Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
English bastards came for my ancestral lands.
Queen Elizabeth broke promises to do it, too.
So, I harbor no affection for London’s ruling class, neither in the Strata nor in the world above.
Nay, give me a good rebellion, the likes of which I and my Irish lords put forth. That’ll keep authority honest.
—Chancellor Grace O’Malley, statement on rumors of a Shiguan uprising
I slept past noon. Once I’d got to Henry’s books the night before, I was up reading ’til four in the morning. I grabbed a hot shower and snaked some cold kidney pie from the kitchen fridge. By two o’clock I felt almost normal again.
Everyone met in the Horse venue about quarter of three, all geared up. I checked to be sure Church had plenty of coin on him. Then, without much fanfare, we popped the hatch at the side of the stage and headed back down to the Strata to confront my would-be abductor.
As I descended the Abyssal Steps, my head started to pound, and I began to feel dizzy. Not far from the Modern Stratum door, lost memories pushed at me . . .
. . . Henry and I are lying on the Iron Horse roof, hoping to see a meteor. I tell him I did a science project on meteorites as a kid. Henry says he wishes he knew me back then . . .
I clutched the handrail and shuffled to the stratum door, traced the password, and we hurried inside. Music roared from the stage—thank the metal gods—softening the ache in my head. When we got out onto Manette Street, Chuey stopped and bent over. He had his rosary out and was working the beads.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Why, you going to carry me?” He smiled. “I just know how delicate you are—”
He gave me the metal salute and we got moving.
Neon billboard lights blazed with color as we turned on Charing Cross and ran south toward the Cambridge Circus Cinematograph Theatre, weaving through pedestrians and dodging trash bins.
Ahead I spotted the white flashing bulbs of the Cinematograph marquee and pulled my lantern and bow. My friends readied their weapons, too.
But as we drew closer, something seemed off, or rather, normal.
Nothing was on fire. Madam was nowhere to be seen, and no thanatists were battering the ward with light.
Just semblances doing what people normally do, a few even going into the theater.
The marquee above them showed three features: The Bright Path, London Today, and Paul Rutherford’s Swing Kings.
I wondered if someone had given Emaline bad information. “Let’s check inside,” I said.
Just short of the doors, we passed through the Iron Horse ward and stopped.
“Jack,” said Church, “the ward’s south end used to extend another few streets.”
Whatever this Madam was doing to contract the ward, it was happening from inside the theater, but going in cold seemed foolish.
“Lakshmi, will you see if there’s a rear entrance?” I pointed at the adjacent alley. “Come in behind any trouble we might encounter?”
“Wise plan,” she said.
As she disappeared up the street, I pushed through the theater door.
Unlike the topside Cinematograph, the Modern Stratum version of the theater was rife with the fresh smell of popcorn and hot dogs.
Old movie broadsides hung in the lobby bearing emphatic titles and men in uniform.
A young woman stood behind the concession counter reading Crime and Punishment.
We cut left to the far aisle entrance and quietly pushed into the dark theater.
Motes shone like tiny fireflies in the bright beam streaming down from the projection room.
An almost entirely full house of semblances sat watching the title credits of London Today.
Then an old-time newsreel, complete with melodramatic voice-over, began to play.
But it was showing news and video footage from the topside world—popular film and television programs set in London’s past, national museum adjunct-education videos, university enrollment campaigns for history departments.
The crowd began to jeer and toss popcorn at the screen.
On the screen, a figure stepped to a lectern.
It was Morris Williams, London’s Minister of State for Creative Industries, Media, and Arts.
Williams was one of the bodies I’d seen in Bazalgette’s watery graveyard.
In the film here now, I could see his binding threads.
Williams introduced himself and then tore into a litany of complaints decrying topside London, gesturing wildly but with a rehearsed familiarity.
The audience were now stomping the floor and shouting.
“I’ve seen Williams speak,” I said. “That semblance moves and sounds just like him.”
“Not just a semblance,” said Church. “Rumor is Brach has developed some kind of projection technology and trained highly specialized seamsters in the art of using film to craft perfect replicas known as mummers. I’ve never seen one . . . until now.”
The semblances on the theater floor stopped shouting and started cheering as the force of Williams’s speech overtook them—his words hypnotic.
“Damn it all,” Lady muttered. “Jack, most of these semblances were Iron Horse folk on this Stratum. Good people. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have stayed inside the ward. They’re exposed now.”
Cassius leaned close and whispered in my ear.
“No, Jack, they are converted.” Propaganda.
Brach was showing people how the topside world was abusing the Strata, and using perfect replicas of significant public figures to speak out against topside tyranny.
It was recruitment. It would grow his influence and army.
And here, close to the ward, it had also wooed away Horse patrons whose light now would no longer help keep that ward strong.
Things were spiraling fast toward Brach’s revolution.
The mummer whipped the crowd into a frenzy. They cheered and hooted and clapped so loud I could barely hear myself think.
“The projection room,” I said, and dashed back toward the lobby. I’m not sure my friends heard me, but they followed.
We rushed up the long, winding steps and circled past the balcony to the upper level. I stepped out onto a broad mezzanine. Dim floor lights illuminated worn red carpeting leading to the door of the projection booth. Behind it the reels of spooling film rattled on their spindles.
We were ten feet from the booth when the door opened, and three vestiges emerged. No sign of Madam.
“You’re tresspassin’, mate,” said one with a mohawk and pierced nose as he unraveled an iron-corded net. “But no worries. We’ll teach you where to piss.”
Cassius, Chuey, and Lady formed a line in front of me.
Church hung back by my side. The two lines crashed together.
Chuey got in a wicked blow with his macuahuitl, dropping Mr. Mohawk to the carpet.
Cassius overwhelmed the hulking vestige who came at him, with a quick parry and a slash across the throat.
A short, muscular woman snared Lady in an iron net, then dove at her with a knife.
I grabbed the net and yanked it back, just before Lady took a blade to the head.
As Church pulled Lady free, the muscular woman ducked back inside the projection room.
The sound of a bolt being thrown came muffled through the door.
I rushed the door and drop-kicked it. Wood splinters exploded from the doorframe, and the door swung open. Cassius followed me in.
The muscular woman dropped the phone she was holding and crouched into a fighting stance.
The projectionist behind her, a gangly young man with long hair, slowly turned to look at me.
A cigarette stub moldered in his lips, smoke wafting up into his bloodshot eyes.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in fifty years, but raised some kind of thin rod and pressed a button—blue lightning crackled at its tip.
“Nothing stops the show, eh?” the man drawled in a Cockney accent.
From the house speakers, the newsreel voice of Minister Williams proclaimed in strident tones, “Art and music and theater must fulfill their moral obligation to depict our progenitors not to the mortal world’s advantage, but to our eternal reality. ”
Cassius disarmed the woman and slammed her to the ground.
I charged the cigarette man, pulling my leather bag and whipping it at the electric prod, knocking it aside.
Then I dove for the projector table, shoved the machine, and toppled the table for good measure.
It all crashed down, bulbs popping and reels spooling out over the floor.
An electric scent filled the suddenly silent booth.
The theatergoers below us booed. A second later, the theater filled with a warm red light, and a low metallic hum filled the air.
I scrambled up to the projection window and peered down into the theater.
Madam stood stage left, slowly bowing her lantern.
She wore her broad-cuffed coat, her infinity scarf, and her tricornered hat.
But her hair was down—she looked “show-ready.”
Her lamplight pulsed on every surface of the large venue. Then the lighting rigs came on in cool blues and violets, and a swing band appeared onstage playing a Tommy Dorsey tune. No load-in. No soundcheck. Just there. paul rutherford’s swing kings, a banner behind them read.
The bandleader started to rip some crazy licks with his trombone. Semblances shot to their feet, crowded down to the stage, and danced in the aisles. Madam ceased playing her lantern and smiled up at me through the theater haze.
Then a gentleman with greased-back hair took the stage and began crooning a flag song to the tune of “O Christmas Tree,” in counterpoint to the Swing Kings. The two pieces of music rose like voices in disagreement—the sound of dissent. The cacophony riled the crowd into gyrating and fist-pumping.
I’d never heard such a combination of traditional folk melodies overlaid with stately rhythms like parade marches.
It was more than just sound. It got inside me, carrying me along.
I stared out the projection window, suddenly wondering whether the Iron Horse was really worth this much fighting and bad blood.
“Jack?” Cassius’s deep voice rang at my ear, disrupting the music’s flow, snapping me from its pull.
I rushed to the wall, picked up the house phone, and hit the PA button. Then, I unleashed the heaviest metal scream I could muster and beat the phone against the wall in a furious rhythm: “Why are you so shameless!” Slam. Slam. Slam. Slam. “Why are you so shameless!”
The theater crowd began to scream and shout. The Swing Kings stopped swinging.
Madam was still smiling up the side aisle at me, as the mob began to point my way and started to shout, “Get him!”