The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(23)

“The work gives one perspective.”

“What kind of perspective would that be?”

I pursed my lips, thinking about it. “The loftiest humanly possible. Or just possible, period.”

She shook her head. “Where is the gun?”

“In my pocket. Why?”

She squatted beside me and fished into my pocket. “Don’t take my firearm, Miss Bates,” I cautioned her.

“Your hands are full.”

“If you take my firearm, I shall be forced to shoot you.”

“The more you try to be funny, the less funny you become.”

She held the gun with both hands against her stomach. She with the gun, I with the bag.

“It isn’t my fault you don’t have a sense of humor,” I said. “Please don’t worry it; you’re making me nervous.”

She sat down beside me, her eyes upon the lump beneath the burlap.

“I thought they grew to five times that size.”

“More like ten. It’s just a baby, Lilly.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking about taking it out for a cuddle. . . .”

She let go of the gun with one hand long enough to punch me in the arm. “I mean after this is done.”

“He’s going to present it to a group of like-minded men, who will nod with admiration and approval and pat him on the back and vote him a medal or perhaps commission a statue in his honor. . . .”

“Some boys grow up,” she observed. “And some grow backward.”

“I shall have to ponder that awhile before I can offer an opinion on it.”

“What will he do with it after the congress has adjourned? That’s what I meant.”

“Ah, I see. The cat, as it were, is out of the bag now, so it can’t stay here. I assume that was his original plan. Perhaps he’ll bring it back to New Jerusalem, build a special pit for it, and feed it goats. I don’t think he has any plans to release it back into the wild.”

“Wouldn’t that be the best thing to do?”

“Not for the wild. And not for Warthrop. One is much more important than the other, you know.”

“I would set it free.”

“It’s the last of its kind, Lilly. Doomed either way you go.”

“Then why not just kill it?” Looking at the undulating burlap. “He could stuff it like a trophy.”

“Well, that’s an idea,” I said curtly. The topic had become tiresome. “Tell me something: Have you kissed him?”

“Kissed . . . Dr. Warthrop?”

I smiled, picturing that. “Warthrop hasn’t kissed anyone since 1876. I was referring to the mediocrity.”

“Samuel?” She lowered her eyes; she would not look at me. “Is that any business of yours?”

“I suppose not.”

“I know not.”

“Really? Then he must be mediocre, for you not to know!”

She laughed in spite of herself. “You aren’t half as clever as you think you are, you know.”

I nodded. “More like a third. Did you meet him in England? Aren’t you lonely there, Lilly? Don’t you miss New York? What sort of person would want to apprentice for Sir Hiram Walker? No one who’s a third as clever as he thinks he is, so he must be a mediocrity.”

“He’s a friend,” she said.

“A friend?”

“A very good friend.”

“Oh. Hmm. Very good is certainly not mediocre.”

She smiled. “Not by a third.”

“I should very much like to kiss you now.”

“That is a lie.” Still smiling.

And I, now frowning: “Why would someone lie about that?”

“If you really wanted to kiss me, you would have kissed me, not—”

I kissed her.

Dear Will, I pray this finds you well.

Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. “Will,” she whispered. “I should very much like for you to kiss me again.”

And I did, and the thing turned upon itself inside the burlap, and scratch, scratch against the heavy glass and you must harden yourself to such things and there was no room for love or pity or any other silly human thing and never fall in love, never.

In the snarl of winding passageways and dusty rooms and shelves overflowing with dead nightmarish things and

I find it beautiful—more splendid than a meadow in springtime.

There is one last thing I must say before I go.

In the twisting, scratching, dusty, overflowing, dead, nightmarish chambers of the lightless heatless deep.

One last thing I must say

lips slightly parted

These are the secrets these are the secrets these are the secrets

FOUR

The light of the monstrumologist’s lamp kissed the rough surface of the egg; he leaned over it, bringing the lens of the loupe close, and his breath was but a whisper of wind through that beautiful meadow at springtime. He’d taken measurements—mass, circumference, temperature—and listened to it through his stethoscope. He worked quickly. He did not want to expose the egg too long to the basement air. As Maeterlinck had observed, New England was anything but tropical.