The Albino's Dancer Read online

  YOU are –clik– Emily Blandish. YOU are a time channeller. YOU travel in –clik– time. We will go back.

  Emily didn’t like the sound of this.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. Nobody had yet mentioned Honoré as anything but leverage. They don’t know, she told herself, over and again. ‘I can only travel, I can’t choose where: if you travel with me, we could end up anywhere.’

  The Albino smiled.

  I know. YOU told me –clik–. When we go back.

  Emily didn’t like the sound of that.

  1C. 23 February 1951, 03:45

  It was cold, and Kate wasn’t dressed for it. The bitter wind cut through her one-piece travelling suit as if it wasn’t there at all. It was early yet, but birds had started singing around her, confused by the light and the warmth into ushering in this false dawn. The light from the fire hurt her eyes a little. If she was going to stay on this planet, in this time, she would have to get some protection for her eyes. She was going to stay – she had no choice.

  Cold tears ran down her cheeks.

  She was alone.

  She looked around for her saviour, the stranger Lechasseur. He was standing a little way off, looking into the fire. Without its light, his chocolate-coloured skin would have been all but invisible in the greasy darkness. Strange how a man so powerful, so dominant, could ever go unseen. Kate walked to him, knowing that he would save her again. He would tell her how she was to survive in this strange world.

  ‘Lechasseur?’ she breathed.

  He didn’t turn.

  He was still looking toward the fire burning at their feet. The bunker had been hidden deep underground, but the explosion had cracked its camouflage, leaving it exposed to the world. Naked and alone. Fire and destruction danced in those cracks, like a glimpse into Hell below. Around the edges, men in deep blue uniforms fretted and fussed. Without the light of the fire, they too would be invisible: was this world full of dark spirits doing their business unseen?

  Kate followed Lechasseur’s gaze. The dark figures were pulling something from the flames, some silent ruin of a body, blackened and charred. Its skin cracked and bled with every finger the men rested on it – in freeing it, they were killing it too. Perhaps they knew, but they wouldn’t just leave it to the flames: it deserved to be free, even if it was only to die.

  The monster turned its head and looked at them with hollow eyes.

  It was no monster. Kate remembered Emily.

  Looking now, she could see tears glisten on Lechasseur’s cheeks.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t your friend,’ Kate lied, impotently.

  Lechasseur turned away without a word.

  Chapter Two

  2A. 4 November 1951, 19:46

  Emily didn’t struggle, even as the lawyer Schreck pawed and groped at her. There didn’t seem to be much point: it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and the consequences of resisting had been made perfectly clear. Even so, as Schreck patted her for hidden weapons, he tutted and fussed as if she were fighting him off with every ounce of her strength.

  ‘Stop struggling, girl,’ he growled menacingly in her ear. ‘The more you fight, the more likely my client will be to put a bullet in that ape you came with.’

  Schreck’s breath smelt of garlic and cigars. Emily didn’t answer.

  This will navigate –clik– through time, came the Albino’s disjointed ‘voice’. YOU will travel.

  The Albino held up a belt: just a normal belt, except that it had silver and gold wire sewn through it that connected here and there with chunky glass transistors. Despite the claim that it could take the place of Honoré, Emily wasn’t entirely convinced that it would even keep the Albino’s trousers up. But she didn’t say anything, just wondered how long it would take Honoré to escape from wherever he was being held. She decided to think of the belt as Little Honoré, just to amuse herself until her inevitable rescue.

  Emily’s eyes fell on the belt’s buckle: a brass plate, stamped with a simple geometric design: a horned circlet.

  It was a design that was horribly familiar to her, not just because she had seen it, in two very different contexts, during her recent exploits with Honoré, but also because it had some deeper, more troubling significance to her; some connection, she was convinced, to the earlier life she could no longer recall, before she’d wound up in London in 1949. There was no way that its presence on the Albino’s belt could be coincidence, and yet... how could there possibly be any connection between the Albino and those other events she had experienced?

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Emily asked lightly.

  Schreck glared at her. ‘You’ll be quiet, or the ape dies,’ the lawyer spat into her ear. ‘Then you.’

  But he said it very quietly, as if he didn’t want the Albino to hear.

  ‘Your lawyer says you’re going to kill me and my friend,’ Emily said, stepping away from Schreck as he spluttered.

  The Albino smiled coldly, but said nothing.

  She could see in his eyes that he knew. Emily put any thoughts of asking about the belt out of her mind. If she was going to discover something, it would come to her.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Emily said, turning her face away.

  Schreck smiled, coldly. ‘The belt is part of a set,’ he growled. ‘One to travel, one to navigate. Neither is of any use without the other.’

  A Little Honoré, and a Little Emily too: a happy couple of the strange little devices.

  ‘Unless you find someone like me,’ Emily said, thinking of Honoré.

  YOU found me, the Albino said, his fingers dancing.

  ‘The other was irreparably damaged in an accident some months ago,’ Schreck continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘My client wants you to go back and retrieve it before that happens.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘Afterwards, you and your companion will be free to go.’

  It sounded simple enough, so Emily knew there had to be a problem somewhere. Nothing was simple.

  ‘Why?’ she asked cautiously. ‘You’ve got me. Why bother with the belt? Why let me go?’

  Schreck snorted.

  ‘Such egotism.’ He breathed garlic-smoke into her ear. ‘You won’t last forever, Miss Blandish. You can’t be reverse engineered and mass produced. You are a fortunate alternative, but very much a temporary one. I might suggest that you remember that.’

  –clik– Schreck, the Albino’s computer barked. Enough.

  Emily realised that some of the words on the Albino’s wax discs had been recorded by Schreck – it was only in hearing his name spoken in his own smoky growl that she could recognise it. But did the Albino speak with Schreck’s voice, or the other way around?

  The Albino pulled himself out of his seat and limped over to Emily and Schreck, using his desk for support. The limp was further evidence of serious injury, albeit less immediately visible than the scars: what was the body beneath the fine clothes like? Emily had a momentary flash of a vast, bloated spider, some of its legs pulled off by a malevolent schoolboy, but still a danger to any prey unfortunate enough to fall into its web.

  ‘Once you arrive at your destination, my client will be unable converse in the normal fashion.’ The lawyer looked momentarily around at the room: there were thousands, maybe millions, of wax discs hidden inside the walls. ‘You will be required to introduce yourself and him, and demand the travelling belt from the parties that hold it. Do you think you can manage that?’

  Emily gave Schreck a look, but said nothing.

  The Albino tapped his desk meaningfully.

  ‘Oh, and when the occasion arises, you will be required to say, “Go after her”,’ Schreck said, looking to the Albino for confirmation. ‘Follow these instructions, and you will be returned here safely – once my client’s business has been concluded. Is that understood?’

&n
bsp; Emily nodded politely.

  ‘Honoré will kill you if you hurt me, you know,’ she said. Just a statement, not a threat. ‘Is that understood?’

  Schreck looked at her with an undisguised distaste, but the Albino nodded politely: it was understood.

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Blandish,’ Schreck said.

  He said it as if he didn’t expect to see her again.

  Emily heard a noise outside, the rumbling of a familiar voice, and her heart skipped. The heavy mahogany doors at the far end of the office burst open in a manner that wouldn’t do any favours to their hinges, and then Honoré was there. He seemed ten times bigger than usual, a great god of anger looking to smite his enemies. His favourite trenchcoat had been torn in some scuffle, and there was a thin trickle of blood drying on his cheek. He looked ready to pull the building down around them, just to make a path for Emily to escape on.

  ‘Honoré!’ Emily said, smiling.

  The Albino was quick, grabbing Emily firmly and turning the dial on the belt he wore. Honoré had taken barely one step towards them before Emily felt all the hairs on her arms stand on end. She suddenly smelt the overpowering scent of peonies, and her mouth went dry.

  The dark wood and coils of the Albino’s office faded around her.

  Emily and the Albino travelled.

  2B. 30 June 1951, 11:30

  Kate sat in the smallest chair she could find, but even that was too big for her: the rich leather creaked around her as if it might decide to swallow her whole. It still smelt like dead flesh to Kate – this whole world did: death and decay, and an overpowering animal stench. It had gotten so that she could breathe only short, shallow breaths like an exhausted dog.

  She still wore her one-piece travelling suit, although she had travelled barely a mile from where she had first arrived. The silky material was dulled by grime and torn in places, and no longer fitted her: food was scarce, as anybody could tell from looking at her stick-thin frame. Her thick hair was starting to fall out in places, and her eyes had taken on a near permanent squint, trying to protect themselves from the harsh light outside. Inside. Everywhere.

  ‘My name,’ said the little man on the other side of the desk, pausing to take a pull on a robust cigar, ‘is Mr Augustus Schreck. I assume that you haven’t heard it before?’

  Kate didn’t answer.

  ‘Good.’ Schreck leered unappealingly. ‘I shouldn’t want to think that my name had come up in conversation with any of the gutter-scum with whom you consort.’

  He took another pull on his cigar, and let the ash fall into an ornate glass ashtray by his side. The smoke filled the room, irritating Kate’s throat. She didn’t cough: she had spent most of her first weeks in this filthy city coughing so hard that she bled, and now she suppressed it as much as she could.

  ‘And you are Catherine Howkins, a...’ Schreck chuckled to himself, leaning back in his own vast leather chair. ‘Shall we say a foreign national? Yes, a very foreign national, here on British soil without official papers, leave to remain or any means of supporting yourself. Any legal means, at least – I’m aware of your other efforts to provide for yourself. As unsuccessful as they have proved.’

  Schreck regarded her with a look of disgust on his face.

  ‘Look at you,’ he sneered. ‘How much longer until you’re dead in the gutter? A week? Two?’

  Kate didn’t answer. It was the same question she had started asking herself hopefully each morning.

  ‘You should count yourself lucky that my client has taken an interest in you,’ Schreck said, swinging himself around to gaze absently out of the window. ‘Heaven alone knows why.’

  Kate knew immediately who he meant. The white-skinned monster who had brought her to this... this sewer pit of a world. Of course he would have survived: he had money, contacts, a place in this world – everything that Kate didn’t have. Everything that she had had, once, somewhere else, but had been torn away from by his cold, grasping fingers. Of course he wouldn’t die – there were too many that needed his black-tar heart to keep beating.

  And none that needed hers to.

  Schreck turned back to look at her.

  ‘What does he want me to do?’ Kate asked.

  Each word cut like a knife, and she hated herself for saying them.

  Schreck smiled, and rested his cigar in the ashtray.

  ‘My client owns a club in North London,’ he said, bridging his fingers over the desk. ‘A club for private members to relieve the stresses of modern living. You will dance at this club, entertain and perform any other duties my client feels are necessary. In return, you will be provided with lodgings on the premises, food and water, and a small sustenance allowance. If you make any attempt to leave my client’s employ, or inform anyone of any business activities of which you become aware, we will bring your existence to the attention of certain international bodies with interests in just your sort of illegal alien. Believe me, if they get their hands on you, you will wish you had died out there on the streets.’

  Kate didn’t say that she already wished for that, most keenly. But if she’d had the courage to make it happen herself, she wouldn’t be sitting in the lawyer’s office now. Some small part of her still wanted to cling to this mockery of a life, and it wouldn’t tell her why.

  ‘What do you say?’ Schreck asked archly.

  Kate didn’t meet his eyes. The carpet was a deep crimson, carefully cleaned. She thought of the future.

  ‘I don’t have any choice,’ she said, softly. Her eyes lifted, and she saw Schreck smiling coldly at her. ‘Do I?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the lawyer said. ‘Leiter!’

  The doors at the far end of the lawyer’s chambers swung open as if they were no heavier than air, and standing in the doorway was a giant in a leather coat, filling the frame easily. His hands could have crushed Kate’s heart with barely any effort: she seemed to feel their grip even now, with the length of the room still between them. The air in her lungs suddenly bit cold, and she had to gasp it out. Schreck smiled, his first genuine emotion of the meeting.

  Leiter didn’t move, but stood waiting for his master’s voice. His broad frame was hidden nearly head to toe by the leather coat he wore, with only his face and hands left free. The skin was pale, and criss-crossed with a network of angry red scars, wounds only partially healed: they mapped the distance between hard glass valves, rusty transistors, second-hand capacitors – all grafted into his dead flesh. A single lamp burnt hot in his neck, throwing strange shadows and charring the flesh there. To anyone else, it might have caused a great deal of pain, but Leiter seemed not to notice: his face was chiselled stone, his eyes so cold and dead they could have been glass.

  – Yes, Mr Schreck? – he asked. His voice was cold and robotic. Dead.

  Kate looked at him for a moment, and then started to cry.

  Schreck smiled.

  2C. 4 November 1951, 18:30

  It took an effort of will for Honoré not to run straight to Emily’s apartment and pound the door down until he saw with his own eyes that she was alive and well. Foolish – he’d dropped her there not two hours earlier. If she was alive then, the only way she was going to die the previous February was if she travelled. And the only way she was going to travel was with Honoré.

  If Catherine’s story was true – and he had no reason to think that it was – then probably the most sensible thing he could do would be to go, pack up his kit and leave. It wouldn’t be like he was leaving behind a thriving business or a vast network of friends: he had plenty of contacts, but if he thought about it, probably the only person he’d seen in the last month that he hadn’t had to barter with was Emily. It would be easy enough to start somewhere else – perhaps it was time to head home? No, not there – but there was more to England than London, and maybe now was the time to see it.

  Except that would mean never seeing Emily
again, for her own good of course. Never drinking any of that black slime she liked to pretend was coffee and talking about nothing. And – a small, guilty part of himself piped up – what were the chances of him stumbling over another time channeller? Was he ready to give up travelling, forever, just to save Emily?

  He tried to tell himself he was just being paranoid: there was no reason to assume Catherine was telling the truth. Not without a little investigation first. So instead, Honoré had headed for the British Library. Going in through a side entrance, he’d been met by a round-faced, bob-haired young woman who’d respectfully handed him a bowl of green tea and requested that he take off his shoes. Honoré had smiled reassuringly, and slipped his feet out of his battered leather shoes. The tea was hot, but mild, with no milk or sugar, and as always, Honoré wished he’d been offered coffee.

  ‘Mr Li will see you now,’ the woman said eventually, and led Honoré through a series of darkened chambers, to a small room deep in the heart of the Library.

  He handed his half-finished tea to the woman, and knocked on the door. There was a long pause, and then a voice with a thick accent called ‘Come!’ through the wood.

  Honoré entered.

  The room itself was small, and lit only by a couple of reading lamps dotted about the place. It was also empty, except for the man seated by one of the lamps. He was around 50, and his hair had turned salt-and-pepper grey long before Honoré had first met him, although his skin was still taut and fresh. At first glance, he seemed to be perched cross-legged on a chair made from copper pipes, glass valves and masses and masses of wire. It was only when one moved a little closer that it became apparent that the man had no legs at all, just a torso that disappeared inside the machine.