The Chemickal Marriage

them!’ shouted Svenson. ‘How else can we continue?
Hurry!
’
    He stabbed a finger at the exit – a curtain, he saw – and the acolytes retreated, bowing and bobbing … all except the adjutant, who remained, still ready to throw the switch. Svenson approached, looking stern.
    ‘Why do you delay?’
    The adjutant swallowed, fighting some inner command. ‘I … I have surrendered my will, in order to be free … my desires have been redeemed …’ His mouth groped for words. ‘The – the –’
    ‘Where is Colonel Bronque?’ Svenson asked gently.
    The adjutant shook his head.
    ‘Where is Mrs Kraft?’
    ‘Consumed. Consumed.
Every last soul shall be
–’
    Pfaff’s brass-bound fist shot into the adjutant’s jaw. Svenson leapt for the handle as the man toppled, luckily, backwards.
    ‘Good Lord! If he had fallen the other way –’
    ‘Is he dead?’ asked Pfaff, looking down at Mahmoud.
    ‘He is not. Untie him, wake him – we must know what happened.’ Svenson prised the mask from Mahmoud’s face, wincing at the clinging layer of gelatin, smeared to conduct the electrical charge. Instead of helping, Pfaff crossed to the curtain.
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘Why did they listen to you?’
    ‘Because obviously Vandaariff left instructions –’
    ‘And you made a bargain,’ Pfaff sneered.
    Svenson pulled at the restraints. ‘Everyone has made bargains. While Vandaariff holds Miss Temple or Chang, he is convinced he can command my aid – and so names me Warden to put me near him, where I can defend him against Schoepfil … or you.’
    ‘That’s what I thought.’ Pfaff ducked through the curtain and was gone.
    No doubt because of his size, more of the blue glass balls had been employed against Mahmoud to bring him down, and Svenson could not rouse him. The large man was too much to carry. Svenson could only leave him where he was.
    Outside the curtain waited a second, wider moat, churning and black. On the opposite side rose another flight of iron steps. The wall behind the staircase bore a line of square embrasures, one of which had its metal grille bent aside. Pulses of water – translucent and clean – slopped over the embrasure’s lip and into the pool.
    Svenson carefully negotiated another set of hidden stones. No wet prints from Pfaff climbed the steps – had
he
bent aside the grille? Svenson was tempted to follow, but reasoned that the sooner he reached Vandaariff the better. The stairs rose to an open trapdoor. He climbed through and gazed about in wonder. If Schoepfil’s makeshift arrangement in the railway carriage had been a pencil sketch of Vandaariff’s prowess, here was a full work executed in oil: more machines with more wires, more hoses, and two large medical tables in the centre. Around the tables, instead of paltry footbaths, hulked five massive coffin-shaped tubs, with space for a sixth. Each tub perched atop a brass-legged dais, like giant, gleaming scarabs. At the beetle’s mouth lurked an ugly crucible chamber, each primed with a bolt of blue glass.
    The walls were painted in the style of Oskar Veilandt, though Svenson felt the execution differed … another artist, or the same artist with an older and unsteady set of hands? Much of it echoed the massive painting from Vienna … but as much again had been changed, reimagined. Had Vandaariff’s practical knowledge deepened? Or had his desires changed? Or had a scrap of the old financier’s practical mind remained to assert itself?
    Doctor Svenson cupped his hands around his mouth and called: ‘Robert Vandaariff! Oskar Veilandt! I am here!’
    ‘So you are, my Warden.
Welcome
.’
    Framed in a small archway, Robert Vandaariff stood wearing a white robe, with a half-mask of white feathers over his haggard face. One blackened hand lay on a squat rostrum that sprouted a mix of knobs and handles. A second archway was at Vandaariff’s back, through which Svenson glimpsed a fountain swirling orange and blue. From the reflections Svenson perceived that Vandaariff was sealed away by protective walls of glass. Vandaariff turned a knob on the rostrum and a door closed, blocking off the fountain room.
    Svenson wondered if he could use one of the smaller machines to smashthe glass. ‘I am not yours. If you do not surrender I will do my best to sabotage every piece of equipment you have.’
    Vandaariff shook his head. ‘But, Doctor, surrender is exactly what I intend!’
    ‘Then enough of this nonsense. Too many