The Chemickal Marriage

they ought to go …
    The Contessa had sent it to
her
. Just as Miss Temple had deciphered the clipping, so she ought to decipher this. The message had been sent some days ago – before Ramper had been taken – it was nothing to do with
now
. The key lay in the past. In the Comte’s past …
    Her throat seized at a rancid nugget of insight from the Comte’s memories. She spat onto the ground and shut her eyes, finally managing to swallow.
    ‘The map!’ whispered Phelps.
    The square of glass lay shattered. Miss Temple wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
    ‘We do not need it. There is a room, fitted for the Comte’s research, from when they built his machines. We would have walked right past …’
    They crouched behind crates stencilled with the Xonck crest. Twice they had heard steps nearby – more fellows in unkempt green – but avoided discovery. Ahead lay a well-lit door that echoed with activity, a guardhouse. Miss Temple pointed to a smaller door half the distance on.
    ‘But it has no guard,’ whispered Phelps. ‘It seems a disused storeroom.’
    She darted out, forcing them to follow. The final yards had her heart in her throat, waiting for the thin-voiced man to appear … but then her hand was on the cool brass handle. They slipped inside.
    Phelps carefully shut the door and turned the lock, one hand tight across his mouth and nose. Miss Temple crept forward, face pinched against the pungent reek of indigo clay.
    Mr Ramper lay on a table, naked and white as chalk. Across his body were craters – each as large and deep as an apple – where both flesh and bone had been scooped away: abdomen, right thigh, left wrist (the hand severed), near the heart, left shoulder, right ear – each cavity offering its own appalling anatomical cross-section.
    ‘The glass bullets,’ whispered Svenson. ‘All transformed flesh has been removed … and, good heavens, preserved.’
    She followed his gaze to a row of meticulously labelled jars, each dark with thick liquid in which floated a fist-sized, jagged blue mass. Svenson delicately peeled back one of Ramper’s eyelids. The pupil had rolled into his skull, leaving a dead white egg whose veins were shot with blue. Svenson put two fingers to the carotid and stepped away.
    ‘I do not think he died at once.’
    ‘Interrogated?’ asked Phelps.
    Svenson indicated two of Ramper’s open wounds and against her wishes Miss Temple leant forward to look. ‘The variance in the clotted blood – the colour. I would hazard that during some of these
excavations
the poor man still lived.’
    ‘And there are more,’ said Phelps. ‘My God … they must be from the town … no wonder their rage …’
    Beyond Ramper lay five men and one woman, naked and despoiled, their discoloured flesh indicating a longer tenure in the room. Miss Temple’s eyes drifted to their hands – callused, with broken, dirty nails – and then, despite herself, to their genitals, exposed and mournful. The lone woman’s breasts hung flat to either side of her ribs, framing a bloody cave at the base of her sternum.
    A rustle of papers startled her. The Doctor stood at a long table piled with bound journals and surgical tools, his face an impassive mask.
    ‘He has documented every step,’ said Svenson quietly. ‘For weeks. Keeping records … every one of these people – each step scrupulously observed.’
    Phelps nodded towards Ramper’s corpse. ‘God forgive me – but does he note anything the poor man might have revealed?’
    The Doctor thumbed the notebooks quickly. Phelps glanced to the door. Miss Temple stared at a body whose eye socket was a coagulated well.
    ‘Whatever the Comte’s insanity,’ muttered Phelps, ‘this room cannot explain Vandaariff’s occupation of the entire works.’
    Svenson turned to Miss Temple, his eyes wide. An open journal lay in his hands.
    ‘What is it? What have you found?’
    Instead of answering he marched past her, past the tables, to the cluttered shelves, the journal dropped, both hands pawing the wall.
    ‘Doctor Svenson?’ she asked, suddenly afraid.
    ‘What has happened?’ hissed Phelps.
    The Doctor found the hidden door and pulled it wide. On another table lay a man secured with chains, naked, pale and still. Miss Temple screamed. Cardinal Chang’s eyes snapped open.

Two
Lazarus
    When he woke everything had changed. One moment Chang had been face down in the forest, his life bleeding away … and the next – a next he frankly did not