Snake Bite

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sherlock stared at the girl in amazement. She stared back, eyes full of some boiling emotion that Sherlock couldn’t quite identify — fury perhaps? Or maybe violent frustration at being discovered?

Her skin was ashen-grey. Sherlock wasn’t sure why. Her hair and her eyes were grey too. Her arms and legs were thin, like sticks, and her body didn’t have an inch of spare fat on it. Her clothes were the same colour as her flesh: a dusty grey. She looked like a little statue, standing there, poised to run. Only the flickering of her eyes as she looked around for a way to escape gave away her essential humanity.

Sherlock’s attention shifted to the thing that the girl was holding. It was made of metal, but it looked a bit like a set of dentures — teeth and gums glinting in the moonlight, just like the girl’s skin. There was some clockwork in there somewhere, and a spring, holding the two sides of the device apart. Sherlock could see something red and rubbery as well, hidden behind the teeth. What on earth was it?

The girl’s eyes jerked sideways, to Cameron, and Sherlock realized what she was going to do. ‘Get back!’ he yelled, and Cameron threw himself backwards as the girl slashed the metal teeth at his throat. The teeth passed a hair’s breadth from his carotid artery, snapping like castanets as the girl squeezed them together against the strength of the spring.

From behind the girl, Wu Fung-Yi appeared. He looked confused, like he’d woken up and still found himself in the middle of a nightmare. He grabbed at her arm. She turned around and hissed at him. Surprised, he stumbled backwards and let go. She turned her attention back to Cameron and leaped at him, arms outstretched, the teeth of the metal device aimed right at his throat. Cameron scuttled back across the boat’s deck, terrified.

Sherlock’s paralysis broke. He ran across the deck and grabbed the girl around the waist, pulling her back just as she got to Cameron. She lashed out with a foot, catching Sherlock in the head. Her feet were bare, but her toenails were phenomenally hard and sharp. Sherlock felt them gouge at his skin, tearing the flesh away from his forehead in a raw strip of agony. It was like someone raking him with a garden fork. He let go, and she went tumbling forward, rolling across the deck. Her hand slammed on the wood and the thing she had been holding went skidding into the shadows. She hissed again, head jerking from side to side. Her tongue licked at her lips, but Sherlock was shocked to see that it was black, rather than pink. It looked like some hideous slug trying to crawl out of her mouth.

Sherlock grabbed for the thing that the girl had dropped. His fingers closed on something hard-edged and metallic. Quickly he scooped it up. She glanced at his hand, then at his face, and then she leaped for him.

Sherlock threw the metal object to Wu Fung-Yi and shouted, ‘Get this out of the way!’ as the girl reached him, arms outstretched. He grabbed at her wrists, stopping her fingers a fraction of an inch before they touched his face. Her fingernails were just like her toenails: hard and sharp. They hovered in front of Sherlock’s eyes, glinting like needles. She strained against him, trying to get her claws — and they were claws, Sherlock decided — on his skin. He knew what would happen then. She would rip him to shreds.

He stared deep into her eyes as the two of them stood there, locked in a frozen struggle. He tried looking for some fragment of humanity, for some small trace of emotion. But there was nothing. Apart from her shape and the way her hair curled, there was nothing human about her.

Snarling, she suddenly threw her weight backwards rather than forwards. Taken by surprise, Sherlock found himself pulled towards her. She brought a foot up against his stomach. He could feel the hard claws of her toenails raking at his skin. She dropped down to the deck, still going backwards, and Sherlock felt his feet lifting off the deck. She pulled him over her head, rolling on her back, and then let go of his wrists. He cartwheeled through the air, seeing the deck below him replaced by the reed bed. Black water glittered. He hit the surface of the Yangtze, sending up a huge splash. The impact drove the breath from his body. Water closed over his head. He could taste mud, and he could feel grit between his lips and his teeth. Desperately he struck out, but he had lost his sense of direction in the fall and he couldn’t tell which way he should be going. His arms thrashed wildly. There were weeds beneath the surface of the river: long, slimy, stringy things that wound around him and stopped him from floating back to the top. He desperately wanted to take in a breath. Despite the fire that burned in his lungs, he thrashed his arms and legs, trying to break the insidious grip of the weeds. More by luck than judgement his foot hit a rock on the bed of the river, and he pushed upward as hard as he could. The reeds holding him tore free of the riverbed. His foot slipped off the rock, but it didn’t matter — he’d given himself enough upward momentum that his head broke the surface and he gulped down mouthfuls of air.

For a few moments he couldn’t hear anything apart from the water rushing in his ears and the straining of his lungs as he tried to breathe, but gradually he became aware of voices calling for him — ‘Sherlock! Sherlock!’ — and voices from other boats asking for a bit of peace and quiet.

Something hit the water near his head. He jerked away, thinking that the girl had dived in after him, but it was a pole from the boat. Wu Fung-Yi was holding it out for Sherlock to take.

Sherlock grabbed the pole and let Wu pull him towards the boat. His arms were too weak to climb back in, and he had to let Cameron and Wu clumsily manoeuvre him out of the water. By the time he slumped to the deck all three of them were waterlogged and exhausted.

‘What the hell was that?’ Cameron asked.

‘A girl,’ Sherlock panted.

Cameron raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve never had much to do with girls,’ he said drily. ‘Are they all like that?’

Wu and Sherlock just looked at him, and then they laughed.

‘What happened to her?’ Sherlock asked.

It was Wu who answered. ‘After she threw you into the water she stood on the deck staring at the two of us. She kept glancing from Cameron to me and then back to Cameron. I think she was trying to work out which order she was going to attack us in. Then you broke the surface and started splashing. She seemed to realize that there were too many things going on, so she rushed for the side of the boat and jumped on to the bank. I saw her running into a bunch of reeds, then I lost track of her.’

‘I think,’ Sherlock said eventually, ‘that we’ve finally met the thing that broke into your house, Wu — and your house, Cameron. The thing that killed both your fathers.’

‘But — a girl?’ Wu said disbelievingly. ‘Why would she?’

‘I doubt that it was her idea,’ Sherlock replied. ‘I think she was following instructions.’

‘I only saw her briefly,’ Cameron said, ‘but her skin… It reminded me of something. Of someone.’

The same thought had occurred to Sherlock. ‘She looked like Mr Arrhenius,’ he said grimly.

‘Who?’ Wu asked, frowning.

‘Mr Arrhenius. He was a passenger on the Gloria Scott. His skin was that same silvery-grey colour. He said it had happened because he drank some kind of silver-based liquid to stop him catching diseases. He said that silver somehow naturally forms a barrier against illness.’ Sherlock frowned, thinking. ‘Maybe she’s his daughter. The chances of two people having skin like that and not being connected are pretty slim. And I did think there was something, or someone, in his cabin, back on the ship. He brought it on board in his luggage — there was a box with holes in it for air. But… a daughter?’

‘There was something inhuman about her,’ Cameron said, shivering. ‘Did you see her eyes?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I could see intelligence there,’ he said, ‘but it wasn’t like looking into the eyes of another person.’

‘Do you think she was born like that?’ Wu asked.

‘If her father was drinking liquid silver before she was born then it might have had an effect,’ Sherlock mused. ‘Maybe it changed her, before she was born. I’ve heard that women who drink too much gin give birth to babies that have… problems. Maybe this is a similar thing.’

‘I wonder what happened to her mother,’ Cameron said quietly. ‘I wonder if she’s still alive.’

The thought was enough to stop the three of them talking for the next few minutes.

‘What was that thing she had in her hand?’ Wu said eventually.

‘I don’t know.’ Sherlock glanced at the Chinese boy. ‘You were the last one to have it. What did you do with it?’

‘I think I threw it somewhere safe,’ Wu said. He got up and crossed to the shack in the middle of the deck. ‘In here, I think.’ He disappeared for a moment, then returned with something metal in his hand. ‘Here!’ he said, handing it to Sherlock.

He held the object in front of his face and stared at it as Cameron and Wu moved closer. It was as he had thought: a false mouth made of metal, with a lower and an upper jaw hinged together — but it wasn’t a human mouth. It was too small, too pointed, and the teeth were too long and sharp. The two fangs at the front in particular were about the length of his little finger. The right-hand fang came to a sharp point, while the left-hand one seemed to have broken off a little way from the tip.

It was a snake’s jaw, fabricated out of metal, and spring-loaded so that the lower and upper jaws could be closed together with some pressure.

He had a feeling that he’d seen the missing tip from that fang before. He had a feeling that he had picked it up on the Gloria Scott once, when he was outside Mr Arrhenius’s cabin.

Looking at the fangs, Sherlock realized that they had narrow holes in them, drilled all the way from tip to base. Behind the fangs, in the roof of the mouth, was a bulb made of some rubbery material. Sherlock squeezed it experimentally, and watched in shock as two small beads of liquid formed, one on each fang.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Cameron asked.

‘It’s poison,’ Sherlock said, fascinated. ‘Don’t touch it!’ He gazed at the drops of liquid, amazed. ‘Look — this is a fake snake skull, made by someone out of metal, with a working poison-delivery system. With this, you can bite someone and inject enough poison into their veins to kill them. No need to wait for a real snake to come along.’

He suddenly realized what he had said. He glanced up to see Cameron and Wu both staring at him.

‘This is what killed your fathers,’ he said. ‘My God — I’m so sorry.’

It was Cameron who asked the obvious question. ‘My father was killed by a girl? A girl younger than me?’

Wu Fung-Yi shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he breathed. ‘Why would a small girl do something like that?’

‘You’ve already seen her,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘There’s something not right about her. Assuming that she is Arrhenius’s daughter, I think all that silver in her father’s body caused her to be born… different… from other people. She looks different, and she thinks differently. I think her father uses her, like you would use a tool, or a weapon.’

‘So what happens now?’ Wu asked. ‘Do you think she’ll come back for us?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ A thought flashed into his mind, and he examined it for a few moments. ‘I remember, when we came into the riverbank earlier on, I saw another boat. Or at least, I saw its lights. It had been behind us on the river. I saw it head for the bank ahead of us. Maybe that’s where she came from. If she is Mr Arrhenius’s daughter then he might be sailing that boat, either following us up the river or trying to get to the USS Monocacy before us.’ He glanced at Cameron and Wu. ‘I think I need to go and take a look.’

‘Chances are it’s a coincidence. There were lots of boats on the river. There’s no guarantee that it was actually following us.’

‘Maybe not,’ Sherlock agreed, ‘but the girl had to come from somewhere. It’s almost dawn. You get the boat ready to leave. I’ll do some reconnaissance.’

The two boys looked at each other, then they nodded. ‘All right,’ Cameron said. ‘Be back in half an hour. We have to get to the Monocacy and warn the Captain about the bomb. If you don’t make it back, then we have to leave without you. We don’t have a choice.’

‘I know,’ Sherlock said.

He glanced at the metal snake jaws in his hand. There must be a safety catch somewhere: a means to secure the jaws so that they weren’t dangerous to carry around. Looking more closely, he could see that if the jaws were pressed carefully closed, then all of the teeth were protected in sockets, and there was a small catch that could be flicked across to hold the jaws closed. Making them safe, he slipped them inside his pocket. ‘Back soon,’ he said, with more nonchalance than he actually felt.

He jumped over the side of the boat and felt his feet sink into the soft mud of the riverbank. A faint line of broken plants led up the bank. That was probably where the girl had gone. He followed her trail and soon came to drier ground.

A path led along the riverbank, lined by tall grasses. Sherlock moved at a fast walk, crouching so that he didn’t make a silhouette against the sky. He made for the place where he had seen the boat with the green and yellow lanterns stop. Assuming there weren’t fifteen boats all moored at the same place, he should be able to work out which one he wanted.

Something moved through the grasses ahead of him. His heart suddenly seemed to beat several times in quick succession, hammering in his chest. He paused, hardly daring to breathe, waiting to see what was moving and what it was going to do. Was it the girl, preparing herself to attack him again?

A few feet away from him the grasses parted and a head pushed through. It was warty and covered in hair, with a long snout and two tusks pointing straight up from the lower jaw. It was a pig of some kind, he realized with relief. Actually, more of a boar than a pig. It stared at him with beady black eyes, snorting in challenge, but when he didn’t respond it pulled back and moved away through the tall grass. It was probably just defending its lair, he decided. Maybe it had babies. He supposed that if the boar had attacked then he might have been in trouble, but it had been put off by his size and his apparent lack of fear. A useful lesson for the future, he decided: if you looked like you weren’t afraid, then animals, and maybe people, would treat you as if you actually weren’t afraid.

He gave the boar a few seconds to get out of the way, then he moved on.

A few minutes later he found himself looking at a boat similar to the one he and the other boys had been using. It was roped to a tree stump on the riverbank. Two lanterns were attached to the mast, but they weren’t lit and Sherlock couldn’t tell what colours they were. Was this even the right boat? Was he wasting his time?

Something moved on deck, and he ducked down behind a clump of reeds so that he couldn’t be seen. Cautiously he parted the reeds and peered through the gap.

A man emerged from a cabin towards the rear of the deck. It was Mr Arrhenius. He was wearing his pale linen suit and a panama hat. His skin seemed to glow silver in the ebbing moonlight, and his eyes glittered like twin jewels. He stood there for a moment, looking around, and then whistled a single note, quietly.

A little way from where Sherlock hid, the reeds parted and a small figure slipped across the mud of the riverbank to the boat. Quickly it scurried up the rope that held the boat close to the bank. Like Mr Arrhenius, its skin seemed to glisten in the meagre light.

The girl paused as she got to the deck. Her head moved back and forth, elevated slightly, as if she was sniffing at the air.

Mr Arrhenius walked towards her, stopping a few feet away. ‘Were you successful?’ he asked softly, his voice barely carrying through the air to where Sherlock hid. ‘Are those interfering adolescents actually dead?’

The girl stared at him, not giving any indication that she understood his words. Or perhaps she did understand but didn’t care enough to answer.

‘What’s wrong?’ Arrhenius asked. Sherlock couldn’t see how, but somehow he had picked up on something in her manner, some uneasiness or hesitation. ‘Were they not there? Was it the wrong boat?’

She continued to stare at him for a few moments, then looked away expressionlessly, gazing out at the darkened river.

‘You failed,’ he said, somehow picking up the truth of what had occurred. ‘Three boys, three children, and you failed!’ His voice grew louder and more angry. ‘And yet you dare to come back here?’ He stepped forward. Before she could move he slapped her, hard. Her head jerked around and she stumbled, falling to her knees. She stayed there, on the deck of the boat, head lowered.

Sherlock was stunned. His experience of the girl was not huge, but so far he’d seen her as fast, strong, implacable and dangerous, yet she wasn’t even trying to defend herself. It was as if she couldn’t use her fists against her own father.

Arrhenius looked at the girl’s hands, which were limp on the deck by her knees. ‘And what about the poison injector? Where is it? Did you drop it? Did you leave it behind where it can be found?’

Sherlock thought he could see something glinting in the girl’s eyes, but it didn’t look like silver. It looked like tears.

‘You lost it, didn’t you?’

She didn’t seem to want to meet Arrhenius’s gaze. He stepped closer to her and grabbed her jaw, lifting her head up so that she was forced to look at him.

‘Pathetic,’ he hissed. ‘All the things I have done for you since your mother died, and you treat me this way. Pathetic! We are already racing against time because of your failure. If you had killed Malcolm Mackenzie when you were supposed to, then it wouldn’t have been necessary for you to follow him to the Prefect’s Residence and steal his warning note, and I would be at the place of the explosion already, waiting to give the signal. Because of you I now have to try to get there in this… this undignified fashion.’ He squeezed her jaw hard: Sherlock could see the white indentations of his fingers in her skin. ‘You are a disappointment to me, girl. A great disappointment.’

Sherlock suddenly realized that the ground where he was crouching was moving. It reared up, opening to reveal a wet, red throat and rows of ragged teeth. Baggy, scaly flesh hung below the mouth, swaying as the creature lunged for him, jaws gaping.