And so perhaps it would simply be better to say goodbye to him in their own way.
Izzy, who wore the same size as Legacy, had lent her the only black dress in her luggage. It had no sleeves and a high neck, the buttons trailing all the way down to its hem, which fell just below the knee. “You should be the one,” Izzy had explained, her eyes wincing away from Legacy as soon as they would tilt too close, as if she had the intensity of a sunset. “You should be the one in the black dress.”
In truth, Legacy hadn’t really noticed the color of her dress, though. She’d hardly noticed anything at all. There were times in the past twelve hours, none of which had she slept, that she’d rolled in the bed and fleetingly perceived, through the cruel alchemy of muscle memory, that he laid in bed beside her still. There were times in the past twelve hours that she’d had the thought, We’re finally going to see Celestine, as if he were still on the ship. And then these moments would be brushed away like stray hairs from her forehead. After everything – after everything, nothing else could hurt her. Dax . . . She hadn’t escaped this collapse. She’d gone down with him.
Vector, as captain, was elected the grim responsibility of overseeing this funeral.
He, too, had managed to find all black, and even donned a large top hat. It was pulled from his head before he began to speak into the morning winds.
Gustav and Liam toted a slab of material, some patch for the ship, and on it rested Dax’s body. He was wrapped in a sheet. Legacy didn’t know which was worse, seeing him or not seeing him, but then, she decided immediately that seeing him would have been worse.
Legacy didn’t look at the sheet. At . . . what had been Dax. She found it difficult to focus on anything. Her eyes instead glossed over the wide blue sky splayed beyond the rail. The place where Dax would go. The place where Dax had gone. She clutched Mudflower in her hand as if it were some talisman.
“It’s hard to know exactly what to say in times like this,” Vector offered, adjusting his spectacles. His script consisted of sloppy notes that, as he reread them now, made almost zero sense. “You never expect tragedy, and then . . . It comes in waves. Most of us had only met Dax recently. He and I became fast friends, because we think – we thought a lot alike. He joined Chance for Choice largely because he was ineligible for Companion Selection, and felt he deserved the right to marry and to father a child, even in spite of his condition.”
As Vector spoke, Liam and Gustav moved around the flat metallic bed onto which Dax’s body rested, securing some rope and a wad of loosely bound fabric.
“He made us all laugh. He made us all think. He helped every time he had the chance. He was a good man, and although it’s difficult to accept this, he was struggling in a way that he kept to himself, and now, the struggle is over. He’d already lost both his parents, the most recent being four years ago, and so . . . especially with the collapse of Icarus . . . there is nothing he leaves behind so much as he leaves behind his best friend, and my friend, Exa Legacy, our former speechwriter, and in truth, possibly our most vital asset. She stepped naturally into the position of our leader, and we should all extend our most sincere efforts to shield her from this sudden misfortune.”
Legacy spoke suddenly, loudly, as if possessed by some outside element. As if drunk. She didn’t even know herself what she was about to say. Nonetheless it poured from her.
“There were times when we were together that I thought, ‘Tell him now, tell him now, tell him, tell him, tell him,’” she confessed. “I suppose, even knowing about his condition, I got used to this idea that we were . . . pre-determined. I forgot that time – that opportunities – were passing me by. I know that telling him . . .” Her eyes trailed the deck, thankful his body was covered. “. . . wouldn’t have kept him alive. But I’ve been in love with him almost ten years, and I think I only told him so once? No . . . twice. Twice. I just wish I would’ve taken more chances . . .” It occurred to her that she was rambling, and her voice had taken on a listing, whiny quality. She cleared her throat. “That was one thing Dax always did. I was content to pretend nothing was happening between us, and he would always tell whatever he felt, even if it sometimes meant a fight. He would always–” Legacy’s voice cracked and she stopped herself. She did not want to cry in front of forty-something people. “So I guess my point is that everything, a person, a moment, a chance, is finite. If the notion crops up . . . don’t risk it. Say it.”
Liam and Gustav nodded, and Vector took a deep, shaking breath.
“May I ask that we share a moment of silence for Dachs Ghrenadel?” he invited.
Most of the crowd obeyed with sobriety, bowing their heads, but Legacy just stared straight ahead, her silver-white braids whipping to the side of her face and pulling at the black dress. It wasn’t that she wished to disrespect Vector, or this ceremony, or the memory of Dax, certainly, but she just . . . couldn’t . . . focus. On anything.
Because her eyes were open, she saw the men lower Dax’s makeshift pyre, setting small flames to the tips of the sheet and then releasing the cradle into the air. A black parachute fluttered open and swung lower, down toward the cloud forests of Old Earth. The wind pulled it – Dax – slightly ahead of them, being as light as it was, but also down. The fire crept along the sheet, but the material of the parachute and cabling must have been flame retardant. He floated away on the air, and Legacy limply raised a hand and flexed two of her fingers in a weak goodbye.
“Do you see that, there, Sophie?” Trimpot wondered, peering through the magnifying scope which had previously belonged to Master Addler but which was now indefinitely his own. He already recognized it, himself, but he doubted that Sophie could. Not from this distance. From this distance, it would appear to be perhaps a final star not yet blotted by the rays of the morning sun. But, through the blinking lens of this emerald scope, it was a fire on the air. A little teardrop of flame drifting in the air beneath a black parachute.
And not far above it: a familiar potbellied patchwork, suspended beneath a lumpy balloon of various gases. He could not make out exactly what was happening on the deck, though he did see that many people wore black. Someone had died. Someone had died, and their remains were being sent onto the air in flames. That was sweet of them.
“I don’t see anything, sir,” Sophie replied.
Trimpot pulled the scope down and peered at her. She had finally changed out of that vomitous chemise, and now wore a simple blue gown. Master Addler had tenderly convinced her that her attire was inappropriate for a servant of the castle. Considering this sudden and ardent turn deep inside a fantasy in which her bones were made of brass and her blood oil, he found the existence of some alternate reality wherein he had chosen to seduce her rather than her mother equally laughable and sobering.
Both were on the roof of the castle keep, Trimpot maintaining course for the past six hours and Sophie having been freed from the watchful eye of the machinist to venture to partake in the view. He couldn’t lie; this made Trimpot nervous. At least she’d never connected him to The Coronal Massacre. Any implications of his involvement in that had come far too late in her decline, when she was too busy pirouetting and wondering where Daddy was, and now there were stray comments made which suggested she didn’t even recall major events from her life. When he’d requested, quite politely, to have a dish of cold pasta leftovers delivered by her hand, she’d replied starchily that she was under strict orders by “the Duke of Icarus” to conserve rations. The Duke of Icarus? Even Trimpot didn’t think of Kaizen as the Duke of Icarus. Plus, what Icarus?
“That, my darling, is the rebel ship Albatropus,” Trimpot smirked, handing the masked girl the machinist’s magnifying instrument and nudging a lever forward five . . . ten . . . twenty notches. “We can finally get you those documents . . . a legitimate identity, and no one to contest it, if you so desire.”
Sophie peered up at him with those disconcerting blue eyes. “I have an identity, sir,” she explained in her odd calm.
Trimpot’s lip twisted down. This was the last thing he needed. His life depended on the mad girl’s malleability. She chose the day of their arrival in Celestine to have a mental breakdown and become completely unreasonable. “You can’t even leave the castle,” he reminded her.
“Why would I want to leave the castle?” She cocked her head quizzically. The motion possessed a disjointed quality. “My only wish is to serve. The Duke of Icarus entrusted to me the task of being a machinist’s assistant.”
So fucking . . . Okay. Okay. You can figure this out, Leo. Just . . . figure out how her crazy-person logic works. Trimpot took a deep breath and nodded.
“Hm. I see. So, you only take orders from the duke, and Master Addler, and perhaps Olympia?”
“The duchess. That’s correct.”
“Oh! I thought I was told that you killed an intruder last night, but . . . I guess that was someone else.”
“That is correct.” She nodded loosely, as if her neck joints were improperly connected. “The intruder was to the machinist’s chamber.”
“Hm. But the machinist was asleep, was he not?”
Sophie tilted her head again, now in the opposite direction. “The machinist was asleep,” she agreed. “That is correct, sir.”
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you know to kill the intruder without the command of Master Addler?”
Haha! Now she hesitated. “I don’t know, sir,” she finally answered. “I suppose a part of me just knew the right thing to do. Perhaps it was a program.” But he knew a glimmer of the old Sophie peaked through. Her tone suddenly took on a melancholic affect, which an automaton would never even manage. No one wants a melancholic servant! They’re programmed to be dreamless. Hopeless.
So, she claims to be a servant to the royal family, but let’s be real. No one gave her the “task” to come up here and sight-see. Deep down inside, as much as she’s loathe to admit it, she’s still Sophie Taliko, ticking time bomb of psycho but nonetheless likes what she likes and hates what she hates. Which makes her malleable. So it’s cool. You can work with this. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the girl thinks she’s an automaton. It won’t be hard to convince her to do what I need done . . . because she’ll want to do it, too. Can’t tell me the same chick who decapitated a total stranger wouldn’t eat Exa Legacy alive.
“Are we traveling at a safe speed?” Sophie pressed.
She gave him an uncertain look, but Trimpot continued to smile. “It’s fine. Trust me. The Duke of Icarus will be ecstatic to see what good time we’ve made. Here, let me nudge it forward just a few more notches. Ah, there we go. You know, I think we can catch that Albatropus if we hurry.”
“The Albatropus?” she repeated. “I believe our destination is Celestine, sir.”
“Our final destination is Heliopolis, in truth, my love,” Trimpot replied. “We are docking at Celestine, but the monarch, you know, will want to see the duke regarding recent changes. Oh, but what am I saying!” he added with a dramatic flair. “You couldn’t hope to understand the inner workings of the monarchy.”
“I understand!” Sophie shrilled. “Sir!”
“Then you must realize that the monarch wishes to see the duke in order to ascertain blame for the disasters beneath his rule. In fact, he made request of Exa Legacy, the rebel responsible for the Coronal Massacre, who is aboard that ship.” Trimpot smirked as the black parachute drifted beneath their island and disappeared. “We shouldn’t need to be told to procure that terrorist. After all, isn’t the monarch the master of the duke? And it is the monarch’s order to have Legacy apprehended.”
Sophie was deep in thought. “No one made any requests of this to me, sir,” she reiterated, sounding doubtful.
But Trimpot smiled. “Of course, of course. It’s not your task, love. It’s none of your concern.” What was the name of that automaton she mentioned in the throne room, during that argument, again? Robert . . .something. Roberta! “I am sure the duke intends to deal with those responsible in whatever way he sees fit, and will inform the staff as such. Well, except for Roberta, of course. Her face shattered.”
Sophie stiffened. “Master Addler said that her repairs would be complete soon. She’ll be fine. He said she’d be fine.”
“Of course! They’re all fine. Except Theodore, of course. He’s dead. His key will never turn again.”
Sophie turned from Trimpot to examine the small ship. They were rapidly gaining and would, in a minute or two, pass perhaps fifty feet over the Albatropus on their left. He tilted their trajectory slightly left and considered the distance between them and the amount of pressure he would have to apply to Sophie; how much longer until she broke? He tamped down their speed for the fear that he would be unable to push her to a breaking point within the window of their paths intersecting. If Trimpot was anything other than materialistic, it was calculating.
“And Valkenhayn, of course.”
“Valkenhayn is fine! I saw him only last night!” she cried, notes of distress arching her syllables.
“Well, yes, he’s fine, in a way,” Trimpot allowed, mind pumping furiously. “But he was found wandering the grounds this morning, apparently searching for someone outside of his ‘small group’ to kill.”
“No! I – I made him do that,” Sophie said, sounding much like her old self in this moment. Tortured and morose and about to pop and spill out something much less sweet than of what she appeared to be made. “We had to ensure that the program hadn’t spread,” she added limply. “The bad people came.”
“Ah, yes, the bad people. Such a shame that they would escape with these crimes. But, without the bad people apprehended, there will be no one to blame but you automata yourselves. Valkenhayn, regrettably, will need to have his key removed.” As she listened, Sophie’s chest rose and fell, deep and shallow, deep and shallow. Her fingers twitched as she, too, began to consider the Albatropus. “Valkenhayn, and Roberta, and Ariela, and Belladonna, and Maureen.”
“Th-those are all my best friends.”
“Well, we can’t have dangerous monsters like that rocketing about, can we?” Trimpot asked. His blood pressure danced as he fantasized how easily she could jump at him and tear into his face, but she seemed distracted by the ship. “There must be someone to blame for what Valkenhayn did to Daddy,” he pressed her trigger. “You can’t possibly know how a monarchy is run, like I said, but there needs to be some form of retribution when a kind, loving man like Daddy is beaten to death by poor Valkenhayn. Of course, you and I know that Valkenhayn didn’t mean to do it, would never possibly do it on his own, but someone needs to be blamed!” His voice rose in pitch as her fingernails dug into her palm, and he carefully applied the brakes, allowing the island to drift over the Albatropus below. “Someone needs to be killed for what happened to Daddy, someone needs to be hurt the way he was hurt; the monarch will make sure of it, even if Kaizen doesn’t! Without the true culprit, that bad girl, Exa Legacy, and her weapon, the one that infected your friends with that bad program, he’s got to execute the actual person themselves, even if they were only following their commands, even if they’d been driven crazy and they couldn’t help it and they’d never–”
Sophie shot from the manipulator’s side, galloping the stairs of the keep, and Trimpot frowned. Hm. He’d expected her to grab the wheel and maneuver the island herself – ideally, crushing the Albatropus below, damaging its balloon and sending it into a spiral toward the earth. Extracting his new scope, he observed through its blinking, emerald lens as Sophie charged from the castle, howling and pounding toward the gate of the external aerial dock. “Ohhh, shit,” he murmured to himself, laughing in a soft chagrin.
A small string of automata clattered and trundled in her wake.
He watched in utter disbelief; perhaps he’d been wrong about the remainder of a human Sophie lurking beneath the porcelain veneer; perhaps the only remainder of her humanity was its emotion and impulse, heedless of reason, even of basic spatial awareness and surviv
al instinct.
Sophie wrenched the dock’s gate wide and propelled herself onto its walk. From the movements of her mouth, she was still shouting things, ducking to and fro in a jerking, haphazard way, as if seeking an access point. Her automaton followers were not so careful in their judgments of distance and trajectory.
One by one, with zero hesitation at all, the glass figures swooped over the railing and disappeared from view. Seven had catapulted from the ledge of the dock when Sophie herself crawled over the rail and vanished.
Trimpot sighed and rolled his eyes. He should’ve figured this would happen. If the damn girl leapt to her death onto the rebel dirigible, all he’d have would be a drifting ship which he could claim was filled with dead rebels and wandering automata. But he’d have no proof. He’d have no tangible snuffing, as the monarch had said. Perhaps, though . . . perhaps he could say he’d only intended to settle the island in order to salvage the ground for Sophie’s body, that he had no idea there was a dirigible beneath . . .
He noted blithely that Kaizen had exited the castle and was racing toward the aerial dock, shouting nonsense. Of course, it was much too late, Trimpot was sure. What did the duke think he could do?
The island began to lower with Trimpot’s manipulation of the levers, smug in his certainty that he could at least destroy the Albatropus to the point that it crashed, and how would Kaizen ever explain to the monarch that he wished Trimpot be executed for such a clearly loyal action? More loyal than a duke, he was!
What would be really perfect, Trimpot thought as Kaizen dashed through the open gate and onto the dock to observe the carnage below, whatever it may have been, is if Kaizen died too. It would just be me and Olympia docking in Celestine, and if the monarch really wished to maintain some kind of superficial office for Icarus, there’d be no one better for it onboard than yours truly.
LEGACY LOST Page 14
