George Mann - The Immorality Engine

He stood back, inspecting his own handiwork. “Fascinating.”

Victoria’s head snapped around to regard him. Her eyes flashed with anger. Her tone changed seamlessly from whimsical to commanding. “We are not one of your little experiments, Fabian. You’d do well to remember that.”

Fabian bristled. He felt little beads of sweat form under his hairline; it was hot inside the audience chamber. “Yes, Your Majesty. Of course. I merely seek to understand so that I may help-”

Victoria waved her hand dismissively as she cut him off. “Prattle and poppycock. We know how your mind works, Doctor. Do not dare to attempt to placate me with platitudes and fabrications. My body may be faltering, but my mind is not. You consider me a puzzle, a medical aberration to be solved. On occasion that perspective has proved beneficial to one’s situation. But you must never forget we are also your Queen, and we demand and insist on your respect.”

Fabian offered a tight-lipped smile. “You command and always will command my enduring support, devotion, and respect, Your Majesty.”

Victoria almost spat at him. “More platitudes. We fear, Fabian, that your opinion of your own importance has become somewhat overblown. You are a physician. Nothing more. Remember your place.”

Fabian took a deep breath and fought against the rising tide of anger that pushed at the limits of his patience. The woman was insufferable. He had saved her life! He had constructed the life-support system that had single-handedly ensured her survival. The only one who understood how to keep her breathing. The one who had given her a clockwork heart. The Victorian Empire endured because of him. She would do well to remember that.

It was within Fabian’s power to end Victoria’s reign with the flick of a hidden switch that he had incorporated into her life-giving chair during its construction. A safety measure, he had told himself. A means of ensuring that if it all went wrong, there was a way out. He’d initially considered this a precaution in case the surgery that had welded her to the chair had failed, but now he dreamed of the day he might trip that switch, and smiled secretly at the notion that it was he, not the Queen, who held the real power in the room.

Outwardly, however, he bowed his head and mumbled an apology, allowing the Queen to consider him admonished. Now was not the time to reveal his secrets. But there would come a point when it would prove necessary for him to assert that power. The thought galvanised him.

Victoria’s breath was rasping and dry. Fabian tentatively approached her chair and leaned in, making an adjustment to the intravenous fluid system that kept her hydrated. Close up, she smelled of stale sweat and chemicals, preservatives. He wondered whether her maids were washing her and changing her dressings as regularly as he had ordered. He would quietly check with them later.

“So? What news from the Grayling Institute?” This, then, was the real purpose of his summons.

Fabian stepped back from the chair. The bellows hissed and wheezed. He looked down at Victoria, meeting her gaze. He tried to keep the defiance out of his expression. “Things… progress. While the engine has proved ineffective on nearly all of our patients, on the girl it is finally beginning to work.”

Victoria rubbed her hands together with something approaching delight. The grin on her face was obscene.

Fabian swallowed and continued. “Seven days. Seven days is the longest we’ve achieved so far. But I am hopeful the duration will increase with further testing.”

“Why do they fail?”

Fabian shrugged. “The girl is frail and sickly. Her… special talents are a tremendous drain on her physical well-being.”

“We are not interested in her physical well-being. Her talents, however, are of much interest.”

“We are learning a great deal, Your Majesty. A great deal. But I have yet to identify exactly why the engine works on the girl and no one else, and whether those talents are part of the reason for our success. These are the two areas that concern me most: the long-term viability of the… product, and how to replicate the success with another subject. I would not want to risk causing any lasting harm to, let us say, a more significant patient…”

The Queen gave a sickly laugh. “You always were of a cowardly persuasion, Doctor, too keen to keep your own neck off the block.” She looked suddenly serious. “Ensure the machine is fully operational within a week. We grow weary of waiting.” She laughed again, but this time it was spiked with menace. “And close your mouth, won’t you? It’s unbecoming.”

Fabian, stunned, stammered out his reply, pushing his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. “But that’s impossible, Your Majesty. Absolutely impossible. Seven days! Our success has been incredibly limited so far. We’re making headway, yes. But a week! I simply can’t do it. We’ll need months of testing and experimentation before we’re even close to being operational!”

Victoria’s expression hardened. “You will do as we say, Fabian.” She used his name as a curse. “You will go from here and you will not return until the device is in full working order.” She seemed to consider her next statement carefully. “Double the amount of testing on the girl.”

Even Fabian felt himself blanch at this. “But Majesty, it will kill her.”

“We are not concerned with whether she lives or dies, so long as the tests prove successful. Identify the factor that separates her from the others. Discover the reason for your recent success. Go to work.” With this she turned her cheek to him and waved a hand in casual dismissal.

Fabian remained still for a moment, unsure how to respond. He wanted to rage at her for the ridiculous nature of her demands, her arrogance. But he knew he could not win that particular battle. He ground his teeth, dug his nails into the palms of his hands. Victoria resolutely refused to look in his direction; as far as she was concerned, their business was over and he had ceased to exist.

Fuming, and filled with a frustrating sense of impotence, Fabian turned on his heel and stalked out of the audience chamber, leaving Victoria chuckling to herself in her chair. He would do her bidding. For now. He could do nothing else. But the time would come for him to assert his dominance. And that time was growing closer by the day.

Packworth House, the building frequented by the members of the Bastion Society, was perhaps the most grandiose clubhouse that Veronica had ever seen. Not, she admitted to herself, that she’d seen the insides of many gentlemen’s clubs in her time.

Nevertheless, this one in particular had an air of the spectacular about it, unlike most of the more austere establishments that she’d had the misfortune to frequent. Even Newbury’s club, the White Friar’s, with all its writers and artists and bohemian types, had nothing on this place. She looked around in barely disguised wonder. The money that must have been spent…

They were standing in a huge saloon, a hall that could have seated three to four hundred people. Tables were placed with unusual precision, according to some prosaic pattern that she supposed would really be discernible only from the wide baroque balcony that ran around the entire perimeter of the space, high above her head. A large marble surround, depicting characters from classical myth, enclosed a roaring fire, even this early in the day. Tall vases stood to either side of it and were filled with plumes of bright emu and peacock feathers, their multifaceted eyes watching her with unblinking interest.

Servants bustled amongst the tables, still clearing away debris from the prior evening’s festivities, which-from the look of the place-had evidently been a riotous banquet of some kind. And before the little group of Crown investigators, greeting them in a haughty but polite manner, was Sir Enoch Graves, the club’s premier.