DOYLE

Pot and the Kettle

YOU THINK YOU’RE the first, the original, the only Black Widow? (No matter who she claimed to be, the name so suited.) Doyle’s eyes wandered back to the examination tables. Pot and the kettle, that.

“What? I …” Meredith warded off Black Widow’s words with an upraised hand. “That’s not true.” She repeated it, as if mortaring the words in place, then looked to her husband. “Is it?” As if hearing the question in her voice, she said, “No, of course not.” When McDermott didn’t respond, she turned to Black Widow. “I understand why you believe that. He creates you to think that way.”

“Creates us?” It was the little girl, Emma. She’d bunched a shawl under Tony’s head and now stood alongside Rima. “All of us? How?”

“Wait a minute,” Doyle said, breaking silence at the same instant Chad said, “Whoa, hold on a sec.” In his cell, the other Tony said, “What, what?”

“Yes. I know, it’s a lot to digest.” Meredith’s face softened a little. “All writers take bits and pieces of real life for their stories. Some of you have more than others, that’s all. But that’s why this all feels so real. Why people who read his books fall into the page, get lost in the story.” A small laugh bubbled past her lips. “A little like us, I guess, although we only visit for short times, never …” Her eyes ticked over the iron bars of that cage, and then she slicked her lips. “We only visit,” she repeated.

“Visit?” Emma echoed, and Doyle saw that Elizabeth, too, had come to attention. “How do you get in and out?” the little girl asked.

Meredith went on as if she hadn’t heard. “The really good stories always cling to you afterward, too. It’s this little click in your head. You can’t shake the narrative, but walk around in a haze; the world doesn’t feel real. It’s as if, well …” Her shrug was almost apologetic. “You and your world jump off the page.”

“Jump off the bloody page?” Doyle went hot with anger. “What the shite you talking about?”

Careful, Doyle. Black Dog’s tone held no mockery now. Think hard before you go any further. Think of me and how I came to be.

Doyle paid it no mind. “This is real because it is. What, you think we don’t feel nothing, suffer …” Nothing. He flicked his tongue over the no-taste blood on his lips. He thought back to the humbug, the nothing that was the hag, the ginger-haired sergeant and constables with no faces and brass smears where there ought to be numbers. Battle’s tasteless whiskey or brandy or whatever it had been. How nothing smelled like nothing, not even his sweat anymore. Kramer had said the serum would bring clarity and strip away artifice. He said he’d wash my mind. Doyle could feel himself going cold all over. Turn my mind into a clean slate.

And hadn’t he felt that happening? The layers peeling off?

My God, it could be, couldn’t it? Wasn’t artifice what a writer did? Gave a character or house or place a cursory description, a few choice bits of history to make it believable? But then that’s all there is. Take that away and there’s nothing. Give him a serum and then layer upon layer of life as he knew it sloughed to reveal the one moment—that little nugget—that was the nexus about which everything else that was Doyle had been crafted. That damned hovel. My father. The moment I …

And then Black Dog had taken on true substance, as if it were his core. No, that’s got to be wrong. Shite. He was sweating rivers. I’m letting them confuse me, that’s all. Hang on, hang on, Doyle. This is shite; it’s all bloody shite.

Ohhhh, poppet. Black Dog leaned into him, and maybe they were propping each other up after all, one feeding off the other. Think of it this way: you’ll always have me.

“What I don’t understand is, why, Frank?” Meredith looked up at her husband. “And don’t tell me I’m imagining things. I’m not insane or delusional.”

“Oh no,” Black Widow drawled. “You only slit your wrists as an amusement.”

“Shut up,” McDermott said, though without much force.

“That,” Meredith said to Black Widow, “has nothing to do with you. What you are and what this place is has no bearing on me or my life.”

“You can look me in the eye and say that? How do you know that he hasn’t made you to believe that you’re real and sane and a person, just as he has these others?” Black Widow said.

“Ohhh, no.” Meredith let out a weak laugh. “I’m not going to get into what-ifs with you. We can argue this all day, but facts are facts. I’m real. No one made me out of words.”

“But I am real!” Little Emma shouted. “I’m bleeding. It hurts. Tony’s dying. Of course we’re real.”

“No, not quite.” Kramer put a hand on his chest. “Only some of us here are the genuine article: fully fleshed-out, real people. Ingenious, too, how Franklin’s managed to meld fact with fiction, reality with fantasy. As for the rest of you and all your many copies …” From a pocket, he pulled that glass bauble on a beaded chain. “All we need now is the Mirror. Once Franklin shows us how to reintegrate your energies, we’ll use the cynosure to guide us, track down any doppelgängers that remain. Rid of its fictions, this world will stabilize.”

“Cynosure? That?” Meredith’s laugh had more heart this time. “It’s a fake; it’s got no power. I’ve got the cynosure. Not on me, but back where …,” Meredith began, but then McDermott cut her off: “Kramer, you and I both know you’ve always had that.”

“What?” Meredith threw him a startled glance. “Why would you write them a copy?”

Write? Doyle could feel the scream taking shape in his throat. Bloody fucking write?

Her husband ignored her. “What’s changed, Kramer?”

“Come now, Franklin. Don’t be willfully stupid. You know it’s her.” Tipping his head at Elizabeth, Kramer let the glass bead and chain dribble onto a nearby instrument stand. “Emma brought the power through the shadows. She’s always been strongest.”

“Me?” Emma said.

“What you’ll become, child, not who you are at this moment,” Kramer said.

“You mean, like me but older?” Emma stared at Elizabeth. “Like time travel?”

“No.” When her mouth moved, Elizabeth’s entire visage trembled. “Tony’s right, Emma. I think this is an alternate reality.”

“Oh.” The little girl was all eyes. “A parallel universe? A different timeline?”

I can’t even pretend to understand that. Doyle armed sweat from his forehead. Reality is reality. Time is time.

Think, though, poppet, how changeless everything is here, Black Dog said. The only reason you’re convinced of time’s passing is when there is a slight change. It grows lighter or darker. But that’s all perception, how your brain works, not because of time. Every moment under and in the heavens is now, poppet.

“Emma?” Meredith laughed again. “There is no Emma. Frank gave her up.”

“But I’m here,” Emma said.

“Yes, I see that, but Emma was only an experiment …” Meredith’s voice suddenly died.

“You were saying?” Kramer prompted. “About an experiment?”

“Yes.” Meredith’s mouth worked as if the lips were unwilling to let what was on her tongue escape. “Frank’s always been fascinated with the idea of setting one of you characters in motion, by yourself. If he left you unfinished but not sealed in a Peculiar … if he allowed you to actually leap from the page, you might … Frank.” Her hand whitened on his arm. “Goddamn it, you didn’t. You promised.”

“It’s not what you think,” McDermott said, his voice rough.

He’s not angry. More anguished, Doyle thought. As if his world is falling apart. Doyle nearly laughed out loud. Well, join the bloody club, boy-o.

“Yes.” Black Widow’s mouth moved in a bitter half-moon. “Our Franklin is so very good at keeping his promises. Open your eyes, Meredith. Aren’t these others, these children, proof of just how often he pops in for a visit?”

“Pops in?” Meredith blinked. “Frank, you come here? Why?”

“It doesn’t matter.” McDermott’s gaze held on Kramer. “We aren’t going to talk about that, all right? That’s not up for discussion. Let me get my wife out of here, and I’ll come back, I promise.”

“You want me to let your wife go?” With that mask, Kramer had all the innocence of a python. “Which one?”

“Oh, for God’s … which wife?” Meredith bridled. “Look, forget appearances; forget that she and I are doubles, all right? You obviously know how this works; that Frank’s used bits and pieces of our lives over the years, and popular culture, history—every writer does that. I mean, for God’s sake, look at Doyle.”

“What?” The word exploded from his mouth in a hard, percussive rap. “What you talking about, history? Popular culture?”

“I mean just what I said. Arthur Conan Doyle was a real person; he was a writer, too, actually, and very famous.”

“Me? A …” He practically choked on the word. “Wr-writer?” In his mind’s eye, he could see his fictitious Brother James’s spidery script: Our Doyle is quite inventive; perhaps he would consider a career in letters.

“Yes,” Meredith said. “But your life before was miserable. Your father was a drunk and died in an asylum. You were poor, lived in a slum … Sciennes Hill Place, I think? You ran with a gang. Probably would’ve ended up dead or in jail if your mother hadn’t begged the Jesuits to take you, except you hated them.”

My God, she knows about me. It was all Doyle could do not to shred his clothes and run stark-screaming from this place.

“And there was all that fascination you had with cocaine, drugs. You experimented on yourself at least once that Frank was able to find. Wrote a paper about it when you became a doctor.”

“A doc …” Doyle couldn’t make his throat work. “Wh-what?”

“The only reason you became a physician was to please your mother. You actually weren’t all that good at it either. Couldn’t make a living, and you started to write in your free time.” Meredith said it all in an offhand way, as if ticking the items on a grocery list. “So Frank did a what-if. What if he took all that real history and made you into the Doyle you might have become, one that fit in with this world?”

“But … but”—Doyle was choking—“wh-why? Why would you do that? I’m a person. I had a good life! I was famous! You just said so!” Thinking, Doyle, Doyle, what are you buying into? You believe this flummery? You, a doctor? A natty writer?

Oooh, poppet. Black Dog gave him a confidential nudge. Am I there, too, I wonder? In this other Doyle’s worst imaginings? A black dog, a hellhound?

“Because a story needs an everyman, a kind of stand-in for the reader and yet a person thoroughly in the world who doesn’t know what’s going on but comments along the way. That’s what Frank intended, although …” Meredith’s brow suddenly furrowed, and she looked at her husband. “I thought you decided to give up Doyle, too. Your editor never saw the point; said people wouldn’t accept a Doyle who wasn’t brilliant, like Sherlock. Didn’t see why Doyle was needed at all.”

“Yet another broken promise, I wager,” Kramer said. “Look at little Emma, after all.”

“Stop that!” Emma shouted, though the words were barely understandable through her tears. “No one made me! I’m not a thing!”

Neither am I. Doyle’s hands curled to fists. I’m a person. I’m a man! I’m singular. I have no double here. Although … what if he wasn’t anything but a fiction? Did that mean that only Kramer was real? Black Widow?

“What goes on with my husband isn’t any of your business,” Meredith said to Kramer. “I’ve been there for every single one of your creations and his failures, the fragments he never finishes. So you can save your breath. Go play your little mind games with someone else.”

“Perhaps,” Kramer said, “but answer this. You say you’ve been by our dear Franklin’s side. For how many years?”

“Kramer,” McDermott said.

“Years?” A fleeting look of confusion clouded Meredith’s face. Her lids fluttered, and she put a hand to a temple. “I … it’s hard for me to remember. The treatments, the shock therapy … my memory’s not …”

Memory a little spotty? Doyle wanted to blurt. Stick around; it gets better. Instead, he bit his lip to corral the bark of a hysterical laugh. Thought, again, I’m going mad, I am mad, we’re all mad here. Then: In the right place for that, aren’t we?

“Kramer, please.” McDermott interposed himself between his wife and the bars. “That’s enough.”

“I don’t think so,” Black Widow said.

“Meredith?” Kramer prompted.

“I’m sorry.” Meredith pulled herself straighter. “I don’t remember. All right? Happy? It’s the treatments, the ECT. The shots and pills.”

“Yes. Of course. Well, how about your age? How old are you?” When she hesitated, Kramer tutted. “Come now, surely you know that.”

“Thirty?” It came out small, and then Meredith tried another laugh that, this time, was no more than a timorous flutter. “No, that’s probably not right, is it? Not if I’ve got a teenage daughter. Unless we were married very young, but Frank was in school and we couldn’t afford to get married and …” Her fingers quivered before her mouth. “I’m rambling. I do that when I get nervous.”

“Of course. The mind is such a fragile thing. I’m sure there are days you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.”

“For God’s sake, Kramer!” McDermott shouted. “What do you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted, Franklin. I want the Dickens Mirror.”

“There is no mirror here,” McDermott said.

“Don’t lie to me.” Kramer aimed a finger at Elizabeth. “She’s bound to shadow, and yet she remains whole, intact. The cynosure knows her; it has power where it did not before. Her blood heals and she’s seen the Mirror, which means that once you tell us where it is, she can either bring more of that healing power here or show us how to leave this accursed place. Now, again, where is the Dickens Mirror?”

“There is no mirror here,” McDermott repeated.

“Liar,” Black Widow said.

“Do let’s not pretend,” Kramer said. “You come here, regularly, to steal from this Now’s energy for your creations. Don’t deny it. That’s why this London is falling apart.”

“No, that’s wrong. You’re mistaken. He can’t come back here. There’s no way in,” Meredith said before McDermott could answer. “I made sure …”

“All right, Kramer. Yes, I do come here,” McDermott said. “I … visit. But not through the Mirror, and it’s not because of my stealing anything that this London’s disintegrating.”

“Frank?” Meredith’s eyes were wide. “You come here? Frank, you promised not to.”

“As I said about our Frank and his promises,” Black Widow said.

“Shut the hell up.” Meredith turned a fierce gaze on McDermott. “You shit. You left in a back door, didn’t you? But why? Why here?”

“For his work, of course.” Kramer gestured toward the examination tables. “Shall we take a look? See what a busy boy he’s been?”

Oh. Doyle felt his insides curdle. No, let’s not.

“Frank, answer me, goddamn it,” Meredith said, “or I will find a way to smash every Peculiar, ruin every book, send all of it back where it came.”

“You will.” Elizabeth’s features shivered, then reformed. “Or you already did; I’m not sure. It might be that everything happens all at once and then things spin out from there. Whatever. Destroying the Peculiars doesn’t work. All you end up with is more of this.” Elizabeth’s gaze roved over the cavern before settling on Meredith again. “Free energy. You know the physics of it. Remember your dream.”

“What the hell are you—” Then Meredith seemed to hear herself. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to snap, but please, Elizabeth, stay out of this for now. Let the adults handle this, all right?”

Black Widow grunted a laugh. “Oh, that’s very rich. Listen to my daughter. She knows what she’s about … well, that piece does, anyway.”

“Shut up.” Meredith’s fists clenched. “Just shut the fuck up.”

“Meredith, stop. You’re only making things worse. I know what I said, but …” McDermott wouldn’t meet her eyes. “But Kramer’s right, and so is Em …” He stumbled. “Elizabeth. I mean …” He made a helpless gesture to encompass the entire cave. “Look at it all, this potential just waiting to be tapped.”

“But Frank, a back door? This isn’t a goddamned computer program! I don’t even pretend to understand why you felt the need to use me as a template for that woman, but don’t you realize that’s how my double got out?” Meredith waved a hand at the rest of the cells. “She found it, and used that to get into their book-worlds.”

“Would you stop saying that shit?” Chad said.

“No, that’s not how she’s doing it.” McDermott sighed. “She’s … she’s using a different way.”

“Oh, really? Which is?” Meredith asked.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Emma said. “I told you. She’s coming through dreams, the same one we’ve all had! You must’ve had it, too. How else did you get here?”

“No.” Meredith shook her head. “A valley? Monsters? Snow? Not me. I had a very different dream.”

“Your house has geraniums. The barn is red,” Emma said. “You have a studio where you make glass, and you used tanks of … I don’t know … fuel, whatever, to blow it all up, and then you made Lizzie get in the car. You made her leave her cat … Marmalade? Only the fog started chasing you.”

“The fog?” Black Widow said. “You mean, another Peculiar?”

“No.” Meredith’s voice was no more than a whisper. Her face was paler than porcelain and her eyes huge, her gaze riveted on the little girl. “A Peculiar’s an energy sink. It’s … sealed.”

At her place along the wall, Elizabeth stirred. “Meredith, she’s not talking about a Bose-Einstein condensate.”

“What’s that?” Emma said.

“Too much to explain,” Elizabeth said. “Think of it as a state of matter as close to zero energy—absolute zero—as possible.”

“I haven’t gotten that far in school,” Emma said.

“I have.” Future Tony armed sweat from his forehead. He was even paler than before. “Nothing would move except on the quantum level.”

“What the devil?” Kramer tossed a confused look at McDermott. “What are they all talking about?”

McDermott didn’t reply, but Doyle saw the swift chase of emotions on the man’s face: surprise, then satisfaction, and then that slight curve to his lips. He’s proud of them, as if they’re all his children parsing out a thorny problem.

“A Bose …” Meredith’s face went slack. Her eyes roved from Emma and Tony to Elizabeth, then back. “How”—she sounded as if someone had delivered a solid gut-punch—“how do you know so much?”

“I told you,” Emma and Elizabeth said at the same moment. “I studied it in school,” Tony said, as Emma went on, “I saw your dream.”

“You saw my dream? You?” Meredith echoed. “That’s not possible.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Doyle asked. He wasn’t aware he was going to speak, but damme, this was ridiculous. “It’s how she found them, isn’t it? She came in through this nightmare, this … this dreaming, somehow. It’s the only logical conclusion because it’s the only thing they’ve in common.”

Excellent, my pet. Battle would be proud.

Doyle pushed past Black Dog’s snigger. “So why you keep saying they can’t dream when they have?”

“Because,” Meredith said, “it’s not possible for any of them—any of you—to dream. Frank makes sure you can’t.”

“Meredith,” McDermott said, “I don’t think this is the time.”

“Oh, shut ya bunghole,” Doyle said. To Meredith: “What do you mean, McDermott makes sure we can’t. Why?”

“Because he figured out that if he lets you dream,” Meredith said, “you go insane.”