Free The Great Game by Lavie Tidhar

the street, a parting shot: "You used to be good."

 
 
TWELVE
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    The observer came out of the water dripping, and so he stood and waited for the water to evaporate. He noted the water was very cold, and the currents strong. As he swam across the Channel he had passed a steam-powered ship, carrying passengers, and a sleek tea clipper with taut sales, and two wooden boats pushed by oars that met in the shallows and exchanged what the voices had told him were contraband goods.
    Â Â  The observer was in no hurry. He stood and watched the water and the small island he had – partly – left behind. He found the world fascinating. Steam and sail and man-power, all sharing the water. That mixture of old and new, and they kept striving for the new, the newer still. Such a curious place. The voices argued and shouted and finally quietened, leaving him momentarily alone. He wondered what it was that had stopped him from taking the small boy, in that city where the whales sang in the river. He had been much taken with the whales. He had gone to see them, standing on the Embankment, and, as though sensing what he was, they came close, one by one, and showed themselves to him, and sang. He loved their song.
    Â Â  He should have taken one of the whales, he thought. He would have liked their song, to accompany the voices.
    Â Â  But there was time, there was plenty of time. He had been rushing about, to start with, with newfound eyes, excited by everything, eager for new experience, but that had been…
    Â Â  He did not have a term for it. It was one of the voices who finally offered a suggestion, and the observer contemplated it now.
    Â Â Unprofessional.
    Â Â  Perhaps, he admitted, he had been a tad unprofessional. Certainly he should have taken the boy.
    Â Â  Why hadn't he?
    Â Â  A strange, unfamiliar word, whispered by the woman. Compassion . What a strange notion, he thought. Yet something in the boy's frozen stare, the wide eyes, the under-nourished face, had halted him. It would have just complicated things, the observer thought. His quarry had not been the boy but the strange man-machine, and by letting the boy go he had freed himself for his primary task.
    Â Â  The observer shook himself, raising naked arms against the rising sun. It felt wonderful, he thought, to be here. Clouds fascinated him, and migrating birds. And people were intensely fascinating, to the observer.
    Â Â  Before the observer had got into the water he had stood, the way he stood now, naked on the shore before the Channel, with moonlight instead of sunlight illuminating his artificial flesh.
    Â Â  He had shuddered, his body shifting and changing, drawing power and material from the humidity in the air, the salt water and the fine chalk. The voices had risen into a frightened crescendo before he silenced them. His body shuddered and shivered, splitting , the extra material of him lying down at last on the sand like an egg.
    Â Â  The observer had waited for his body to seal itself again, then crouched by this egg and put his hand on the warm, thin membrane. After a few moments the surface broke and the egg hatched.
    Â Â  The thing inside was not yet human, nor did it have shape. Blindly, it burrowed into the sand, feeding, converting solids and gas into–
    Â Â  At last the child rose out of the sand, and the observer helped him up. They stood, facing each other, identical in height, identical in shape. The moonlight reflected on their flesh. Then, not needing to speak, the observer turned to the sea, and the other put on his clothes, heading back into the city.
    Â Â  For there was one element left, of course, besides the trivial task of harvesting a whale. The observer had been aware of that for some time. Sooner or later he would have to collect one of the others, he thought. The masters. One of them. That made him a little uneasy. But what had to be done had to be done.