A crash. The scholiast fell silent. The door swung open to show a tall slender figure silhouetted against the pale light.
“Dr. Silverthorn!” Bellanca cried. She and Martin ran to greet him. Oleander bit his lip, drew the gun from his makeshift belt and pointed it at me. From across the room Octavia made a thick clucking sound and waved. Her fingers had rotted, flesh and bone, all the way to the second knuckle.
“Dr. Silverthorn,” began Oleander. He shifted the gun from one hand to the other. “It’s him. That boy. The one he told us about.”
The figure stepped into the light where I could see him for the first time. I gasped and looked away.
“I understand that the Consolation of the Dead wishes him to be returned alive, Oleander,” he said, disdain icing the words Consolation of the Dead. A thick voice—he had difficulty forming the words—but kindly and intelligent for all that. “Will you put that damned thing away and let me see him? And where is Angeline?”
Sheepishly Oleander tucked the gun back into his belt and stepped away. I heard the other children whispering as they surrounded the newcomer and plucked at his clothes.
“He killed her, Dr. Silverthorn. I saw it—”
“That one, the one he told us—”
How can they bear to touch him? I thought as I tried to calm myself.
Because in that brief instant I had seen a horrible thing: a man of bones whose clothes flapped about him like gulls taking flight, with a nearly fleshless face drawn into the hideous grimace of a skull picked clean of skin and sinew.
2. Parts of the nature of a skeleton
I STARED AT THE floor, trying to keep my heart from racing. That awful face! I heard the scrape and rattle of his feet upon the floor, the crackle of his stiff clothes as he moved slowly among the remaining children.
“Dr. Silverthorn, can we go home now?”
“Dr. Silverthorn, did you see the party?”
“Dr. Silver—”
“Shh, children,” he hushed them. A rustle as he crossed the room. He finally stopped a few meters from me. I heard his breathing, a thick glottal sound as though he choked upon the air. Still, if the children did not fear him I could at least make a show of boldness. I turned to face him.
He stood there, a shrunken scarecrow of a man all in white, his long tunic stained with dirt and grass. White gloves covered his hands, a loose white scarf wrapped his throat. Only his face was not hidden: pink and white and gleaming as a piece of fresh meat, the veins and capillaries stretched like vines across the tendons and smooth solid bones of his skull. My eyes filled with tears.
“Ohh …” I cried. In spite of myself I was moved to pity at the mere sight of this stranger. “Why have they done this.to you?”
He shook his head very slowly, as though if he moved too quickly the tenuous strands that held him together might tear. “But don’t I know you?” he murmured as though he had not heard me. He stretched out one gloved hand to brush the tears from my cheeks. “Wendy Wanders?”
I shook my head. “No—I am Raphael Miramar.”
My tears stained the tips of his gloves. He drew his hand to his face and stared at the damp cloth, then turned his gaze back upon me. Once perhaps those brown eyes had been tender; perhaps even now they regarded me with pity or wonder. But with no flesh upon his brow, no lashes to droop across those swollen orbs he could only stare rigidly, a fine sheath of flesh flicking up and down when he blinked. “Raphael,” he said, shaking his head. “Yes, of course—the Aviator told me, the children spoke of you, they saw you by the river. …”
With a soft creak he swiveled his head to look behind him, to where the children waited. “Poor things, they are tired,” he murmured, then returned his attention to me. “But you are not Wendy?”
“No,” I said. I was torn between wanting to look away from him and wanting to stare in repelled fascination and pity. I fixed my gaze upon his hands. A clear liquid seeped from beneath the gloves and stained them as my tears had. “Who are you?”
He sighed, the sound unnaturally harsh as it hissed from his lipless mouth. “Three weeks ago I was Dr. Lawrence Silverthorn of the Human Engineering Laboratory. Three days from now I will be dead.” His clothes rustled as he shrugged and pulled from beneath his tunic a large black leather bag. He removed a narrow vial and began to rub a clear ointment on his face. “Antibiotic,” he explained, smearing it across the planes of his cheeks.
“We heard that Wendy was alive,” he said absently, as though once more taking up a long story. “A trader from the City said he had seen her performing with a wretched group of actors. We thought we might escape as she did, we thought we might find help here …”
He glanced up at me and laughed silently, mirthlessly. I hugged myself to keep from shaking at the sight; but I would not look away. “They kept some of them alive for a month while they tried to synthesize the bioprints,” he went on, clumsily replacing the cap on the vial of ointment. “After that they killed them. Their heads in vats while they pried their brains out. I hid Gligor and Anna in my room. At the end they ran out of anesthesia. All of your empath friends, Wendy, except for Anna and Gligor. All of them dead; all the children.”
His teeth clicked as he shook his head to indicate the lazars. “You were right to run away with that Aide. But you are not Wendy?” he asked again, confused. He glanced around the chamber. “Where is Angeline?”
“Dead, she’s dead, Dr. Silverthorn,” Bellanca cried. “He killed her. Can we go home?”
He started at the sound of her voice, then nodded. “Of course. Yes, of course, Bellanca. But lie down first, rest for a few minutes. All of you, rest.” He turned to me. “You did kill them, then: the albino boy and that other man. How?”
He stared as though he perceived me through a thick wall of glass. I held up my fist. The sagittal’s fierce radiance had faded to a faint lilac, almost gray. “This,” I said. “A sagittal. I did not mean to.” I bowed my head.
Dr. Silverthorn nodded. “A sagittal. I have seen them. They were prototype geneslaves developed during the Second Ascension, for—” His jaws moved as he turned his face toward mine, teeth bared in a horrible leer. “But you already know what they are for.”
He continued to stare at me for a long time. Finally he dipped his head to pore through the contents of his bag. I glimpsed the soft white globe of the top of his skull, blue-veined and shining dully. “Ah—here, boy.”
I moved to avoid the hand he reached toward me. He only stared with those cloudy eyes, continuing to stretch out a gloved palm holding a small round patch of blue cloth. “I am not contagious,” he said softly. “None of us are—but nobody here knows that, do they? They pick you off like little flies and you let them die, you let yourselves die. You ignorant fools.” There was no malice in his voice, not even a hint of it. All feeling might have been stripped from him as well as flesh and nerve.
“Here: this is a mild stimulant, it will make it easier for you to come with us.” I shuddered as he touched my neck but this time did not move away. He pressed the patch beneath my ear and drew back. “Now: look through this and find a vial with clear yellow capsules in it and give me one. Please.”
He handed me the bag and waited while I fumbled through its contents, strange bottles and instruments like swivels and flares, oddments similar to those I had seen Doctor Foster employ, but new and gleaming as though they had never been used. I found the bottle he wanted and handed him a single capsule.
“Thank you,” he said, swallowing it with difficulty. “It’s hard for me to get those out with the gloves. And I can’t use the others now: no skin left for them to adhere to. Soon not even these …”
After a moment or two his eyes seemed to glitter more brightly, and he flapped his hands. “Well! But I’ll feel better now.” He dropped the bottle into his bag and patted it closed. “Are you ready to come with us?”