Time's Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page A

acoustics of the chamber until the glass itself resonated with the harmonics of the clapping.
    The Palace of Illusion.
    The Glass House of Lies.
    It all fell into place. It was the answer to all of his prayers.
    He saw Balthazar looking at him, his smile warm. He nodded at the silent message that passed between them. The Magister was right; the unveiling had been of particular interest to him. He was shaking as he stood up, his applause every bit as awed and heartfelt as the applause from anyone else in the room, but more urgent.
    He wanted to ask: “Why? Why have you done this?”
    But he knew in science there was no why, no because, beyond the straightforward: “Because we can. Because it is there. Because we must. Because all flesh is dust, and to dust returns and we none of us dream of death.”
    When all of the Pandemonium had died down and the good people had filed away back to their lives abuzz with the miracle of this mechanical resurrection, Josiah sought out the Magister. He stood beside his clockwork creations, greasing the mechanisms and preparing to box them away for shipping to the next show on their tour schedule, up North. The boxes were disturbingly similar to coffins, he thought, watching them crate up the false Queen.
    “Did you enjoy our little performance, brother? A silly question, of course you did. We owe it all to you, of course,” Balthazar said. “It was your loss that set us to thinking: why must we always lose what we love? Why must we grieve? Science cannot grant immortality, the flesh is weak after all, the valves and pumps of the machine we inhabit are weak, fashioned to fail, but …” he let it hang there between them, unsaid. Imagine a world where the dead could walk on, every day, at our sides, in our lives as more than memory. All the talk had been of farming out the thankless chores to the automata, but the truth of it was far more sentimental.
    “I must have one,” Josiah said simply.
    “Of course, brother. She is yours, she always was and now, thanks to us, she always will be.”
    O O O
    Josiah Bloome provided the Queen’s artist with fifty sepia-tinged photographs of Annabel Leigh, catching her likeness from every angle. In some she was beautiful, in others plain. It depended upon the light and the skill of the photographer and, of course, her mood when the lens had been directed her way. He took the man on a guided tour of the places she loved, explaining what made each special to her in the hope that the man could add her essence to her beauty. It was a curious thing to do, of course, but he asked himself one simple question: what is a woman but the sum of her memories?
    A system of gears and cogs and valves?
    A system of organs and blood vessels, muscle and tendon?
    Organic or inorganic, a machine was a machine.
    He shuddered at the thought, needing to believe that there was some way the artist, in many ways one of the very greatest the Aesthetic Movement had to offer, could imbue his new Annabel Leigh with all that had been, all he knew and all they had shared.
    It was a gift and a curse.
    He visited the artist in his studio, surrounded by the oils and watercolours that would make him famous.
    “You must tell no one of this,” he urged Waterhouse.
    The artist, nodded, working his peculiar magic with the mixture.
    “I am in earnest, man. You must never record in a journal or diary what you do for me now. There is something ungodly about it. I fear posterity would not look kindly upon us.”
    “And yet you have me raise the dead,” the artist said.
    “I miss her with all of my heart,” Josiah Bloome said. There was no other explanation he could offer.
    The man worked in his house of wax, fashioning her skin for the mechanical frame to wear. The place had a smell to it that Bloome came to think of as life. The recreation was perfect in every way. The man was a genius. In his hands she was born again. He watched as her nose and her eyes, her lips and her smile were