Lord Aldous Culliver hurried down the steps of the Royal Academy, cursing himself as he saw the sun had already faded to the shade of a dying autumn leaf beneath the bilious smog. Worse still, it was on the last legs of its descent behind the horizon of soot-stained smokestacks and grimy stone buildings. The chill October wind was strolling in for the coming night, biting into his pale flesh as he hailed a cab and drew his dark, furry cloak tighter about him, turning the brim of his silken top hat down low. He could hear the spider which lived inside the topmost compartment chittering in protest, and not for the first time he wondered why he hadn’t bothered to work on a silent species.
Saurians stomped down the cobblestone street, snorting in the gloom as they strained to pull or carry their various cargo. Lord Culliver cursed once more as he observed not a single cabbie, instead beholding only a massive apatosaurus weighed down with the traveling parlor of some Lord Evolutionary even richer than he. The behemoth was surrounded by several lesser saurians pulling commercial cargo or adorned with signs advertising Lord So-and-So’s latest must-have species. There were even a few well-to-dos laughing and gossiping on the balcony of the lumbering parlor, sipping wine and holding on to the spider-silk leashes of miniature pterodactyls who flew about the much larger saurians like kites.
“Where in Darwin’s name is a blasted coach when you need one?” Lord Culliver harrumphed, tapping his foot as he waited on the sidewalk. The fog finally settled and seemed to almost solidify as the night descended, and the only way Lord Culliver could see anything at all was by the light of the manufactured extra-strength fireflies in the streetlamps. “Half the attendees must be there by now, and I simply won’t stand for missing the beginning of my own meeting.”
A few minutes after the apatosaurus and its entourage disappeared into the mists, a lone figure began to materialize in a shadowy silhouette at one end of the street. Hopeful, Lord Culliver squinted at the apparition until a toothy smile cracked his face as he saw the hansom cab pulled behind the saurian…wait, no, not a saurian at all.
The creature bore the lower body of a velociraptor, all powerful legs and huge claws, but where the neck and head would be the scales tapered off into human flesh and clothing. The upper body of a young woman adorned the top of the beastie like some sort of mismatch of two different jigsaw puzzles. She was dressed in almost threadbare rags.
For a half-moment, he considered not hailing her down and waiting for the next cab to come around. However, he was in a hurry to be home, and there was no telling when someone else, someone human would show up. This homunculus would have to do.
“You there!” he called out, waving his hand in the air and making little blurry swathes in the fog. “Cabbie! Here, and make it quick.”
She turned her gaze to him with a flick of her head, locking eyes with him. Unlike a pureblooded human, the process that must have made her into this amalgamation of creatures had caused her eyes to become a sickly greenish-yellow with dark slivers for pupils, like those of a cat or, more accurately, something more reptilian. She nodded at him and began to head over, her large, slick claws click-clacking as they chipped at the cobblestones.
“Evenin’, your lordship,” she said, bobbing her head a bit in what Lord Culliver supposed might have been some sort of curtsy. “Where ya’ headed?”
He told her his address and climbed into the back of the cab, sighing as he saw that the interior was about as luxuriant as its driver. Bits of cottony fluff poked out of tears in the cushions, and the wood of the frame was so old it might not even have been manufactured.
Lord Culliver was also rather annoyed to see that the window between the forward-facing wall and the driver’s back was open. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the sliding door to close, though there seemed to be no lock on it. Upon closer inspection, he saw the sliding grooves jammed with a slowly oozing residue which smelled of pine sap, and he dared not touch it.
“Are ya’ comfortable, your lordship?” the cabbie called back as she set off at a slightly quicker pace than when she’d been aimlessly meandering down the street. The deflated cushions did almost nothing to buffer the jarring bumps of the cobbles nicking at the wheels, and thus Lord Culliver was feeling anything but comfortable. His hat-spider chittered in annoyance as well until he tapped the top hat roughly, silencing it.
“I’m fine, miss,” he said absently, pulling out his copy of the latest science journal and trying his best to read it in the rickety old cart. He was even more miserable with the wetness of the fog spilling into the cabin and bringing the outside chill with it.
“Dreary night tonight, isn’t it?” the cabbie called back with a somber note in her voice. Lord Culliver gave a noncommittal grunt as he tried his best to concentrate on his reading, but the cabbie merely continued. “T’were a night like this when I had the misfortune to become the sorry sight ya’ see before ya’.”
The cabbie cleared her throat, a rather odd sound that was something of a combination between a saurian growl and a human cough. The effect was almost as unnerving as her eyes, but Culliver paid it little mind until the cabbie began speaking again. He idly toyed with the idea of asking her to be silent so he could read, but there was little chance of him getting any reading done in this damp drudgery, so he relented.
“I was running an errand for me mother that night, but a few years back, when I still had me God-given legs instead o’ this factory-made lizard flesh,” she began. “The poor old dear had taken to coughing up blood. My little brothers reckoned she had caught one o’ them nasty newfangled bugs that come about now and again in the flesh factories.
“I didn’t understand her sickness ‘cause I never knew much about your lordship’s sort o’ work, all that fancy-talk about Sir Darwin an’ his evolution. I knew even less about that practice o’ fake evolution he started, but I’d grown up with the stuff all me life. Everyone in London these days seems to be ridin’ a saurian resurrected from some ancient hardened tree sap or what-have-you, or wearin’ clothes made out o’ a factory’s spider-silk, or havin’ a cat with wings and a parrot’s voice for a pet. A’course, then there’s them homunculi what had the misfortune a’ bein’ meshed with them factory-mades, all Moreau-style. I stayed away from them same as everyone else, till I became one a’course.
“But I’m getting ahead o’ myself. My brothers were watchin’ dear old mother at home that foggy night and tryin’ their best to keep their eyes dry as she wheezed and heaved. We had no pennies to our name save what mother brought home for our wee bit o’ sustenance, but I knew she’d not see the morning’s light if we didn’t get a doctor to her, an’ fast.
“That’s why I was rushin’ through the fog that night. There was a nice old medical man who lived not far from us, retired with little money after some scandal with the Lord Evolutionaries. He always said they was messin’ with the good Lord’s grand design, and my mother had a mind to agree with him, but I never thought much about that. I just wanted me old mother well again, and I was so caught up thinkin’ on that I must’ve not been payin’ enough attention to the road when I crossed the street.
“I was runnin’ as if all Hell’s demons were hot on my heels, peerin’ through the fog and callin’ out the good doctor’s name. The fog was thicker than pea soup, but I was howlin’ like a banshee, so much that I was sure half the neighborhood musta’ heard me. That’s why it was so surprisin’ when a saurian comes a’runnin’ out of nowhere, the rider screamin’ somethin’ about gettin’ out of the way. I tried, Lord knows I tried, but the next thing I know my face was pressed against the cold, wet street, and a sticky sort o’ red was leakin’ into the mud. I couldn’t feel nothin’ lower than my stomach, and when I tried to lift meself and see what’d happened, a horrid dark pain shot through me skull.
“I heard footsteps, and the next thing I know I was starin’ at well-polished boots and the ends of a blackish, furry coat. The man leaned down to look me in the eye, his face reddened with anger, and he was goin’ on about how I’d nearly tripped his latest saurian design on its very first test run, and what a big lot of pounds that’d cost him to get the tissues replaced, and how he ought to call the nearest patrolman and have ‘em lock me away till Judgment Day.”
Lord Culliver had only been passively listening thus far, more intent on the dim shades of slightly darker gray in the evening gloom which denoted buildings beyond the fog. The smog was so thick he couldn’t make out any discernible landmarks, but at least trying to see something recognizable was a more interesting pastime than listening to the cabbie’s lifelong sob story.
However, upon hearing this latest development in her narrative his eyes widened a bit. Could this cabbie be…no, that wasn’t possible. That girl had to have perished years ago in the fusion process. He’d recommended her to the shabbiest Lord Evolutionary he could think of, a man by the name of Berkeley, who was always trying wild experiments which most often resulted in cadavers for the students at the Academy to dissect.
Because of this, the minor Lord had become little more than a dumping ground for evidence the higher Lords wanted to be rid of but that otherwise could not so easily be disposed. After all, there were laws in place, however inconveniencing they may have been, and he had been legally required to do something to patch that girl up after his new saurian had technically been the cause of her mangling, even though she’d clearly been the one who ran out in front of him. Besides, his saurian had been worth more than she’d ever make in her life, worth more than a hundred of her ilk.
But this couldn’t be that girl. She simply couldn’t be. Try as he might, though, Lord Culliver couldn’t think of a convincing reason why she couldn’t be.
“As the good Lord would have it, there was a patrolman nearby,” the cabbie continued. “I was too stricken to say much, but after listening to the Lord Evolutionary—who else could such a well-dressed bloke have been? —he had some medics pick me up and take me off to be mended. The Lord recommended an old friend o’ his, said he was the best in the business an’ he’d have me good as new in no time. The patrolman thanked him for his advice, ‘specially after the Lord Evolutionary handed him a small pouch o’ somethin’.
“I still didn’t know much about what was goin’ on, but the pain was beginnin’ to creep up my spine even when I lay still on the gurney in the back o’ the medical men’s wagon. It was gettin’ worse and worse, like no pain I’d ever known, and I feared I would drown in it. Red and black were dancin’ behind me eyes like two lovers, and before long they were all I could see. When I woke up, the pain was mostly gone, and I was in some medical man’s operatin’ room. I thanked my maker, tears in my eyes, thinkin’ I’d been made whole again like one o’ Christ’s miracles.
“Only…I didn’t feel exactly right. It was like I was bigger in my legs somehow, and there was the strangest feelin’ of a third leg juttin’ out behind me. I was also hungry, hungrier than I’d ever been, and I was cravin’ some meat pie somethin’ fierce.
“A gentleman wearin’ medical man’s clothin’, spattered with blood, appeared an’ helped me to my feet. Only…they weren’t my feet. Past my stomach all I could see was this big scaly body with wicked claws and a tail, and I started breathin’ real heavy, afraid I would start seein’ the red and the black dancin’ again.
“The medical man calmed me down as best he could, but I wept like a newborn at seein’ me unnatural new body. The man was nice enough, even if he’d made me some sort of horror, an’ he helped me get used to bein’ like this. After a few weeks with Lord Berkeley—that was his lordship’s name—he sent me on me way. I supposed I shoulda’ been thankful I was livin’ at all, but it was hard bein’ a homunculus. Nobody will look ya’ in the eye when you’re part saurian, and children point and their mothers tell ‘em to cross on the other side o’ the street.”
It was her. There was no doubt in Lord Culliver’s mind now. It had to be her; he’d heard that daft Berkley had had at least one successful fusion in the past few years, and who else could it have been but her?
A cold sweat broke out on Lord Culliver’s clammy skin. He paid more attention to the shades in the fog than he’d ever paid to an artificial evolution experiment or even his knighting ceremony. This was worse than if one of his experiments had suddenly grasped the speech of man and rebuked him for his unnatural meddling with their biology. This had been a human, and he’d reduced her to less than one of his experiments. If she realized who he was, then Lord Evolutionary or not, there was no telling what would happen. She might leave him stranded in the most crime-ridden nest in East End, or worse, force him to confess to the authorities what he’d done to her.
He could only hope she hadn’t guessed who he was. She gave no indication, as her speech was level and had been since she’d picked him up. Perhaps she’d deliver him at home none the worse for wear, and he’d berate himself later over a glass of sherry on how foolish he’d been to ever think an urchin like her could threaten a captain of industry such as himself.
He sincerely wished that would be the case.
“I tried my best not to pay attention to people’s glances and whispers,” she carried on. “I did my best to hurry home, but there was not a trace o’ me family left. I was in a right fright, and searched everywhere I could for ‘em. Nobody would speak with me, even my old neighbors, until I finally got the news from none other than the good doctor I’d been tryin’ to fetch that fateful night a month or so before.
“His eyes were weary, and he looked pale as if he’d seen a ghost when I called on him. He said my dear mother’d passed from the bug, an’ that all but one o’ my brothers had caught it and joined her in paradise. I wished I had been there to meet ‘em…
The cabbie was silent for a moment.
“After that, I sought out my one last brother like a madwoman, finally findin’ him in a poorhouse,” she continued. “I was overjoyed at findin’ him, but he wouldn’t speak to me at first. I pleaded with the lad and at last he faced me, his face all red with fury, and he cursed me under Heaven. He blamed me for not fetchin’ the doctor, and said it was all my fault that all the rest had perished and he hoped God barred me from ever seein’ ‘em again when my time came.
“I wanted to meet them in paradise then more than ever, and I thought about making a tiny hole in the Thames to do it. Only God knows why I didn’t; maybe it was the cabbies who took me in, plenty o’ ‘em homunculi themselves. They gave me a sort o’ family again, even if it came with some costs… But I made it through. I’ve lived a good few years since that horrid day, and I’ve made it in life as best as I can. I can’t say there’s some things I wouldn’t change, but I’ve done all I could to live a good life.
“I hope you do the same, your lordship,” the cabbie finished. “It’s all we got in this world, really. Our lives. Best make somethin’ good out o’ ‘em, as best we can, before we’re done.”
The hansom cab pulled to a stop.
“Yes, quite right,” Lord Culliver said hastily, perhaps a bit too hastily. “I’ll leave your fare on the cushions, miss. A good evening to you.”
Leaving not so much as a penny on the seats, he quickly opened the door and climbed down into the street, preparing to hurry into the foggy night towards his home until he turned around to see nothing but a dirty old alleyway. Bits of broken bottles and other such garbage littered the ground while a few hardy blades of grass did their best to poke their way through the oddly reddish mud and other such ochre detritus.
“Miss, this isn’t my address,” he said worriedly, turning to see that the dilapidated old hansom cab was blocking the exit to the alleyway. The only way out would be to climb back through the cab itself, but before he could make a move to do so the wood creaked and sagged with a loud thumping sound.
A shadow fell across Lord Culliver through the meager lights of the firefly-lamps, and he looked up to see the cabbie had leapt atop the cab, her huge saurian claws gripping the sides of the roof. She looked down at him hungrily, licking her lips as her already slivered pupils grew even thinner.
“Of course,” she said. “We never know just when our lives will be done. It’s a shame you didn’t make somethin’ good o’ yours before you were done, your lordship.”
The next morning, the residents of East End searched the alley for anything worth scavenging. However, the same as always, there was little more than a scarlet smear in the mud. The only other thing of note was a chittering manufactured spider trying its best to re-spin the rent silk of a badly-damaged top hat.