The Black Lung Captain

Thirty-Two

Plome's Confession —

Conversations In The Sanctum — An Ending, Of Sorts

Summer had got hold of Tarlock Cove, and Jez was glad to feel the sun on her face. After all that time in the arctic north it was a pleasure to be reminded that not every day was a hostile one. She took winding lanes up the mountainside, past streets turned sluggish in the heat. The distant sound of crashing waves drifted up to her as the sea patiently battered at the coast far below.

The address that Crake had left with the Cap'n turned out to be a tall, narrow house tucked away down a well-kept cobbled alley. She approached the door and composed herself. Now that she was here, she felt nervous. She'd not seen Crake since that day on the All Our Yesterdays when her Mane side had taken over. By the time she was out of the infirmary, he was long gone. She had no idea what to expect from him.

Would he welcome her, or be angry? Would he resent her for coming, and scorn her attempts to talk him back to the Ketty Jay? Would he despise her for being part Mane? Or would he offer to help her, as she hoped? That was, after all, her reason for coming.

Yes, she wanted him back on the crew, for everyone's sake. Yes, she was concerned about his well-being and worried that he might be in some kind of trouble. But first and foremost, she needed him for his expertise. Because she had a daemon inside her, and who but a daemonist could drive it out?

If anyone could help her deal with what she was, it was him. But she'd never told him about her condition. He'd hinted in the past that he knew, or at least suspected, what lay behind her unique abilities. Yet she still hadn't spoken out. And then, on the very day it became obvious to all and she could hide it no longer, Crake decided to leave.

Just when she needed him most. Just when she could finally admit to him that she was part Mane.

Was it just bad timing? Or did he leave because of me? Does he fear me? Or does he fear what I might ask him?

No way to know. She should have talked to him a long time ago. Should have asked him to take care of the daemon that plagued her. But instead she'd suffered, because she didn't dare admit her secret.

In that, at least, they understood one another.

She rapped on the door and waited. After a few moments she heard footsteps, and the door was opened by a harassed-looking middle-aged man, stout and balding. This, she assumed, was Plome, the owner of the house.

'Yes?' he inquired, looking her over critically. It occurred to her that she should have worn something more impressive than her grey overalls, but she'd never been much interested in clothes or jewellery.

'I'm looking for Crake,' she said. 'Is he here?'

'And who might you be?' he asked suspiciously, studying her over his pince-nez.

'I'm Jez. I'm the navvie on the—'

But Plome's face had already lit up. 'Oh, thanks be! Come in, come in!' He hurried her inside and shut the door.

'He spoke about you,' Plome explained, as Jez found herself propelled down the hallway. 'Said you were the only one who knew about what happened to him. I'm so glad you're here. So very, very glad.' He stopped and seized her by the shoulders. 'You have to take him away!'

'Err . . .' said Jez, who was still catching up. 'That was the idea, actually.'

'Good! Good!' Plome cried. 'I thought it would be wonderful having him here, you know. Such an eminent daemonist to learn from. Oh!' He clamped his hand over his mouth, aware that he'd let something slip. 'You mustn't tell anyone!' he urged.

'Tell anyone what?'

'That I'm a daemonist. Just an amateur, you understand, but then, aren't we all? No professionals in our business!' He laughed nervously, produced a handkerchief and mopped his glistening pate. 'I'm in politics, you know. Running for the House of Chancellors. If anyone knew, it'd be the death of me.'

Jez held up her hands. 'Mr Plome. Calm down. I'm not going to tell anyone anything. Now what's happened to Crake?'

Plome was describing frantic little circles around the hallway, wringing his handkerchief. 'He's become a liability, that's what! Oh, don't think badly of me. I've been a good friend to him. I lent him money. I helped him in everything. He bought rare books, sought out other daemonists, gathered all the research he could. But he always needed more. And one time he emerged from the sanctum, ranting about daemonism, while there were guests in the house! Came damnably close to blowing my cover and sending me to the gallows!' He threw his hands up in the air. 'I've become a recluse! Trapped in my own home, guarding him! I spend every day dreadfully afraid that the madman in my basement will break out and the world will know I've been dabbling with daemons. It's a short trip from there to the noose, believe me, young lady! And I'm supposed to be in the middle of a campaign to become a Chancellor of the Duchy! My rival makes ground every day I'm not out there! The Tarlocks are breathing down my neck, wondering what I'm up to! It's a disaster!'

He was panting by the time he finished. Jez decided she'd heard enough. 'Show me where he is.'

Plome led her around the side of the staircase at the end of the hall. There a cupboard door lay hidden and out of sight. He began fumbling in his pocket for something.

'Through here?' Jez asked, and pulled the door open.

'Wait! Don't open that yet!' Plome said.

Jez felt a strange tingle through her body. Her senses tipped, threatening to send her into a trance. Then everything righted itself, and she was looking at a set of steps, leading down, just beyond the door.

'He's down there?' she asked.

Plome, who was holding a tuning fork in his hand for some reason, gaped at her. 'But . . . the glamour . . . You can see the stairs?'

Jez looked at him oddly. 'Of course I can. Can't you?'

Plome looked bewildered. 'Oh, my. It's time I thralled a new daemon to that doorway. This one's lost its fizz. You shouldn't have seen anything but an old cupboard.'

Jez was eager to see Crake. She headed down. There were deep scratches on the walls of the stairway, which looked relatively fresh.

'Don't tread on the third step from the bottom!' Plome called after her. Jez stepped over it obediently. She could feel the faint thrum of energy7 from the wood. Another daemon, she guessed. She wondered if it was any more effective than the last.

The sanctum was a mess. Electric lights buzzed behind their shades, but half the bulbs had died and not been replaced. Chemical apparatus lay half-disassembled. Muddled equations were scrawled on blackboards, overlapping one another. There was a huge brass vat against one wall with a window in the side. It was full of a murky yellow liquid and attached to various machines. A large, riveted metal device like a bathysphere stood in the centre of the room. Books lay face-down and open where they'd been thrown.

Crake was sitting at a desk, his back to her. He was scribbling in a notebook, with occasional pauses to consult an enormous hidebound tome. His blond beard and hair had grown out; he looked shaggy and untidy. Bess sat near the desk, dormant. She was wired up to a complex tangle of equipment.

Jez suddenly understood the scratches on the narrow stairway. They must have had quite a time getting her down here.

'Crake,' she said.

He jumped at the sound of her voice, and his pen nib snapped. He stared at the notebook for a moment, then swept it off the desk.

'I can't make it work, Jez,' he said. He got to his feet and began pacing back and forth, his hand on his forehead. Red-rimmed eyes searched the middle distance restlessly. 'I can't make it work.'

'You can't make what work?'

'This!' he snapped, gesturing towards Bess. 'It's impossible!'

Jez was shocked by the state of him. He was like a madman, full of frantic energy, waving his arms around, bubbling on the edge of mania. He stank of sweat.

'What were you trying to do?'

'I was trying to get her back! There were rumours, you see. Always rumours among daemonists. They said there was a way to bring someone back from the dead. If you just collected the right raw materials, you could put them in a tank, you could infuse it with the essence, the . . . the . . . frequency of your loved ones, that you'd recorded when they were alive. And the body would grow itself!

Bones would form and muscles knit and there they'd be, floating in the tank, the way they always were!'

As he spoke, his face was full of mad hope, like a crazed prophet; but then his expression twisted and turned to rage.

'Lies! All lies! There are no records! I've searched everywhere, I've asked everybody, and no one's ever done any such thing! I don't even know where to start, do you understand? It's so far beyond me I can't even beginV

Jez was appalled. That had been his plan? She'd suspected that he'd left the crew to deal with the question of Bess, but this sounded like a far-fetched method of doing so, even to her. She began to worry7 that he'd taken leave of his reason altogether.

'You were trying to bring her back from the dead?'

'The dead!' he cried, pointing at her. 'That was my next thought! After all, you walk around without a pulse. Why not my Bess? But what was I to do? Her body's gone, Jez! Dust and worms! Am I supposed to murder someone else to provide her with a form? No, I couldn't. So I tried to find corpses, but when I saw them, I ... I couldn't . . . I . . .'

'Wait, you did what?

'Don't you dare judge me!' he shouted. 'Don't you dare! I'd do anything to get her back. But not that way. Not some stitched-up post-autopsy puppet of cold meat. I'd be exchanging one abomination for another. That wouldn't be my Bess. So I looked for another method, but there isn't one!' He raked his hand through his hair anxiously. 'And after that . . . after that I wondered if I could make her smarter, you know, something closer to what she once was. Spit and blood, at least that'd be something. But I don't have the slightest notion how to do it! I don't even know what I did when I put her in there!' He was pacing back and forth now, making wild gestures, so agitated that he could barely contain himself. 'And then I thought . . . I thought, what if I did rescue her from wherever she went? What if I did restore her, and my beautiful little niece woke up and looked at herself, and held up those metal hands in front of her, and realised what she was? Can you imagine such a horror? Trapped inside an unfeeling metal shell for ever, her only companion the man who put her there? It's . . . it's positively macabre! It's that kind of meddling that led to all of this in the first place!'

He stopped, stared at her, and suddenly the angry expression on his face wavered, his lip trembled and tears shimmered in his eyes. 'I can't bring her back,' he said.

'No,' said Jez. 'You can't.'

She pitied him. Blinded by guilt, desperate to atone for the crimes of his past, he'd wanted to achieve the impossible. But Bess's body was gone. He might have salvaged a part of her, but he'd never get back the girl he'd known and loved. Her skin, her hair, her smile -they'd rotted away in the grave. All he could do was move her essence from the vessel she occupied to another one. And that wasn't any kind of solution.

But he had to try. He had to prove to himself that it couldn't be done, that there was no way to save Bess. He needed to fail before he could be made to see.

'It's not as simple as life and death, Crake,' she said. 'You should know that. I'm technically dead. My heart doesn't beat. But I am Jezibeth Kyte. I'm as much Jezibeth Kyte now as I was the day the Manes caught me.' She looked at Bess: an empty7 shell, her essence departed to wherever it went when Crake sent her to sleep. 'All that you knew of your niece, all the things that made you love her . . . they're gone. Gone for good. And what lives in that suit is not that girl.'

Tears had started to fall. Crake was beginning to sob. He wiped his nose. 'Why are you telling me this, Jez?'

'Because you can't change things, Crake. What you need to realise is that your niece died that night. That golem is just a memory of her. But it's not your niece. Your niece is dead.'

Crake shook his head.

'Say it, Crake!' she urged him. 'It's been killing you every day, and it won't stop killing you until you accept it.'

'She's there!' he insisted, thrusting a finger at the armoured suit. 'I put her in there! It's up to me to get her out!'

'You can't!' said Jez, grabbing him by the shoulders. 'That over there, that's something else. And it loves you and it needs you to take care of it, but it's not your niece.''

Crake pushed her away with a moan of anguish. He spun around and lashed a mass of chemical apparatus off a nearby table, then snatched up the book he'd been copying from and hurled it at Jez. She stepped aside with ease.

'What do you know? What do you know about it?' he shouted at her. Spittle flecked his beard, and his bloodshot eyes bulged.

'I know the difference between being alive and being dead,' she said calmly. 'Better than anyone, I reckon.'

Crake rampaged around the sanctum, knocking over anything he could see. When he'd smashed or thrown anything he could lay his hands on, he wheeled drunkenly against the wall and leaned there, sweating and red and spent.

'Say it, Crake,' she said relentlessly. 'You can't save her. You don't have the power. She's dead. Say it.'

'Alright!' he said. 'She's dead! I killed her and she's dead and gone! Happy now?'

His words rang into the silence, and then his face crumpled and he began to cry. He hugged himself and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. 'She's dead,' he said again.

'You have to accept that,' Jez said. 'Accept it. Make it a part of you. Move on.'

'Easy for you to say,' he muttered. He clambered unsteadily to his feet, his face hard with disgust. 'I know why you're here. I know what all this is about. You've a daemon inside you, and you want it out.'

'Well, yes, I—'

'Well, nothing! You think I haven't considered that? All this time when I suspected you were a Mane? I was your friend, Jez. You think I hadn't wondered if I could fix you?'

Jez had a sinking feeling in her guts. 'Can you?' she asked.

'No!' he crowed. 'No! No one can! Because you died, Jez! Because your heart doesn't beat! I could drive that daemon out of you, but it's the only thing that's stopping you being actually dead. Without that daemon, you're just a corpse. Accept that! Make that a part of you!'

Jez was shocked by the viciousness in his voice, the hate on his face, the glee with which he crushed her hopes. Tears prickled at her eyes. She struggled to maintain her composure. She'd hurt him, and he wanted to hurt her back. She understood that. It didn't make it hurt any less.

No wonder he left as soon as it was clear that she was a Mane. Maybe that was the spur he needed. He didn't want her to ask him. He didn't want to tell her that there was no help for her. That she was condemned to slowly turn into something else.

She fought to come up with some kind of argument, some way to persuade him that he was wrong. But his reasoning was infallible. In fact, had Jez not been so desperate to rid herself of the invader in her body, she might have seen it herself. Even someone who knew nothing about daemonism could have worked it out. But just like Crake, she'd believed what she wanted to believe, what was necessary to keep going. And just like him, she'd been doomed to failure from the start. Some things couldn't be changed, no matter how hard you wished.

But now that she came to it, she found there was none of the disappointment or sorrow or misery she'd expected. Instead she felt a bleak, sad sort of resignation. The peace of a prisoner as they walked to the gallows, knowing that all possibility of reprieve or escape was gone. Maybe she'd always known, deep down, that there was no going back.

'Alright,' she heard herself say. 'I believe you.'

'Good,' he said.

She walked around the room. 'There's no chance.'

'None.'

'The way I am is the way I am.'

'Exactly.'

She shook herself, brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and nodded. 'Then that's how it is,' she said quietly.

Crake gazed mournfully at the empty shell of the golem. 'That's how it is,' he agreed.

She raised her head. 'We'd like you to come back, Crake.'

The daemonist surveyed the room, strewn with the wreckage of his studies. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'm finished here.'



They held a small gathering on a hillside on the way back to Iktak. There was nothing to bury, so they simply raised a marker: a slab of metal that they'd scored with one of Silo's screwdrivers.



Bessandra Crake

Beloved niece of Grayther Crake

DY138/32-147/32



The whole crew attended, except Pinn, who was no longer with them. Crake was glad of that. He'd only have asked moronic questions. The others understood well enough, though. They didn't know the dead girl, nor why Crake was honouring her now when she'd died two years ago. But they came anyway and kept silent. Because he asked them to. Because he wanted them there, and they were his friends.

And though they couldn't have failed to notice the similarity between the name on the grave and Crake's golem, he knew they'd never guess the truth. It was too terrible, too impossible. Easier to assume he'd named the golem in her memory.

On reflection, Crake decided they were right.

Bess herself - the golem Bess - stood off to one side, her ball clutched in her massive hands, shifting restlessly. She'd picked up on the mood and made sad cooing noises, but he wasn't sure whether she really fathomed what was happening here. If his niece truly was inside that armoured skin, he'd surely have seen more of a reaction. She was witnessing her own funeral, after all. But the way she behaved was no more than might be expected of a faithful dog.

The wind was warm, rippling the grass, and sunlight broke through the clouds to slide over the hills in great patches. Harkins had his cap scrunched in his hands. Malvery's head was bowed. Jez had tears in her eyes. Frey and Silo stood solemn and grim. Even the Ketty Jay, visible nearby, was a witness to this.

She's dead, he told himself. It still didn't feel true. But, on some level, something had changed. He'd begun to feel that, if he repeated it enough, he'd believe it. That was something, at least. That was hope.

No words were spoken. They simply stood and stared at the grave-marker. Silently sharing the emptiness of death.

After a time, Crake stooped and laid a small toy at the foot of the marker. A doll that he'd bought in Tarlock Cove. Bess had always been enchanted by the toys he bought for her. He used to pretend he made them himself, in his secret basement. It explained what he was doing in the wine cellar of her father's house, night after night. It had been her desire to see his mythical toy workshop that led her to sneak into his sanctum, on the night that was to end her life.

He heard the rustle and clank of leather and metal, and felt Bess arrive next to him. She looked down at the grave-marker, tiny glimmers of light glittering behind her faceplate. Then she bent down, and put her ball next to the doll.

Crake choked back a sudden sob. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and smiled at her, as best he could. He put his hand on the cold armour plate of her shoulder and patted it.

'Good girl, Bess,' he said.

Then he turned away from the grave, to face the sympathetic gazes of his friends. He pulled in a deep breath, raised his head, and nodded.

'I'm ready,' he said. 'Let's go get Grist.'