‘Not really,’ Chadfallow admitted, studying him. The man’s shirt was buttoned to the neck. It was, thought the doctor,
Uskins had begun to notice the doctor’s peculiar manner. ‘You have an idea, though, don’t you? Something to build on?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Chadfallow, barely conscious of his words. ‘But it’s. . rather complicated. I’m afraid I need to examine you once more. ’
‘Anything to help, Doctor. But I can tell you right now that I’m unchanged.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Chadfallow, trying to evoke his usual, peremptory tone. ‘Sit down, sir. Take off your shirt and breathe deep.’
Uskins consented amiably enough for someone who had been examined almost ceaselessly for a fortnight. He sat in the room’s one chair with his back to Chadfallow, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, and pulled it over his head. There it was: the tail end of the scarf. Uskins had removed it along with the shirt, and was now holding both in his hands.
He placed the stethoscope on Uskins’ back, went through the motions of listening.
‘I’m feeling truly fine today,’ said Uskins. ‘My appetite is immense.’
‘Arms out to either side, if you please,’ said Chadfallow.
Uskins tucked the shirt under his leg before he obeyed. Now Chadfallow could see the scarf ’s tasseled edge: just two inches, but that was enough. His skin went cold. His hand trembled on the stethoscope.
Captain Rose had named himself a slave to anger. He, Chadfallow, had been a slave to pride. He was intelligent; he knew that. But for the first time in his life he understood with perfect clarity that he was also a fool.
‘I must. . step out,’ he heard himself say. ‘I left an instrument in the surgery.’
‘What instrument?’ asked Uskins. His voice was abruptly cold.
Chadfallow’s mind seized. ‘A spirometer,’ he managed to blurt. ‘Also known as a plethysmograph. It measures a patient’s lung capacity.’
‘I don’t think you care about my lung capacity,’ said Uskins.
‘Now you’re being foolish,’ said the doctor, all but lunging for the door.
But the door would not open. Chadfallow heaved at it, wrenching at the knob. The door held fast. Slowly he turned to face Uskins. The first mate had put the white scarf back around his neck.
‘No more games,’ said Chadfallow.
‘Oh no,’ said the other, ‘I quite tire of them myself.’
‘What happened to you, Uskins?’
The man smiled: a wide, toothy, ear-to-ear grin, unlike any smile the doctor had ever seen on his face. ‘Your first mate is not available for questioning,’ he said.
Chadfallow did not even see the knife, but by the force of the blow, the white blaze of pain-beyond-pain, the rich smell in his nostrils and the dysfunctional lurch of the organ in his chest, he had his diagnosis at once. So fascinating. The left ventricle. If only he had time to make some notes.
These thoughts were lightning-flashes. Others followed. He had a son; his son might yet be alive; his son would never embrace him and say
‘Arunis?’ he whispered.
‘Of course.’
‘Dead. .?’ he whispered.
The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Who do you mean? You, me, Uskins? Never mind; the answer is yes.’
‘How.’
‘How did I win control of this body? Just as you’d go about such a task. I reasoned with Uskins. He had the plague. I reminded him that a continent full of doctors had failed to cure it, and persuaded him that his one chance was to let me into his mind. To sign over the house, as it were, and let me see what I could do about the termites. He hated the idea, but saw the logic in the end.’
The doctor’s strength was gone, his vision going. Arunis lowered him quietly to the floor. ‘Our Imperial surgeon,’ he said. ‘A scientist, a practical man. It was you who ended the stand off that day in the Straits of Simja. You threw me the rope ladder, let me climb aboard. I might have failed that day, but you couldn’t bear to let me strangle Admiral Isiq’s little bitch. Astonishing weakness, I thought. And do you know, nothing angers me so much as weakness? Even here in Agaroth, on death’s doorstep, it enrages me. I had hoped to keep you alive. I wanted you there on the night of the Swarm, so that you would know what your weakness had made possible. You will have to use your imagination instead. The nothingness before you, the blackness closing in: that is the future of Alifros, Doctor. That is the world that you shall never see.’
23
A silent canyon, blanketed in early snow. The chilly Parsua dances, gurgling, between cliffs that soar above two thousand feet. Black boulders stand in the river, pines struggle along the shore; further from the water rise old oaks and ironwoods. Upriver there are waterfalls, where the gorge descends in jagged steps. High overhead, wisps of cloud scud across a narrow slab of sky the colour of a robin’s egg.
Stillness, sunlight, cold. A finch alights and vanishes again; a pinch of snow tumbles from a branch. The wind above the Parsua can scarcely be heard. Straining, one might fancy it carries sounds of violence, of horror, from some unthinkably distant land: sounds all but dissolved in the vast, consoling indifference of the air.
Then a noise cuts through the morning: a desperate, clumsy sound like rough shears through wool. It grows nearer, louder. It is the sound of feet in snow.
From upriver he appears: a youth, bloodied and in rags, his white breath puffing like smoke through his lips. He is running for his life, tumbling over snow-hidden rocks, careening through drifts. His gaze swings left and right, studying the cliffs that offer no cave or crevice, no place to hide. When he glances back over his shoulder it is with naked fear.
He passes the tree where the finch rested, catching his sleeve on a branch. Two or three steps later he has blundered onto the thin ice that girds the riverbanks, and falls on hands and knees into the water. He bites back a howl. As he drags himself onto solid ground his pursuer erupts into view.
It is an eguar. Black, burning, elephantine. It roars at him from atop the last set of falls, over a mile back along the canyon. Then it hurls itself from the cliff into the river below.
Flailing, the youth doubles his speed. He cannot see the eguar now, but the vapour above it forms a white flag, racing towards him along the bottom of the gorge. Trees crack; steam hisses where the burning flanks of the creature slide through snow. Before it has closed half the distance the youth knows he will not escape.
He turns. His body is shaking uncontrollably; his eyes have a sheen like fogged glass. Suddenly he throws back his head and screeches at the sky. As it was on the Water Bridge, the transformation is swift: the head flattens into the neck; the neck elongates; the limbs become massive; the jaw stretches to reveal enormous fangs. But the
The
