Dan Simmons - Drood

“Mr Lazaree?” said Dickens, stepping closer to the cross-legged man. “Or should I say King Lazaree?”

“Welcome, Mr Dickens,” said the figure. “And welcome to Mr Collins as well.”

I took a step back at hearing my name spoken in such perfect and unaccented English from this pure stereotype of Yellow Peril. In truth, I realised later, his English had been lightly accented… but it was a Cambridge accent.

Dickens laughed softly. “You knew we were coming.”

“Of course,” said King Lazaree the Chinee. “Very little occurs in Bluegate Fields or Shadwell or Whitechapel or London itself, for that matter, that I do not hear about. News of a visit from someone of your fame and eminence… and I include both of you literary gentlemen, of course, in that phrase… is conveyed to me almost instantly.”

Dickens made a slight but graceful bow. I could only stare. I realised that I was still holding the unlighted candle in my left hand.

“Then you know why we have come down here,” said Dickens.

King Lazaree nodded.

“Will you help us find him?” continued Dickens. “Drood, I mean.”

Lazaree held up one open hand. I was shocked to see that the fingernails on that hand must have been six inches long. And curved. The nail on the little finger of that hand was at least twice that long.

“The benefit of Undertown,” said King Lazaree, “is that those who wish not to be disturbed here are not disturbed. It is the one understanding that we share with the dead who surround us here.”

Dickens nodded as if this made eminent sense. “Is this Undertown?” he asked.

It was King Lazaree’s turn to laugh. Unlike Opium Sal’s dry rattle, the Chinaman’s laughter was easy and liquid and rich. “Mr Dickens, this is a simple opium den in a simple catacomb. Our customers once came from—and returned to—the world above, but now most prefer to stay here through the years and decades. But Undertown? No, this is not Undertown. One might say that this is the foyer to the antechamber of the porch of the vestibule of Undertown.”

“Will you help us find it… and him? ” asked Dickens. “I know you do not wish to disturb the other… ah… inhabitants of this world, but Drood let me know that he wanted me to find him.”

“And how did he do that?” asked King Lazaree. I admit to being curious on that point myself.

“By going out of his way to introduce himself to me,” said Dickens. “By telling me where in London he was going. By creating such a mystery around himself that he knew I would try to find him.”

The Chinaman on the wooden couch did not nod or blink. I realised then that I could not remember seeing him blink during this entire interview. His dark eyes seemed as glassy and lifeless as those belonging to the mummified figures on the benches all around us. When Lazaree did finally speak, it was in a lower tone, as if he were debating with himself.

“It would be very unfortunate if either of you gentlemen were to write and publish anything about our subterranean world here. You see how fragile it is… and how easily accessible.”

I thought of Hatchery’s having to put his heavy shoulder so energetically to the crypt bier that hid the upper doorway, about the barely visible path in the red dust to the invisible door in the iron grate, about the narrowness and eeriness of the stairway descending to this level, and the labyrinth we had traversed just to find this second opium den.… All in all, I was not so sure I agreed with the Chinaman king about the accessibility of this place.

Dickens appeared to, however. He nodded and said, “My interest is in finding Drood. Not in writing about this place.” He turned to me. “You feel the same, do you not, Mr Collins?”

I was able to grunt and let the King of the Opium Living Dead take that as he wished. I was a novelist. Everything and everyone in my life was material. Certainly this writer whom I stood next to in the candlelight here had already proven that maxim more than had any other writer of our or any other age. How could he speak for me and say that I would never write about such an extraordinary place? How could he speak honestly for himself and say such a thing… this man who had turned his father, mother, sad figure of a wife, former friends, and former lovers into mere grist for his fictional-character wheel?

King Lazaree lowered his head and silken cap ever so slowly. “It would be very unfortunate if some harm were to come to you, Mr Dickens, or you, Mr Collins, while you were our guests here or explorers of Undertown beyond here.”

“We feel precisely the same way!” said Dickens. He sounded almost merry.

“Yet no guarantees for your safety can be made beyond this point,” continued the Chinaman. “You will understand when… if … you proceed.”

“We ask for no guarantees,” said Dickens. “Only for advice on how and where to proceed.”

“You do not fully understand,” said King Lazaree, his voice sounding harsh and Asiatic for the first time. “ If something were to happen to one of you gentlemen, the other would not be allowed to return to the world above to write, tell, and testify about it.”

Dickens looked at me again. He turned back to Lazaree. “We understand,” he said.

“Not completely,” said the thin Buddha-figure. “If something were to happen to both of you down here—and if it were to happen to one, as you now understand, it must happen to both—your bodies will be found elsewhere. In the Thames, to be precise. Along with Detective Hatchery’s. The detective already understands this. It is imperative that you also do before you decide to proceed.”

Dickens looked at me again but did not ask a question. To be honest, I would have preferred at that instant that we retire for a moment to discuss the matter and to take a vote. To be completely honest, I would have preferred at that moment that we simply bid the Opium Chinaman King a pleasant evening and have retired altogether—up out of that underground charnel house and back into the fresh night air, even if that fresh air carried the stinking miasma of the overcrowded burial ground that Dickens called St Ghastly Grim’s.

“We understand,” Dickens was saying earnestly to the Chinaman. “We agree to the conditions. But we still wish to go on, down into Undertown, and to find Mr Drood. How do we do that, King Lazaree?”

I was in such shock at Dickens having made this life-and-death decision for me without so much as a consultation or by-your-leave that I heard Lazaree’s response as if from a great, muffled distance.

“Je suis un grand partisan de l’ordre,” the Chinaman was saying or reciting.

“Mais je n’aime pas celui-ci.

Il peint un éternel désordre,

Et, quand il vous consigne ici,

Dieu jamais n’en révoque l’ordre.”

“Very good,” replied Dickens, although, in my shock at Dickens’s speaking for me, at Dickens’s having gambled my life along with his in such cavalier fashion, I had not understood a word of the French.

“And how and where do we find this eternal disorder and order?” continued Dickens.

“Understanding that even eternal disorder has a perfect order such as Wells, find the apse and the altar and descend behind the rude screen,” said King Lazaree.

“Yes,” said Dickens, nodding as if he understood and even glancing at me as if telling me to take notes.

“All that they boast of Styx, of Acheron,” recited Lazaree,

“Cocytus, Phlegethon, our have proved in one:

The filth, stench, noise; save only what was there