The Vorrh by B. Catling Read Free Book Online Page A

in so as not to stir the chemicals and spoil the process. He stepped back, straightening into a position of satisfaction and unbolting the door to the intensity of the world.
    An hour later, he laid out the sequence of photographic prints on a long, narrow table in his temporary study which adjoined the barn. Four men moved together towards the images as Muybridge stepped aside to give them space around his pride.
    The running horse had been delineated, flattened to silhouette on a scaled grid. The cameras had erased the noise and the sickening third dimension. Now it could be studied, uncluttered by the stink of actuality. Great beauty strode across the dense chemical papers. The horse had become classical and otherworldly as it charged, buckled and collapsed in a dignity of aestheticism.
    The men were delighted as they pored over the prints. Theirs was a world of mechanical precision, and this gridded slaughter had proved the value of its latest device. They packed away the evidence that would lead to manufacture and thanked Muybridge on the doorstep of his domain, shaking his hand enthusiastically.
    He closed the door on their departure. For a moment, in the narrow corridor between rooms, he mused on the effect that monstrous gun would have had on the anatomy of the despicable Major Larkyns, and how his last expression of stunned surprise and pain would have been so much greater. Even after all these years, he would have liked that. He would have liked his treacherous young wife to witness her lover being cut in two. She had died from his silence months after he dispatched the Major. A stroke they said, some said grief, but Muybridge knew it was the granite hush he had sealed in her: even after she left their home, he had known it would harden and split her head.
    It was a moment of delightful speculation before returning to the serious business of the negatives. His military clients had their prints, but he had the negatives, and he had his own plans for the images. He had been at the pinnacle of a life’s achievement when he decided to chase another quality in his work: an allusive ghost that permeated everything he photographed. It had led him into deep speculation and personal violation, but still he could not put it aside. He was an artist, photographer and inventor of prodigious importance – that was all secured, acquired against all the odds. The last few experiments were his, and they would answer the questions. He pictured a horse that never touched the ground, or one that charged under it, or another that stalked his sleep like a bed sheet ghost. Process thrown over anxiety to flap in the corridors of then and his few remaining tomorrows. A movement he had only caught from the corner of the camera’s eye.
    * * *

    Ishmael was becoming a man. His docile white body was beginning to toughen and shape itself for a different purpose, though it would never be as hard as the brown ones who so carefully nurtured him. Their bodies were all very different, perfect in their gleam and the depth of their polished surfaces. Each was a unique, beautiful variation of form and appointment – he forever marvelled at their splendour, while examining the flabby imprecision of his own shell.
    Over time, he had become more and more intrigued by Luluwa; she was unlike the others. Not because she was female. That had been explained to him before. There were four kinds of things like him in this world: men, women, animals and ghosts. He was a man, like Abel and Seth. Luluwa was a woman, like Aklia. He was just a different kind. Men had tubes and strength, women had pouches and gentleness. He had a little of all.
    He had first felt heat for Luluwa when she killed an animal for him. Snapping it in her long, shiny fingers, she had opened it for him to taste and smell, and explained that its insides were a copy of his, made in the same materials, unlike her own, which were modelled from a different substance. She had described how the