Human for a Day (9781101552391)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
THE MAINSPRING OF HIS HEART, THE SHACKLES OF HIS SOUL
THE BLADE OF HIS PLOW
CINDERELLA CITY
TUMULUS
THE SENTRY
TEN THOUSAND COLD NIGHTS
MORTALITY
THE DOG-CATCHER’S SONG
MORTAL MIX-UP
BAND OF BRONZE
ZOMBIE INTERRUPTED
BENEATH THE SILENT BELL, THE AUTUMN SKY TURNS TO SPRING
THE VERY NEXT DAY
THE DESTROYER
INTO THE N TH DIMENSION
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITORS
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Santa did not want to go away again.
He could not imagine anything more wonderful than being here among people, seeing how they lived, how they felt. Cold fear made a knot in his belly. He did not recall what it was like before he had appeared on that street corner. The thought of not existing again worried him.
It was the nature of life to want to remain alive. What did he have to do to stay that way?
And it was all around him. Twinkling lights that were not made of fire, encased in light bubbles of glass. Everywhere he walked, he saw fascinating new inventions, wonders in themselves. Human beings defied the darkness, pushed back ignorance, spread knowledge in new ways. They had chained the lightning. Small wonder that it had pushed from them that little comfort of someone giving them simple gifts out of love. Was he no longer relevant?
Peddlers pulling carts glanced up and saw him. Women doing their day’s shopping noticed him. Men in waistcoats, collars and ties peered his way. Most smiled, and then looked away hastily. A few stared openly. He greeted them with a cheerful wave. They saw, they hoped to believe, and they doubted.
As he walked through the bustling city, he saw no place where he belonged. He touched upon the lives of people only once a year. Here and now he was misplaced in time. I’m not satisfied to exist only one day, he thought.
—from “The Very Next Day” by Jody Lynn Nye.
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Boondocks Fantasy, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg
Urban fantasy is popular, but what if you took that modern fantasy and moved it to the “sticks,” with no big city in sight? Trailer parks, fishing shacks, sleepy little towns, or specks on the map so small that if you blink while driving through you’ll miss them. Vampires, wizards, aliens, and elves might be tired of all that urban sprawl and prefer a spot in the country—someplace where they can truly be themselves without worrying about what the neighbors think! With stories by tale-spinners such as Gene Wolfe, Timothy Zahn, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Anton Strout, Linda P. Baker and others.
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Zombies have long stalked and staggered through the darkest depths of human imagination, pandering to our fears about death and what lies beyond. But must zombies always be just shambling, brain-obsessed ghouls? If zombies actually maintained some level of personality and intelligence, what would they want more than anything? Could zombies integrate themselves into society? Could society accept zombies? What if a zombie fell in love? These are just some of the questions explored in original stories by Seanan McGuire, Nancy A. Collins, Tim Waggoner, Richard Lee Byers, Jim C. Hines, Jean Rabe, and Del Stone Jr. with others. Here’s your chance to take a walk on the undead side in these unforgettable tales told from a zombie’s point of view.
After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar, edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray
The first bar, created by the Sumerians after they were given the gift of beer by the gods, was known as the Ur-Bar. Although it has since been destroyed, its spirit lives on. In each age there is one bar that captures the essence of the original Ur-Bar, where drinks are mixed with magic and served with a side of destiny and intrigue. Now some of today’s most inventive scriveners, such as Benjamin Tate, Kari Sperring, Anton Strout, and Avery Shade, among others, have decided to belly up to the Ur-Bar and tell their own tall tales—from an alewife’s attempt to transfer the gods’ curse to Gilgamesh, to Odin’s decision to introduce Vikings to the Ur-Bar…from the Holy Roman Emperor’s barroom bargain, to a demon hunter who may just have met his match in the ultimate magic bar, to a bouncer who discovers you should never let anyone in after hours in a world terrorized by zombies....
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Brozek and Tekno Books
ISBN : 978-1-101-55239-1
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First Printing, December 2011
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Mainspring of His Heart, the Shackles of His Soul,” copyright © 2011 by Ian Tregillis
“The Blade of His Plow,” copyright © 2011 by Joseph A. Lake, Jr.
“Cinderella City,” copyright © 2011 by Seanan McGuire
“Tumulus,” copyright © 2011 by Anton Strout
“The Sentry,” copyright © 2011 by Fiona Patton
“Ten Thousand Cold Nights,” copyright © 2011 by Erik Scott de Bie
“Mortality,” copyright © 2011 by Dylan Birtolo
“The Dog-Catcher’s Song,” copyright © 2011 by Tanith Lee
“Mortal Mix-Up,” copyright © 2011 by Laura Resnick
“Band of Bronze,” copyright © 2011 by Jean Rabe
“Zombie Interrupted,” copyright © 2011 by Tim Waggoner
“Beneath the Silent Bell, the Autumn Sky Turns to Spring,” copyright © 2011 by Eugie Foster
“The Very Next Day,” copyright © 2011 by Jody Lynn Nye
“The Destroyer,” copyright © 2011 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Into the Nth Dimension,” copyright © 2011 by David D. Levine
“Epilogue,” copyright © 2011 by Jim C. Hines
THE MAINSPRING OF HIS HEART, THE SHACKLES OF HIS SOUL
Ian Tregillis
As the Christiaan Huygens made its final approach to New Amsterdam harbor, carrying a princely gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs for the colonial governor, the chief engineer and his mates fired up the wireless. The Breuckelen Dodgers were playing a double-header.
Jax wondered if they played baseball in Quebec. Maybe, after they escaped, he and Willem could attend a game.
But he couldn’t join the others where they sat with their heads clustered around the tinny speaker, straining to hear box scores over the rumble of turbines and the clacking of Jax’s metal body. The chief had commanded him to ignore the game and work the boilers. So Jax had no choice but to shovel coal: he had no Key, and thus no free will.
War’s end meant a cessation of open hostilities between the Brasswork Throne and Montreal. But to French Canadian privateers and fifth columnists, the Treaty of Dublin was just a piece of paper—suitable for the privy and nothing more. Hence the order from the commodore of the queen’s naval entourage: be ready to move at the drop of a kerchief. The Frenchies wouldn’t catch the world’s only superpower asleep in port. The fleet would whisk the queen back t
o the Netherlands at the first sign of trouble.
Not that Her Majesty was likely to tarry in the war-ravaged colonial backwaters. She’d deliver the tulips, thank the governor for his service to the crown, and return to civilized Europe. Even a million tulips couldn’t dispel the infamous stench of New Amsterdam, fodder for jokes long before three decades of warfare had scoured the colonies.
Jax didn’t mind. Surely even the most noisome human sewage couldn’t taint the thrilling promise of freedom, of unlocking his soul, of drawing breath and speaking as a human man. Each revolution of the turbines brought him closer to the fabled secret locksmiths of Montreal.
Meanwhile, he shoveled.
Coal crunched beneath the blade of his shovel. Reticulated gearing rattled along his spine, brass clattering against brass as he heaved another load into the cherry-red maw of the boiler.
“Quiet down!” said the chief. He spat. “Worthless goddamned Clakker.”
Jax adjusted his posture. It made shoveling more difficult, but marginally quieter.
Firelight gleamed on the humans’ bare chests, sweat-slick in the close heat of the engine room. Jax tried not to notice how the flickering light played across their smooth brows. Humans didn’t have keyholes. They owned their souls from birth.
Jax slumped in imitation of a sigh. His keyhole sat in the center of his forehead, at the spot some considered an outward extension of the third eye, and where currently (and more prosaically) soot caked the alchemical sigils etched into his metal plating.
The ship shuddered. A minute tremor ran along the keel from stern to bow: the captain had called the order to reverse engines. Jax’s feet clanged like a pair of cymbals against the deck. He creaked to his toes, forced there by the geas laid upon him by the chief’s casual outburst. Shoveling became extremely difficult, but it lessened the noise almost imperceptibly. Jax heaved a dozen loads of coal while contorted like a circus performer before the captain called a halt to the engines and the decking fell silent. The Huygens coasted the last few hundred yards to its berth. Down here among the boilers, the queen’s historic arrival in the new world was announced by nothing more grand than a faint bump as the flagship snugged into its mooring lines.
Queen Margarethe, Blessed Sovereign of Europe, Light of Civilization and Benevolent Ruler of the Dutch Colonial Empire, had arrived in New Amsterdam.
And Jax, the very least of her clockwork servants, had arrived at the home of the Underground Railroad.
A strong wind followed the East River. It ruffled miles of blue and tangerine bunting, snapped the queen’s standard like a lion tamer’s whip, and blew across the deck of the Huygens, where it evoked a strangled cough from Willem. The lieutenant fished a handkerchief from his pocket and pinched his nose. The cloth, Jax knew, had been soaked in chypre.
Jax wiggled his fingers. Is it as bad as they say? The stench?
“It smells like a herd of elephants drowned in an open sewer,” said Willem.
That doesn’t sound so bad. You squishy humans. So delicate. Jax signed this along with a trill of gearing from deep in his torso: the Clakker equivalent of a chuckle, though most took it for a growl.
“They drowned a month ago,” said Willem. “And they’re getting ripe.”
In the centuries since Jax’s primary mainspring had been wound and sealed into his torso, only Willem had ever taken the time to know him. Only Willem recognized that being mute didn’t make Jax a halfwit. Willem alone had ever wondered about the thoughts imprisoned within the brass jail of Jax’s skull, and only he had seen fit to set them free with sign language. Willem was his only friend and the best human he had ever known.
Soon Jax would have a Key and a voice. His chromium-plated exoskeleton would undergo the alchemical transformation that would render it soft flesh. He’d be able to hug Willem, and thank him, without cutting or crushing him. His love would not be deadly.
The wind sculpted snowdrifts of confetti against an empty grandstand. The Mayors of New Amsterdam had been in attendance when the queen presented the lord governor with his medal, his title, and, most extravagant of all, the tulips. He’d gained her favor by pushing the French back across the border, and lavish were her rewards. But now the celebration was over and the sterile glow of electric street lights bleached color from the rainbow-hued streamers. Wind-strewn crepe flittered through the legs of the motionless clockwork servitors lining the approach to the Huygens. The rest of the queen’s guard had accompanied her to the ball at the governor’s palace.
The buzz of saws and the percussion of hammers echoed across the harbor. Carpenters were already hard at work dismantling the stands. Wood was in rare supply these days.
The wind died. The queen’s standard fell limp against the flagpole. But Willem kept the handkerchief pressed to his nose. Jax pretended not to hear him blowing his nose; politely turned a blind eye to the way he dabbed at his eyes. He felt the same way, but envied Willem his tears. Jax couldn’t cry. That was the province of humans.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t worry. Willem would pay dearly if his role in Jax’s escape were uncovered.
Are you having second thoughts?
Willem gave his nose a final blow, tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket. A rueful smile touched the corners of his eyes. “Miss my chance to see you finally free? Don’t be silly. But now that I’m here, I find I’ll miss being a sailor.”
Jax shook his head. A passerby at that moment might have thought a steam engine had slipped its bearings. You should stay, he signed. Let me go alone. A Dutch naval officer caught sneaking into French Quebec is likely to be shot on sight. Worse, it could reignite the war.
Willem said, “Let’s make an effort not to get caught, then.” This time the smile missed his eyes. Instead it speared Jax in the hollow where a human’s heart would have been. It hurt worse than a grain of sand pinched in the coils of a mainspring, or a cracked tooth on a cog.
“Are you ready?”
Jax nodded.
“Very well, then.” Willem stood straighter and looked Jax in the eyes. The regal bearing couldn’t completely erase the wetness in his eyes. The tears, Jax knew, signified both joy and sorrow. He’d observed humans for a long time before he understood this.
“Jackivantus, heed my words, for as a human being I claim my right to lay this geas upon you: I demand that you forsake your duties aboard the Christiaan Huygens. I demand that you venture into New Amsterdam with the sole and unwavering purpose of seeking freedom in Quebec. I demand you seek the maker of counterfeit Keys, who is said to live above a machinist’s shop on Vermeers Street, and that you make every effort to do so, including doing violence to those of your own kind if such is necessary. And I demand that you take every precaution to avoid receiving any further geas that would supersede this compulsion.” The seriousness around his thin lips gave way to the smirk. “And, as your friend, I demand that you let me help you.”
Willem meant well. He didn’t know how much the compulsion hurt. No human did.
The words were a lightning bolt to the helpless dry tinder of Jax’s soul; an unstoppable brush fire that would burn him to ash, over and over, until he satisfied the geas. He could not but obey. He had no Key. No free will.
Willem’s bootsteps evoked a quiet rattle from the gangplank. Jax crouched beside the taffrail, his knees hinging backwards in the manner some found grotesque. They ratcheted closed with the tick-tick-tick of an outsized pocket watch. He rocked onto his toes, pressing his ankle joints tighter against the springs of his haunches. Willem set foot on the pier. He ignored the guards and went straight to the carpenters, clever and bold and oh-so-handsome in his lieutenant’s grays. Only a man with nothing to hide would be so brazen.
Jax’s anxiety grew with every pulse of hydraulic fluid into the pistons that drove his legs. He quivered like an overheated boiler. The compulsion had stiffened the springs in his legs, made them stronger, almost too strong to withstand. Light glinted between Willem’s fingers when he p
ulled the silvered flask from his pocket. The carpenters gathered around: the price of good liquor had increased a hundredfold during their adulthoods.
Jax waited until after Willem had taken his own sip and passed the flask around. And when the lieutenant had captured their attention, he jumped.
A quiet puff belied the explosive release of potential energy that launched him from the deck. He arced over the pier, over the Clakkers tirelessly protecting the Huygens from French perfidy, over the flagpoles and the queen’s standard. Jax soared beyond the ring of electric lights toward the shipping offices and warehouses. The carpenters might have seen a glint of light streaking across the sky and thought it a shooting star.
On the way down, Jax unfolded his arms to their fullest extent. As the shadows of the wharf enveloped him, he tightened the springs in his arms and torso.
Like a steel javelin, Jax’s outstretched body speared a warehouse roof. His arms buckled to their fullest compression with a spine-rattling clank. The impact pulverized roofing tiles. The handstand persisted for a fraction of a second, and then he somersaulted through the air, flipping along the roofline like a Chinese acrobat. Each landing absorbed more energy and slowed him further.
Until he crashed through a skylight. Jax flailed at nothing on the way down and came to rest atop a flattened pile of wooden crates. His landing launched billowing clouds of dust and debris through dark aisles.
He stood. Glass tinkled and wood creaked. Nails jutted from the demolished crates, scritching across his armatures. Something soft and round bounced away when he brushed himself off. Jax stepped out of the wreckage and crushed another soft something underfoot.
A tulip bulb.
The queen’s gift, he realized. He untangled himself from a length of tangerine bunting.
Electric arc lights flared to blinding life. A shout echoed through the warehouse. It was followed by the rumble of a loading-dock door and the unmistakable clatter of brass on concrete as a squad of the queen’s guards poured inside.