Part 15 (1/2)
St. Ives tasted his sherry. Clearly Klingheimer had manifold addictions, extreme self-opinion fueling them, and was dosing himself in order to pursue his supposed ascent to some sort of lunatic G.o.dhead. There was no means by which a mortal could reason with such a man.
”Is the wine satisfactory?” Klingheimer asked.
”The elixir of life,” St. Ives said.
”Then pose me another question. I seldom get an opportunity to speak my mind.”
”What do you mean to do with Narbondo now that he too has the fluids flowing in his veins? Now that he has become one of your 'a.s.sociates.'”
”We've already done it, sir. We have accessed his mental faculties. Dr. Peavy has trepanned the man, and his mind has been explored. He is a receptacle of vast knowledge, which news does not surprise you, and because of the mushrooms that knowledge remains intact. He is also mentally unstable, a man driven by hatred an emotion to be despised, as are most of what we refer to as emotions. Because of that he is destined to live out his life in his wood-and-gla.s.s prison. His life is mine to dispose of or to maintain. Would it astonish you to know that he is entirely conscious? You can speak to him, if it would amuse you.”
”Nothing about the man amuses me. How does Dr. Peavy effect this 'exploration' of the mind?”
”His methods involve the electrical stimulation of the cortex and the linking of two brains, connecting them, literally, with thin silver wires across which knowledge pa.s.ses in an electrical current. Willis Pule has been the medium.”
”That explains the wires intermingled with the hairs on Pule's head?”
”Just so. The wires are fixed in his brain. You can see for yourself that he bears no apparent ill effects. To the contrary, Mr. Pule has the honor of being the first explorer of the vast ocean that is the human mind. I myself am another.”
”Literally, do you mean? You've put yourself willingly under Peavy's knife?”
”Literally, yes.”
”Despite his being careless of the single life?”
”Even so. That unfortunate carelessness led in time to great successes. Willis Pule is an example. Narbondo another. Dr. Peavy has made other discoveries also. He has discovered the seat of paranormal powers as well as a means to enhancing them.”
”You refer to this mumbo-jumbo about the pineal gland?”
”I can a.s.sure you, Professor, that 'mumbo jumbo' has nothing to do with it. It is a simple matter of effecting several small lesions with a very thin, charged wire a matter of... opening a window, if you will.” Klingheimer bowed deeply and parted the hair on the top of his head, fingering a small circular scar. ”Do you see it?” he asked.
”Yes,” St. Ives said. ”No trepanning, then?”
”Unnecessary. Peavy spent the better part of a year finding a route, shall we say, to the center of the brain, where the gland lies between the hemispheres. The streets of our city and the hallways of our asylums provided subjects who, if not entirely willing, were safely persuaded to take part in Peavy's experiments. Once Peavy was sure of himself, I myself went willingly 'under the knife,' as you put it. The result was extraordinary.”
”I admit to being baffled by all of this,” St. Ives said. ”What is your motive if not material gain?”
”I have no motive but knowledge, sir. As I said but a moment ago, I am a mountaineer. My sights are on the summit, and I use whatever means are at hand to scale...”
The door opened Jimmy this time, who nodded and stood by the door. He held a pistol in his hand, and he regarded St. Ives with distaste.
”Ah,” said Mr. Klingheimer, ”it appears that Dr. Peavy is just now completing his work. Will you follow me into the theater, Professor? I believe you'll see some prodigious wonders.”
Klingheimer stood up and set out. Jimmy falling in behind St. Ives, the three of them entered the operating theater, which was stiflingly warm. St Ives saw that a large iron furnace some three-feet wide by eight long was emitting a low roar, which accounted for the smoke rising from the chimney outside. A heavy stovepipe connected the furnace to the chimney.
St. Ives was distracted from the ominous furnace by the sight of Clara Wright bound into a chair. Her head hung downward as if she were etherized. A wheeled pole stood beside her. Hanging at the top of the pole was what appeared to be a pig's bladder connected by lubing to a syringe affixed to her arm. Dr. Peavy worked over her, manipulating a pump-like apparatus, drawing fluids from the bladder and forcing them onward with an injector.
”Clara and I are being wed as we speak, Professor,” Klingheimer said in a low voice. ”Wed in the highest sense of the word. She is appropriately clad in her matrimonial gown, as you can see, made from good, English, Macclesfield silk. You'll agree that the gown is artfully simple. There was no time to chase after superficial elegance, and of course there is nothing superficial in the girl at all.”
St. Ives stared at him, looking for any facial indication of perverted humor, of irony, but he saw nothing beyond a mask of self-satisfaction.
”Our ceremony involves no clergyman, and this theater is our humble church. My blood is even now flowing into her veins, mingling with her own, and her blood with mine, a portion of fungal elixir into the mix a literal marriage, do you see? Nothing symbolic. The girl has been sedated and fixed in the chair for her own good. She might do herself a mischief otherwise.”
”You run the risk of murdering her,” St. Ives said. ”If the blood is incompatible...”
”And of murdering myself, sir. Clara and I have exchanged blood twice now, and will continue to exchange it until we are quite the same person, at least in essence. If our bloods, so to speak, were incompatible, we would be aware of it six times over by now. I depend on Dr. Peavy, you see, in these matters, just as Peavy depends upon Jules Klingheimer.”
”What can you possibly hope to gain by this dangerous play, sir?”
”Clairvoyance, in a word. Second sight. It is one of my goals to expand my sensibilities, to see beyond that which ordinary mortals see. Clara, of course, is no ordinary mortal, and she will share her powers with me. I am in the act of becoming. You, sir, are in the act of unbecoming, which is the great human curse. Now, sir, I adjure you to silence for a brief time. I would like to commune with my bride. Please sit, Professor.”
Mr. Klingheimer waited until St. Ives was seated, and then he himself found a seat where he had a clear view of Clara. He settled himself and ceased to move. St. Ives watched his now blank face, wondering what the man intended.
Clara felt the blood leaking slowly into her vein an amount exactly equal to what they had taken from her and put into Mr. Klingheimer, or so he had told her. It was painful where the needle went in, but no worse than other things she had known in her life, and she knew by now that the pain would recede when the needle was taken out. She forced her mind away from thoughts of the tainting of her blood...
She was aware of the Professor's arrival. Finn had told her that he was in London. Had he come here to Dr. Peavy's to take her away with him? He seemed to be at odds with Mr. Klingheimer, who was enamored with the sound of his own voice, his own gabble. You run the risk of murdering her, the Professor had said. And yet the sharing of the blood went on. The Professor had no power here. If he did, he would stop what they were doing.
It came to her now that someone was regarding her not from without, but from within, as if an intruder had found his way into a darkened house and was standing in silence watching the family sleep. Intruders never meant well. She began to recite ”The Jumblies,” which she had long used to drive interruptive thoughts from her mind when she wanted her mind ordered, or wanted it to s.h.i.+ne a light in the darkness a light that her mother might see: They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they went to sea: In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter's morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea!
Clara pictured the sieve, spinning on the surface of the sea, faster and faster, the Jumblies holding on tightly in the stormy weather.
Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.
In her mind's eye the sieve spun faster and faster until it was a spinning ball, like the round head of a man white like the moon, like the man in the moon. There was a green tinge over all, however, green like the Jumblies' heads.
And all night long in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail, In the shade of the mountains brown!
The conversation in the room diminished to a mere droning noise like the speech of bees. She saw in her mind a bearded face, smiling an empty smile, the smile of a figure drawn in the dust with a stick. It was him Mr. Klingheimer, who was the intruder within her mind, and he looked about him, as if to make himself at home.
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of Silvery Bees.
Mr. Klingheimer's smile did not disconcert her now. She blotted out his face with the spinning sieve, which spun itself faster and faster into a silvery hive, the silvery bees holding on tightly to the hive, just as the Jumblies, not caring a fig, held onto their sieve. And then the bees let go in a wild cloud and swarmed about Mr. Klingheimer's head. Clara was abruptly aware now that her mother's mind had joined her own, and that her single-minded anger had enraged the bees. Their wings whirred mechanically, their silver, needle-like stingers plunging into Mr. Klingheimer's flesh, secreting their poisons. In her mind she saw his mouth open in a silent scream, and his hands went to his head...
...and then she was aware that the needle in her arm had been removed, and she was back in Dr. Peavy's laboratory, her mind entirely her own once again, the Jumblies and their sieve sailing away in the far distance.
In the moments before Clara awakened, St. Ives had heard Klingheimer make a high, hollow sound in his throat, like a man in a nightmare attempting to scream. His eyes had rolled back and he had clutched his hair on the sides of his head as if in torment, quickly letting go to swat at the air roundabout him. Something had staggered him, and he was making an effort now to regain his composure.