“Arthur Barge. My name is Arthur Barge.”
Boon looked disappointed. He nodded toward his companion, at which Hawker rooted around in his blazer pocket and retrieved an immensely large knife, two or three times the size of the one with which Arthur Barge had intended to murder Dedlock and far, far too large for the size of the Prefect’s pocket.
Barge boggled at it in fear, a sticky yellow warmth coursing unchecked down his left leg.
“Cor! Hawker’s got a wizard new penknife.”
“It’s a smashing knife, sir. Look — it’s got a bottle-opener and a corkscrew and all sorts.”
Barge wept.
“Tell us your name, sir.”
“I told you. I’m Arthur Barge.”
Boon raised his voice just ever so slightly. “Don’t be an ass, sir.”
“Please. Please, I-”
“Name, please, sir. Your real name.”
Barge could see no alternative but to tell the truth and submit to the uncertain mercy of these creatures. Strangely, after all these years, it actually felt good to admit it out loud, to own up at last. He groaned: “I’m the Mongoose.”
Boon beamed. “Thank you, sir. You understand, of course, that we had to make sure.” They laughed. Hawker leant over Mr. Barge and, with enormous gusto, began to saw away at his neck.
I should put up my hand here and confess that I was, at least in part, responsible for all the unpleasantness. I needed to stop the Directorate becoming too interested in our activities, and following the failure of that old soak Slattery, I set this killer on their trail, a former Okhrana sleeper agent living in deep cover as Arthur Barge. I allowed Donald to take care of the specifics and I fear he may have been a little overzealous in his duties. Certainly, I never intended matters to go so far or for poor Mrs. Grossmith to suffer as she did. But how was I to know? I’m an important fellow, and delegation is a necessary evil of my job.
Much as I had enjoyed explaining to Moon the ease with which I had manipulated him, I had begun to weary of exposition.
Moon spluttered, “You want me to join you?” His face had turned an interesting shade of mauve, puce with righteous indignation.
“When you see what I have to show you, I think you’ll understand.”
I sauntered from the room, certain that Moon and his companion would follow — led on now not by fear or even simple curiosity but by the most basic and primal desire of alclass="underline" the need to know how everything will end.
I have long had a fascination with underground London, her secret subterranean, for the dark places of the earth. Since wresting control of Love, Love, Love and Love from its odious President, Donald McDonald and I had constructed an entire world beneath our headquarters. We had sculpted great vaults and chambers to be a hiding place and refuge from the tumult of the world above.
I led Moon and the Somnambulist back to the balcony above the great hall. The place had filled up with my people, men and women packed shoulder to shoulder, crammed against the walls. It seethed with life, it brimmed with Love. Standing before us were London’s edge-people, the poor, the ugly and the deformed, the indigent, the dispossessed, the ragged and the hopeless, all the marginalia of the city. At my appearance a mighty roar went up, which I acknowledged as best I could with a modest bow and a diffident wave.
Moon stared down at the multitude, trying no doubt to spy his sister amongst them, or Thomas Cribb, or Mr. Speight.
“So many,” he murmured. “I had no idea there’d be so many.”
“Love assembled,” I said, unable (I admit it) to entirely hide my pride. “The foot soldiers of Pantisocracy.”
“Soldiers?” Moon was being contrary again. “Why would Paradise need soldiers? Why the violence? Why the death? Why not simply take your followers and go? Build your Eden by the banks of the Susquehanna and leave the rest of us be.”
I marveled at the man’s obtuseness. Despite all I had told him, still he hadn’t realized the truth of it. “The Susquehanna?” I tried to keep the contempt from my voice. “You really believe we’re going to America?”
“That was Coleridge’s plan, was it not?”
“American is unsuitable. Corrupt.”
“Where, then?”
“Here, Edward. Here, in the city.”
“I thought you hated London.”
“No city is irredeemable. We shall rebuild. Start again. A new city where we will live as true Pantisocrats. I’m giving London a second chance.”
“What happens to anyone who doesn’t qualify for your utopia?”
“I had to be honest. “They shall be put to the sword.”
Moon said something predictable about my mental state. I told him he was being short-sighted and patiently explained that we could wipe the city clean, begin again.
“What would your precious Coleridge make of this? I doubt he would ever have condoned such bloodshed.”
I felt an attack of hysterical laughter surge up inside me and it was only with a Herculean exercise of will that I was able to restrain myself. Calmly, I told Moon that I wanted to introduce him to my superior — the Chairman of the Board.
“I had assumed you were the Chairman,” he snapped.
I did not reply, but instead left the balcony, led them away from the hall and deeper into the underground tunnel system, down to the lowest levels, to a large locked room located in the most inaccessible part of Love, our holy of holies. The door was fastened with padlocks and chains, and a small sign was all that proclaimed this to be the province of the
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
I unlocked the door and ushered my guests over the threshold. Evidently, they had not expected anything so grand as what lay beyond. Even I, who ought to have been inured to the sight, never failed to be awed and humbled by it.
An enormous metal sphere filled the room, a great iron egg paneled intermittently with glass portholes against which a greasy yellow liquid lapped hungrily. Attached to one side was a small steam engine, its working parts skeletally exposed, its tubes and metal lines snaking umbilically between the two machines. All the awesome modern technology of electricity and steam was at the service of the sphere, all its valves and slides, its crank-pins and pistons, its pumps and its flywheels, its cylinders and packing rings and pillow blocks.
But it was not the object itself which aroused such wonder but rather what lay inside — its most singular occupant.
An old man floated in the sphere, dressed in clothes not fashionable for almost a century, his wispy white hair yellowed from nicotine and decay, his skin mottled, torn in places and showing signs of minor putrefaction. He was immediately recognizable nonetheless as the foremost poet of his age.
Moon realized at once, I think. The Somnambulist took a little longer. A line of poetry sprang unbidden to my mind: “Could I revive within me that symphony and song…”
Moon gasped, and it was with a small spurt of pleasure that I saw he had finally comprehended the full magnitude of my achievement. “How is this possible?”
“Galvanism,” I said triumphantly. “The wonders of electricity and steam.”
The Somnambulist scribbled furiously on his slate.
GRAVEROBBER
I shrugged, beyond such petty morality. “I liberated him. No doubt he’ll thank me for it.”
“He seems… damaged,” Moon said uncertainly.
The Somnambulist peered through the glass at the old man’s hands.
STITCHES
“When I found him,” I explained, “parts of his body had badly deteriorated. They had to be replaced… Of course, we used his friends where we could. His left hand belonged to Robert Southey. Several toes were donated by Charles Lamb. Other organs, best left unspecified, originate from the late Mr. Wordsworth.”
MONSTER
“A thing of shreds and patches, perhaps,” I said. “But, no, not a monster. A savior. The lord of Pantisocracy.”
Moon seemed transfixed. “What is that liquid?”
“Amniotic fluid. Or at least my best approximation of it. ‘For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.’ ”