The Vorrh

and into the overly green trees; a coachman waited for him at the roadside. Ten minutes and dozens of green turns later, they pulled in through high metal gates and stopped. He was taken inside by a custodian, or a warder, he thought, a rhino of a man dressed in a long apron over a dark uniform, with a peaked cap that accentuated the man’s hornlike nose and low, sloping forehead.
    ‘Thank you, Crane,’ Gull said to the departing shadow. ‘Mr Muybridge, welcome.’ He put out his square hand for his visitor to shake, looking about as if to greet another guest. ‘But where is your equipment?’ He looked towards the door; the coachman shook his head.
    ‘I did not bring any,’ said Muybridge, ‘I presumed our first preliminary meeting would be more theoretical than practical?’
    Gull was mystified and twitched his mouth in a small movement that looked like a rehearsal for a larger one – irritation in advance of anger – before it was quickly gathered back. ‘Quite right!’ he blurted, in a boisterous and obvious lie. ‘Let me show you the business at hand, and then you can make your professional assessment.’
    The good doctor took him by the arm and amiably propelled him along the corridors in Crane’s wake. Muybridge was instantly ill at ease; being touched was repugnant to him, and not something he tolerated well. He had never understood why so many people, common people, derived such pleasure from pawing each other, even in public. His treacherous wife had demanded these suffocating duties from him. She used to grab at his arm while walking, hanging from the speed of his sprightly gait, complaining about his pace, telling him to slow down, and hanging on even harder if he failed to comply. It had been embarrassing. But when they were alone, she had demanded much worse. He had never refused his husbandly duties. In fact, he quietly enjoyed them in moderation, and practice had improved him in the rigours of their physical exertions. He fulfilled all that might have been expected of him, but she always wanted more: to cling, to kiss, for him to linger inside her, long after his business was done. Some of her requests had been downright offensive, and against all modern notions of hygiene. The worst of it was that she even pawed him in front of the neighbours or the servants, and at social functions to which she had forced him to take her. It had been uncomfortable, unnatural and thoroughly time-consuming.
    Shaking off the horrid recollections, he returned to the present and found that Gull had removed his hand to denote waiting. They stood outside a long, ward-like corridor. The walls were painted in a thick, heavy yellow, more marrow than flower. The same apron-clad guard stood in contrast by the doors. Gull gestured, and the guard pulled an elaborate bolt that slid levers and greased phalanges to open to the ward beyond. It all seemed highly theatrical, more like one of the new zoological gardens than a sanctum of health.
    Gull caught the scent of his thoughts, and began to explain. ‘Some of the women here are very unstable, a danger to themselves and others. Their tides of mania and excessive will are beyond discipline or control. Therefore we contain them, and for good reason.’
    Muybridge felt his excitement grow at the proximity of these demented creatures. The pair walked the corridor and stopped at another door, where Crane stood waiting. Gull nodded and the assistant unlocked it.
    ‘First,’ said Gull, ‘I will show you Abigail. She is the one I gave the picture to. She was picked up off the streets, where she was working the Penny Finger trade; she has been here now for nearly eight months.’
    ‘But you said this was an infliction of the affluent, not of the poor, not of street women?’
    ‘Quite right!’ said Gull. ‘But to understand a disease you have to find its root. To instigate it from the beginning. So we collect test subjects and create the malady in them. This is the same protocol that grew from vaccine research, but here we apply it to the mind. Those already suffering are only useful to study symptoms – not the cause, effect and cure: you can’t grow a plant from a leaf.’
    ‘So the subject of your lecture at Guy’s was different from this one?’
    Gull looked at him in the way strangers do when they are trying to politely judge the age of a friend’s child. ‘On the surface they are different, yes, but fundamentally they are the same. The one you saw at the