Hot and Steamy

by Jean Rabe

  His face was so full of concern it hurt to see. Tia flinched. “I haven’t done anything since I came home.”

  “There must be probabilities or some new calculations the city has made,” her father muttered. He sat down on another chair and rubbed his forehead. No doubt he was wondering where he had gone wrong in raising her. Or trying to figure out what he could do.

  Which was nothing.

  “Or,” Tia said, “the city is right.” It was strange to think of the city itself bringing its attention on her. It was more than strange: it was scary.

  “What do you mean?” her father asked, looking up.

  “I’m an ambassador. I’m exposed to things that come into the city. It’s my job to stop them. It does mean there is a risk. And I know who I need to talk to.”

  “You can’t leave, there are ambassadors on the way,” her father protested, but Tia was already out of her chair.

  She used a long black cloak with a hood to help her slip around the shadows of the streets and flit her way to the guest houses.

  When Riun opened the door again, she pushed him back inside and closed the door behind her.

  “What did you do to me?” she demanded.

  “What are you talking about? What are you doing here?”

  “There’s a quarantine command on me. You’ve infected me with something; I want to know what.”

  “It’s just me,” Riun protested. “I’m not an agent. I’m not anything. I don’t have anything.”

  “Then you must have gotten something from someone else,” Tia insisted. “Do you have anti-city propaganda you’ve been exposed to or thoughts?”

  “What? No!”

  “What city sent you?” Tia poked his chest.

  “It was my own idea. I wanted to see the world. That’s all.”

  Tia threw herself down on the couch. “Then why am I suddenly a threat to peace and order? Why is the city going to quarantine me?”

  “I don’t know,” Riun said. He looked just as upset as she did. “There’s always a risk, being a traveler. That you picked something up somewhere. Some mannerism that a host city will get upset by. But I swear to you, Tia, I haven’t set out to do anything to you. I would never forgive myself if I did.”

  She looked at him sharply. “You seemed quick enough to push me out of the guest house earlier.”

  “For both our sakes, Tia. You and I both know you have a cardmate. You have a place in this city. I won’t jeopardize your life here.”

  But he already had. Just be revealing his existence, she realized.

  She opened her mouth to try and explain this, and a loud rap came from the door.

  “Open up!” shouted an authoritative voice. “Traveler Riun, in the name of the city open up!”

  Tia stood. “I’ve ruined it all for both of us, haven’t I?” The city had figured out she came here. Now Riun would be expelled.

  “What will they do to you?” Riun asked, eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem to be worried about expulsion. “Answer me quickly, for I’ve been to many cities, and the punishments for disorder vary wildly, Tia.”

  “Long term quarantine,” Tia said. “Maybe a year. A recomputing of my personality profile based on an interview, pending release. Reeducation during the quarantine.”

  Riun grimaced. Tia stood up and walked over to him. “It’s not your fault, Riun,” she said. “It’s mine for wanting something that isn’t mine to have.”

  She touched his lips with her fingers. To her frustration, he didn’t seem to be sharing the moment with her. His brow was creased with thought, as if he were struggling with something.

  Then he gently held her shoulders. “And what is it you really want, Tia? Is it me or the traveling? Or to escape the city? Some want to leave it, but there always more cities, more places you’ll have to navigate carefully. More places you’ll be considered an outside threat by the city’s Mind.”

  Tia looked into his eyes. He looked quite earnest at this moment. So she returned that with honesty. “I know I’m attracted to the outside. I think that’s a part of it. And I think a part of it is you as well. I hope that’s the greater part. But how am I to know? You are not my cardmate.”

  The hammering on the door stopped. They would be breaking it down shortly.

  “If you truly are in love with both, and not just one of those things, then come with me,” Riun said, and held out a hand.

  Riun led her to his room and pulled on a coat, then swept his books and notes into his trunk.

  “Lock my door,” he said.

  Tia did, hearing the ambassadors crashing against the outside door. It creaked, seconds away from breaking open.

  “It’s not uncommon for travelers to have to run for it when a city changes its mind,” Riun said. “So we always have a way out that we note for each other.”

  He kicked at a panel, and a small section of the wall swung aside. They walked into the empty room next door and closed the false wall behind them. Outside, ambassadors trooped down the hallway and started banging on Riun’s door.

  Riun took them through two more rooms until they stopped at one with a window onto an alley.

  They squeezed through, yanking his trunk along with them, and clattered out into the alleyway. Riun pulled his collar up, making to run for the street, but Tia stopped him.

  “This way,” she said, pointing at their feet. Wisps of steam leaked out from the edges of a manhole. “There’ll be watchers on the streets. I know the steam tunnels.”

  Inside the dark tunnels they ran for the edge of the city, and emerged near the ravine elevators. Again, Tia directed them away from the street. “I know a faster way; my dad works around here,” she huffed.

  They broke through the doors and ran down the long halls of a calculating factory instead. Clean white, brightly lit, and filled with thousands of sober-faced men and women, leaning over abacus trays, flicking beads in response to equations being offered up to them by blinking lights near their control boards.

  Their presence caused a rippling effect of commotion as they passed through, with calculators in clean white robes standing up to shout at them.

  Tia threw open the rear doors, and they pushed past the handfuls of people waiting to board the city elevators. Curses and complaints followed them, but Riun shut the cage to the elevator shut and Tia hit the switches.

  The elevator climbed up the side of the ravine, hissing and spitting as it passed street after street level, and the roofs of houses at the lower levels and clinging to the sides slowly slid past them.

  There was a balcony on the High Road near one of the bridges that ran along under the glass roof that capped the city. Riun grabbed Tia’s arm, and pulled her over to the railing. “Look,” he said.

  Tia did, and gasped. The city below was changing. People were spilling out onto the streets. Lights were turning on. It wasn’t orderly, or staggered in shifts as normal. Instead, the focus of the disturbance was the calculating building they’d run through. People were wandering the streets randomly, not using the flowchart sidewalks and lights.

  There was chaos in the Abyssal City and it was spreading.

  Lights flickered randomly, and gouts of steam burst from below the streets.

  “Did we cause that?” Tia asked, looking at the masses of pedestrians wandering aimlessly about, shouting and arguing. They could hear the grinding shudder of machines coming to a halt over the bubbling hum of discussions and arguments drifting upwards from the entire city. “Did you?”

  She glanced at him, and realized from the look on his face that he was just as horrified as she was. “I’m just a traveler,” he whispered. “Just a traveler.”

  They looked at the spreading chaos, rapt. “Do you think it’ll bring the entire city to a stop?” she asked.

  Riun shook his head. “No. No I’ve seen this before. It’s a temporary fault. A system failure.” Warning klaxons fired to life throughout the city. “Soon they’ll order a return to homes, empty the streets. Stop
all the machines then restart them. Order will return.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tia said. Not in all her life. It unnerved her. She’d always thought of society, the system around her, as stable and everlasting and solid.

  Yet here she was, with Riun. And there chaos was. In the distance, she heard the rumble of an intercity train.

  They had to move through the sandbox and get to it.

  “Listen,” Riun told her, hearing the train and turning to face her. They were so close, their lips could almost touch. “If you leave with me, I can’t promise you anything. I can’t promise you a home or a city that you fit into. I can’t promise you my love, I’ve only known you a week. All I can promise is a travel partner, and the fact that I do find you beautiful and interesting and I want to escape with you. Can that be enough?”

  Tia pulled the silvered card off her neck and looked down at it. “Yes,” she said. “I’m willing to take chance and uncertainty.”

  And then she threw the card out into the space over the ravine and watched it flutter away, down toward the steaming, chaotic streets of the city.

  FOR THE LOVE OF BYRON

  Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician, parent, bird wrangler, goat roper, dog trainer, cat herder, horse rider, and fish feeder, who learned (the hard way) not to let macaws remove contact lenses. She is the author of two dozen novels and fifty-some short stories. Her other claims to fame are that she has performed brain surgery and her parents really are rocket scientists.

  Night wind howled through the colonial village of May’s Landing, sending a loose shutter slamming against a shop window. Elizabeth Holden wrapped her overcoat more tightly around herself, shivering beneath the red wool. The long, floaty fabric of her nightgown bunched beneath it, making her look bulky in odd places, but she appreciated the long sleeves and high-buttoned collar for the first time since arriving in the New World. She clenched her hands inside the rabbit fur muff and tried not to think about the growing numbness in her fingers and slippered toes.

  The same village that seemed so bright and welcoming during the day now seemed like a strange forbidding place, rife with hulking shadows. The dark alleys drew her gaze more fully than the doorways now. Smoke streamed from every chimney, engulfing the village in a pungent fog. The machinery that usually spouted friendly billows of white steam now looked like huddled monsters prepared to spring at the unwary. Suddenly wishing she had never ventured out, Elizabeth glanced toward home. The mansion sat in darkness on the hill, looking as odd and uncomforting as the village itself.

  Elizabeth forced an image of Byron to her mind’s eye: an adorable armload of black, all huge brown eyes and clumsy paws. She had illegally dragged him across the sea, hidden in a basket of knitting. The law was strict about bringing animals to the pristine environment of the New World. It allowed for a limited number of domesticated cows, goats, pigs and chickens, all carefully cataloged and all ultimately intended for the dinner table. No exceptions were made for any other living creatures, although they encouraged the mechanical dogs and cats that had become the preference of the Old World as well.

  Elizabeth had lost track of Byron nearly three months earlier. When he had grown too big to hide in her room, she had moved him to a clearing in the forest outside her window. There, she had spent many happy hours romping with the animal. Large, calm as windless sea, and mercifully quiet, Byron had grown from an awkward puppy unsteady on his saucer-sized paws to a gawky adolescent dog with a tongue that could wash her entire face in a single, happy lick. She had managed to pass him off as a mech-dog on the few occasions when someone had spotted her with him.

  Then, one day, Byron had gone crashing off after a herd of bounding deer, their odd white tails flashing like parley flags. She had chased after him, but he swiftly outdistanced her. Elizabeth had not seen him since, though not for lack of trying. She had slipped away to call him at every opportunity. She listened breathlessly to all the passing gossip. If someone had discovered a living, breathing dog, news of its capture would have spread throughout May’s Landing.

  Elizabeth had nearly given up hope. When no news reached her, when no one spoke of an odd black carcass or the bones of some unidentified predator, she did not know whether to feel relieved or frightened. The thought of Byron lost and alone cut at her heart like a physical attack. Whenever she considered it, her chest hurt, breathing became a struggle, and tears flowed freely from her eyes.

  Now, Elizabeth thought she saw a movement in the nearest alley. She stared, dark eyes attempting cleave the darkness, but she saw nothing more. With no other leads, she glided toward the alley, hesitantly removing her hands from the muff. Although she hated to lose its warmth, she worried more about falling on her face and having nothing with which to catch herself.

  Not that it would make much difference, in Elizabeth’s mind. She had never considered herself pretty, with her long narrow face, close-spaced eyes, and thin bird-like nose. Her stick-straight brown hair balked against the rags Peggy wound into her locks each night, refusing to curl. Elizabeth wore the latest styles because her parents insisted that their twenty-year-old daughter should appear suitable should a young man finally choose to woo her. Yet that seemed like a pipe dream. All the men of proper age and stature were already married or had their eyes fixed on Flora, Ruffina, Hope, and Hester. Men wanted girls with pert noses and sparkling blue eyes, lily complexions and rosy lips and cheeks, girls who could tighten their corsets to form delicious hourglasses: full, soft, voluptuous in contour. When Elizabeth cinched her corset, she looked more like a stick insect. Instead, she wore as many petticoats as she dared, trying to bulk up a curveless figure without sweating herself to death.

  Elizabeth stepped into the alley, at first seeing nothing. Disappointed, she turned to leave, and movement touched the corner of her vision again. She whirled toward it, seeing a tiny, ragged figure staring at her from between a stack of crates. Recognizing it as a young boy, she crouched to his eye level. “Hallo.”

  The boy receded deeper into the darkness.

  Worried he might run away, Elizabeth tossed him a penny. Moonlight struck an orange glint from the copper, and it pinged against a cobblestone, bounced, and settled on a corner of broken, wooden crating.

  Elizabeth could no longer see the boy, but a small grubby hand eased toward the coin, snatched it suddenly, and disappeared.

  “Please don’t go,” Elizabeth said urgently. She dug through her pocket to see what other coinage she carried. Her fingers sifted through florins and threepences to uncover a larger sovereign. She pulled it free. The gold would catch the boy’s attention like no lesser metal could. “I’ll give you this if you tell me what I want to know.”

  A filthy face poked out, surrounded by an unkempt mane of light brown hair. His gaze locked on the sovereign, probably more than he had held in a lifetime.

  “I’m looking for a dog,” Elizabeth said.

  The boy continued to eye the coin. “There’s dogs everywhere, missy. Every kid what can afford one’s got a mech.”

  Elizabeth sighed. Even in the Old World, mechanical pets had mostly replaced the flesh and blood animals of earlier times. Cleaner, more obedient, designed to love, they cost little to keep. If an owner forgot to feed it, it merely wound down, awaiting the single lump of wood or coal that would bring it back to life. The water needed replacement only once every few days, poured directly into a valve, not licked about and spilled. There was no excrement or urine to worry about, no training necessary. Random barking was never a problem, although an owner who wanted a protection animal could set it to warning mode. They could be calibrated to snuggle up at night or be tossed casually under the bed until the next play period without holding a grudge. They fetched, they wagged, they executed simple tricks, soulless automatons that performed their duties to the letter. They were also the only legal pets in the unsullied expanse of the New World.

  “I’m not talking about
a mech,” Elizabeth spoke as softly as she could. As far as she knew, no one would overhear her if she shouted, but she did not want to risk the possibility. If the authorities found out about Byron, they would kill him and imprison her for smuggling. A terrified shiver traversed her. She hoped the boy mistook it for a reaction to the cold.

  Even in the dim alleyway, Elizabeth saw a light flash through the boy’s eyes. He licked his lips several times before speaking, still fanatically interested in the coin. Clearly, he knew something he did not wish to tell.

  “I’m worried about him,” Elizabeth said. “I love him, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. Please. Help me.”

  The boy’s gaze moved reluctantly from the coin to Elizabeth’s face. He obviously tried to read the truth of her statement, the sincerity in the lines of her face. Apparently, he found what he was looking for, because he visibly relaxed. “Perry’s got a dog.”

  Elizabeth needed more. “Black?”

  The boy nodded. “As a raven. Huge beast. Bigger’n me.”

  Elizabeth hesitated. The last time she had seen Byron, his back had come up to the level of her knees. He was still a puppy, though. She supposed he might have grown to the size the boy specified. It has to be Byron.

  “Can you take me to this . . . Perry?”

  The boy receded back amid the crates.

  Elizabeth’s eyes had adjusted fully to the gloom, and she could easily make out his silhouette. He was still there. “I’ll give you more.” Desperate, she pulled nearly all the coins from her pocket. “Please, I’m not going to get anyone in trouble. I just want to see my dog.”

  In her rush, Elizabeth tore the edge of her pocket, and several copper and silver coins spilled to the cobbles. They rattled there, rolling on edge to settle awkwardly in the cracks between the rocks.

  The boy darted out to gather them. In a flash, he had every coin in his hand. He looked hopefully at Elizabeth, then opened his fingers to display the stash.