Justin Richards - The Death Collector

‘And what is he up to. More or less?’ Liz asked.

Sir William was filling glass flasks and beakers from a tap over a small sink at the back of the room. ‘Help me stopper these up, will you. I’d like an impressive collection ready for when the time comes.’ He had taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Satisfied that Eddie and George were able to put the rubber stoppers into the flasks and cover the beakers with glass lids, he turned to Liz.

‘Lorimore has coupled his fascination with modern technology with his love of fossils and dinosaur discoveries. His plan, it would seem, is to create a dinosaur for the modern age. A work animal that has the strength and power of the dinosaurs, the reliability and stamina of British steam technology, and the intelligence and intuition of humans. Although I think he has some way of regulating the brains of his subjects …’ Sir William paused, then corrected himself. ‘Or rather, his victims. I believe from Albert Wilkes’s behaviour that so far complete control of the individual has eluded him. He can either leave the reasoning faculties intact, along with their free will, or he can assume control — as he does with that monster — but at the cost of any individual thought and initiative.’

‘But why is he doing it at all?’ George asked as he arranged the last of the flasks on a small table.

‘I would guess, from what I know of his character and ambition, that his ultimate aim is to ensure that the British Empire endures for a thousand or more years. And that he, Augustus Lorimore, plays a prominent role in its governance.’ Sir William smiled thinly. ‘It may sound a trifle melodramatic, and I doubt if he has thought of it in entirely these terms, but I believe that Lorimore wants to rule the world.’ He surveyed the collection of flasks and beakers. ‘Yes, I think that will do for now.’

‘It’s just water,’ Eddie said.

‘You and I know that,’ Sir William said. ‘But don’t tell anyone else, will you?’ He looked up sharply as the handle of the door rattled.

A moment later, something crashed into it, shattering the lock. The door moved barely an inch, stopped by the heavy workbench. The bench shifted slightly, with a scraping sound, pushed backwards by whatever was on the other side of the door.

‘His ultimate goal,’ Sir William went on, apparently unperturbed, ‘must be to somehow recreate the animal and achieve a true marriage of living dinosaur and technology. But to do that he would need more than dead bones and corpse’s brains. He will need some living tissue, some animal material that has survived down the millennia and could still be viable.’

‘Viable?’ George echoed. ‘For what?’

‘Why, to breed from. To grow and harvest cells that can be transplanted on to his mechanical frames and driven by his engines. He doesn’t want to spend forever working with the bodies of the dead. No, no, no. He wants to create life.’ The workbench slid back another inch. ‘You know, I don’t think he wants to stop at ruling the Empire,’ Sir William said thoughtfully. ‘He also wants to be God.’

The workbench shivered, then shifted again. Slowly but inexorably, a gap was appearing. An arm — huge and bulging with muscles — poked through the gap, an enormous hand feeling round.

‘And these employees of his,’ Liz said, anxiously watching the hand as it fumbled over the door frame, ‘you implied they were somehow enhanced in this way.’

‘The strength of a dinosaur in the body of a man,’ Sir William said quietly. ‘Demonstrably the case, wouldn’t you say? Now all he needs is the ability to breed rather than manufacture. So much more efficient.’

The workbench was still slipping slowly back. The door was opening further. Something was heaving itself through the gap, the top of the door bending as it forced its way through. A head appeared, huge and bony. Eyes glittered with malevolent triumph as the man — if he was a man — stared at Sir William and the others.

‘Now I wouldn’t stand there too long, if I were you,’ Sir William said. He had picked up one of the flasks and was holding it up so the man could see it clearly. He agitated it, letting the clear liquid inside slosh about. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘It’s water, innit?’ The man’s voice was a deep gravel-rasp.

‘Certainly it looks like it. But as you will discover if you come through that door and force me to throw this at you, it is nothing so benign.’

The man was frowning, unsure what Sir William was telling him.

‘I suggest you tell whoever is in charge out there that we are willing to listen to any reasonable request or offer. But if any of you so much as set a foot through that door again, then he will get a face-full of concentrated sulphuric acid. Now perhaps you don’t know what that would do to you. How it would blister and burn and destroy your face before eating into your brain, or what Lorimore has left you of it. But I suspect your employer will. So you might want to check with him before we close up the breach with your steaming dead.’

The man stared at them for several seconds. Eddie was holding his breath. If he forced his way into the room, he would soon discover that the flasks and beakers held only water. What then?

Sir William sighed, raised the flask. ‘Very well,’ he said sadly, and drew his arm back ready to hurl the flask.

But the man was gone.

‘Now what?’ Liz asked.

‘Now, I hope, Lorimore will be forced to offer us some sort of deal. Something which may give a further clue as to what he is after. Remember, we still have something he wants.’

‘But,’ George said slowly, ‘how badly does he want it?’

The answer came barely a minute later. A clanking, hissing, thumping from the corridor outside. Mechanical and rhythmic, like the mechanism of a gigantic clock. But organic too — breathing, sighing, a sore-throat scraping like someone trying to speak through unbearable pain.

‘It can’t be that monster,’ Eddie said. ‘It would never get down the passage.’

‘Our mistake was perhaps in assuming he had just the one monster,’ Sir William admitted quietly.

The door was flung fully open. The workbench was shoved backwards by the impact. Steam blew through the doorway and hung warm and oily in the air. Through the smog, a shape slowly solidified as it approached. Every step was measured, deliberate, accompanied by a breath of steam and a whirr of gears.

It was something that George had seen before, albeit in its component pieces — at Lorimore’s foundry. Waiting to be assembled into exoskeleton frames like this. But what confronted them now was not merely the metal frame that had been assembled at the foundry.

‘Two lines of experimentation,’ Sir William said, nodding sadly. ‘Replacing the bones internally, or this — an exoskeleton to strengthen the existing body even as it rots away.’ He shook his head, more sad than afraid. ‘Grotesque,’ he murmured. ‘Devilish.’

The exoskeleton, as Sir William called it, was like an enlarged human figure. It was crude and distorted, like a child’s drawing outlining the figure held inside, keeping it rigid and upright. Its limbs were bulky and long, iron bolts and supports erupting from the pale bone and connecting them to the metal frame. When the man moved, so the heavy metal frame around him also moved. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Steam hissed out from the joints — from the elbows, knees, shoulders …

Worst of all was the face. A deathly white face, drawn and emaciated. The cheekbones all but poking through the parchment-thin translucent skin. The remains of a tangle of white hair flopped uncertainly to one side, away from the scars and stitches across the scalp.