop herself from screaming as he leapt through the sundered wall, dusted as white as a ghost.

  His spectral appearance did have an advantageous side-effect, however. The people parted before him, backing away from the insane and wailing apparition as Ulysses screamed at them to move – not for his own benefit, but so that they might save themselves from what he knew was coming after him.

  With a roar, the golem emerged from the synagogue, bringing down another landslide of bricks and rubble.

  Women screamed. Men swore. People ran.

  “The Rabbi’s still in there!’ Ulysses shouted as he barged his way through the crowd. “Help him!”

  And then he felt the tide of people move with him suddenly, rather than against him. Terrified screams filled his ears, reverberating from the close-packed tenements and shop-fronts as the crowd encountered the Limehouse Golem in all its awful majesty.

  People fled before the relentless charge of the lumbering droid. Some fell, but there was nothing Ulysses could do to help them. The best he could do – the only thing he could do – was to lead the golem as far away from where it might hurt anybody else, and then try to think of a way of halting its juggernaut charge.

  Part of him wondered if the golem-droid would simply give up and return to wherever it came from, allowing Ulysses to track it to its lair, its mission to destroy the synagogue – he assumed that’s what its primary objective had been – complete, just as eye-witnesses reported it had done after the fire had taken hold at the Palace Theatre.

  But for some reason, the Limehouse Golem had seemed focused on getting to Ulysses.

  He could understand it if the robot had been programmed to protect itself, except that Ulysses hadn’t done so much as lob half a brick at the shambling droid. So what had he done to earn its enmity? Was it simply because he had got up and fled from the synagogue? Had its instructions been to neutralise anyone it met within?

  But it was pointless to consider might-have-beens now. The fact of the matter was that the droid was after him, and apparently would not rest now until Ulysses had been neutralised with lethal force.

  Then the screaming crowds were gone and Ulysses was alone on the street as he ducked into a side-alley, skirting the edge of a barn-like structure, the cries of panic fading into the distance.

  The street ahead of him was thick with Smog. He must be close to the river, he thought, faltering before the roiling bank of oozing mist.

  Ulysses would have liked to think that entering the Smog would hide him from the pursuing automaton, but he doubted that very much. He was sure it would make no difference to its artificial vision systems, whereas he would find it even harder to see where he was going. But if he turned back now he would immediately put himself in harm’s way, coming face to face with his pursuer, and still without any means of defending himself.

  And then the decision was made for him as the golem turned into the alleyway after him, one hand clawing at the corner of the street, the brickwork crumbling at its touch.

  Ulysses decided that he had been lucky to survive his initial encounter with the golem. One squeeze of just one of those huge, steel-claw hands would crush a man’s skull as if it was nothing more than a pineapple. If the mechanical monster hadn’t caught him a glancing blow, he was sure that his whole ribcage would have been crushed, his lungs punctured in a dozen places. Yes, Ulysses thought, he had been lucky. But was his luck about to change?

  He ran on between the mouldering warehouses, feet splashing through rust-coloured pools of standing water, ripples appearing in the puddles ahead of him, the golem’s crashing locomotive motion sending tremors through the packed earth.

  Ulysses heard the clattering of an Overground train overhead, the sound of it muffled by the Smog. He heard the ringing of a ship’s bell out on the river and the mournful cry of a foghorn. And then he heard the lapping of water, and the hollow splash of wavelets from the wake of a boat’s passing. His own running footsteps changed in tone and timbre as packed earth gave way to wooden boards.

  Ulysses stumbled to a halt, and looked down over the edge of the jetty at the hungry black waters of the Thames. In his desperate flight through the mist he had almost run straight into the river. He had enjoyed a dip in the Thames not so long ago, and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat the experience.

  He stood there, toes at the very edge of the jetty, panting for breath.

  A slow smile spread across his face. Here might just be a way to fight the golem-droid and win. Raising himself to his full height, Ulysses turned to face the advancing droid.

  The giant automaton gave voice to another metallic howl and Ulysses saw the fog burn away before the red-heat of its gaping cavernous maw, its peg-teeth like the crenellations of a castle’s battlements, the beams of its eyes piercing the jaundiced yellow mist.

  “Come on then!” he shouted, suddenly feeling supremely calm and confident. “Come and get me!”

  As if it had been summoned to battle by his challenge, the golem-droid emerged fully from the mist, the oozing Smog parting before it as it charged towards him, its steel jaws open wide, ready to bite his head clean from his shoulders in a moment.

  It stopped abruptly, sending a few loose stones splashing into the water. And there it waited, staring blankly ahead of it, the beams of its lantern eyes remaining fixed on Ulysses, splayed metal toes crushing the bricks of the riverbank.

  “Come on!” the desperate dandy shouted again. “Come and get me! I’m right here! Come and get me, you bastard!”

  The golem’s head swung from left to right, like a dog sniffing the air, as if scanning the waterfront for something. But it remained where it was.

  Ulysses Quicksilver and the Limehouse Golem stared each other in the eye, neither one moving, until the waiting became an unbearable moment of tension. And then, just when Ulysses thought he couldn’t bear it for another second, the droid simply turned, lifting a foot as it rotated about its waist, ready to scrape its way back along the alleyway.

  With a roar like a thousand fireworks going off at once, a black blur rocketed out of the Smog behind the droid and slammed into it with incredible force. The giant robot wobbled for a moment, unbalanced and then put its foot down again, only this time behind it, stepping onto the boards of the jetty.

  Ulysses heard a series of clangs as something rained down blow after blow against its hardened carapace.

  The monster howled in protest and raised its colossal fists, ready to smash its attacker into the riverbank.

  With
another screaming rocket roar, the black blur hurtled up into the sky until only the spurting flames of its engines were visible. But in that split second, Ulysses thought he caught a glimpse of something like a man-shaped bat.

  Accompanied by an ominous creaking sound, Ulysses felt the structure of the jetty waver and drop an inch, and his attention snapped back to the reeling droid. The golem was trying to recover its footing but every movement it made, the jetty sank another inch into the mud of the riverbed.

  Hearing the rocket-scream above him, Ulysses leapt into action, away from the edge of the pier, back towards the teetering droid and the riverbank. The speeding black blur slammed into the golem-droid, hitting the hulking automaton squarely between the shoulders.

  Ulysses dodged a flailing arm, as the robot made a grab for its assailant, the muscles of his legs on fire. He felt the jetty subside beneath him, what had been a relatively flat surface suddenly dropping away, but he kept up the pace and, with one last herculean effort, flung himself bodily forwards as, with a splintering groan, the jetty gave way completely.

  Ulysses landed on his front, knocking the air from his lungs against the riverbank, and rolled onto his back in time to see the gigantic robot drop into the water.

  The golem-droid’s entry into the Thames threw up a great plume of sludgy black water, showering Ulysses’ already ruined suit with effluent from the fetid river, and splattering his face and hair with its oily residue. But at least he had been saved from another dunking in the city’s largest sewage channel.

  Ulysses slowly sat up and immediately felt the wall of the riverbank crumble beneath him. He had landed at the exact same spot as where the golem-droid had halted, its great weight and crushing toes weakening the mouldering wall. Heels kicking against the crumbling black earth of the collapsing riverbank, Ulysses scrabbled for purchase. But despite his efforts he was only rewarded with handfuls of mud and stones. And then he was sliding over the edge and there was nothing he could do to save himself.