The Chemickal Marriage

sheer drop of at least thirty feet. Several acolytes lay on the floor, and who knew how many more had taken that plunge. Foison, armed with only a silver knife, had retreated behind Chang’s table with Professor Trooste.
    Mahmoud reached into the sticky red fluid to raise up his mother.
    ‘Do not!’ cried Trooste. ‘You will kill her! The essential liquor is all that keeps them alive!’
    Mahmoud hesitated, not trusting Trooste, yet not daring to risk her life. Vandaariff rapped his cane against the glass.
    ‘
Enough!
If you care for that woman, you will listen to me!’ He gave Svenson a haughty snort and when he spoke it was as much for the Doctor as for Mahmoud. ‘Six chambers, for the first six compounds, each reduced in turn. The seventh will infuse the final coupling. The vessel itself constitutes the eighth –
tempered
metal, the rebirth. The ordure of death will be shed like a serpent’s skin, peeled like a malignant husk,
passed on
.’
    ‘What in the name of all hell –’ began Mahmoud. Vandaariff rapped on the glass.
    ‘
I
hold that woman’s life in my grasp. The dawn has come!’
    Vandaariff waved like a tragedian at the honeycombed ceiling. Each round tube glowed brightly, the shafts of light landing, Svenson saw, directly on the rostrum. Vandaariff ran dark fingers along six identical brass knobs. ‘What do you say, Professor Trooste? Iron, to start?’
    ‘Yes, my lord.’
    ‘Matthew Harcourt,’ Vandaariff intoned, ‘I initiate your sacred journey …
now
.’
    ‘No!’ shouted Doctor Svenson, but the acolytes held him back. Vandaariff slipped the brass cap off one knob to expose a lozenge of blue glass. The light from the ceiling fell upon it and the glass began to glow. A moment later, the wires leading to Harcourt’s tub coughed sparks into the air. Mahmoud raised a hand to shield his eyes …
    Nothing else happened. No surge of energy came through the machines. Vandaariff was speechless. He slipped the brass cover on and off. More sparks, then nothing. Mahmoud roared and went for Trooste with both hands.
    ‘
Stop
.’
    Foison knelt over Gorine’s tub, the silver knife at the floating man’s neck.
    ‘Down on your knees or he’s dead.’
    Slowly, Mahmoud did just that. Svenson saw the heaviness in the large man’s limbs, that his body still fought the effects of the blue smoke.
    ‘What in heaven, Professor Trooste!’ shouted Vandaariff. ‘What has gone wrong? Examine every coupling, every cable! This cannot be allowed! Send men below! The time, sir,
the time
!’ Vandaariff turned from the window, mopping his mouth with a sleeve.
    ‘Already your plan fails,’ said Svenson.
    ‘Momentary malfunction is not failure,’ barked Vandaariff. ‘Why was that black fellow not
redeemed
?’
    ‘Because I saved him,’ said Svenson.
    ‘
Saved?
You have doomed him altogether.’
    Mahmoud looked at the glass wall with a baleful hatred. Svenson spread his fingers on the glass, anything to urge patience.
    ‘Why preserve
me
?’ Svenson asked. ‘Why any warden at all? You offer me Elöise – but merely her shadow, a sliver of her mind –’
    ‘A taste of heaven is still heaven, Doctor.’
    ‘But
why
?’
    ‘Because I will be forced to trust you.’
    ‘And if I refuse?’
    ‘Then everything dies. And every person with it. The chaos in the city goes unchecked and my work will be scattered like African diamonds, treasure waiting for the worst of men to use for the worst of purposes.’
    ‘What is that to me?’
    ‘Because I see who you are. What is your answer? For Elöise?’
    ‘No. Never. No.’
    Vandaariff gurgled with pleasure. ‘O Doctor. Such a terrible man with a lie.
Excellent
.’
    By the time Svenson returned to the machines, Mahmoud’s arms had been bound behind his back, copper bands digging into his dark skin. Trooste kept well away, moving from tub to tub, adding pinches of different powders. Foison guarded Mahmoud, favouring one leg, knife held listlessly.
    Svenson rubbed his neck where the helmet’s seal had pinched the skin. He nodded to the second, unoccupied medical table, and called to Vandaariff behind the glass: ‘Is that for Miss Temple or the Contessa? Or does it matter?’
    ‘Such cynicism – everything
matters
.’
    ‘We should find Pfaff,’ Foison called. ‘We should locate Drusus Schoepfil.’
    ‘You should let me examine your leg,’ said Svenson.
    ‘Thank you, no.’
    ‘Doctor Svenson has been tempted to save the innocent,’ called