The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven
Page 36
Sir Arthur possessed himself of Tacy’s hand. “I think,” he said, “that I should like to go home now.”
But the dawn of reciprocal love had not entirely robbed Tacy of her common sense. “One more question there is to be settled, before we make an end,” she said, turning to Mr. Holmes. “You have our prototype and all our notes. Without them, we can neither refine our work, nor present it to the Royal Society, nor apply for a patent. In short, it will be as if the Illogic Engine was never invented. Unless, perhaps, you intend to present it as your own work?”
The inventor looked shocked. “I may be a thief, Miss Gof, but I am not a scoundrel.” He rubbed his face with his well-kept hands. “Well. It seems we have a great deal still to discuss. Doctor, would you be so good as to walk through that door behind you and put the kettle on the hob? I think we could all use a cup of tea.”
April 1882
ON A BRIGHT, chilly spring morning, Sir Arthur and Lady Cwmlech sat at breakfast in the cozy morning room of their house on Curzon Street. Sir Arthur was reading a book he had propped up against the saltcellar and absently dripping egg over his waistcoat. Lady Cwmlech, a plate of toast and marmalade at her elbow, was poring over the flimsy sheets of the popular journal, the Thames-Side Monthly.
Turning over a page, she uttered an excited squeak. “Here it is at last, Arthur!”
Sir Arthur looked up from his book, pale eyes bleary behind his spectacles. The patent application for the Illogic Engine had kept him up half the night. Bad as a new baby, Tacy thought, and smiled. He smiled back wanly. “Here is what, my love?”
“John’s account of the Bootlace Murders. Never tell me you’ve forgotten! Five cobblers strangled with bootlaces and laid out on their benches all neat and tidy, and the police as baffled as sheep at a gate. Last spring it was, just after the wedding.”
“After the wedding,” Sir Arthur said, “I had more important things to think of than deceased cobblers.” He gave Tacy a grin that brought the blood to her cheeks.
“Of course, my dear. But John wrote us about it, remember? Their first case after the move to Baker Street, and so proud he was of how well Sherlock and the police dealt together, after that unfortunate misunderstanding about the purloined letter.”
“Damned silly name, Sherlock,” Sir Arthur observed.
“No sillier than Mycroft, when all’s said and done. None of our concern, in any case.” She gave him a wifely look. “Will I read it to you, then, while you wipe the egg off your waistcoat?”
Sir Arthur stared down at the congealed yolk festooning his chest. “Oh, dear,” he sighed. “Tacy, do you think. . .?”
Dipping her napkin in her husband’s tea, Tacy dealt with the waistcoat, then rang for Swindon, who bore off the spoiled napery.
“I’m sorry, my love.” Sir Arthur said. “I’ve forgotten what you were saying.”
“The Bootlace Murders.”
“Ah. The Bootlace Murders. I am all attention. Who did the Great Detective deduce had done ’em?”
“There’s pity,” Tacy said severely, “to set aside all John’s hard work in unfolding the mystery step-by-step, with all the characters of the shoemaker’s wife and Inspector Gregson and the man with the limp drawn as clear as life. Furthermore,” she went on, “we are to dine with them tonight, before the concert. Churlish, it would be, not to mention his literary debut.”
Sir Arthur shook his head. “I dare not, dearest. The patent application—”
“Will be the better for an evening’s holiday. A program of Bach, it is. You like Bach.”
“I thought Watson preferred Chopin.”
“He does. But Madame Neruda plays tonight and Sherlock has conceived a keen interest in the violin. He speaks of learning to play.”
“Heaven help us,” Arthur said. “Very well. Bach, Neruda, and dinner, it shall be. And the Bootlace Murders. I do not wish to disoblige John.”
Tacy had just reached the second murder when Mistress Angharad Cwmlech swept into the room on the arm of Mr. Mycroft Holmes, visible to all and very pretty indeed in a plaid walking dress, with a saucy hat perched on her dark curls. Her lips were soft against Tacy’s cheek, if a little chilly.
“Going to a meeting, we are,” she announced, “with Rosebery and Ball, about the Bill of Mechanical Rights. Mycroft”—she cast a proprietary glance at the big man—“thinks it possible it may pass, if we can coax the prime minister into speaking in support.”
Arthur groaned. “But, my work!”
Mycroft Holmes fixed him with a keen and pearly eye. “This is your work, Arthur—or should be. The patent office will wait—this bill will not.”
“Do I not deserve to be a person before the law?” Angharad demanded. “Does not Sherlock?”
“To be sure,” Tacy answered her. “And so do all thinking mechanicals.”
Sir Arthur sighed and rose to his feet. “You are right, of course. Tacy, ring for the carriage. There is not a moment to be lost.”
EVERYONE FROM THEMIS SENDS LETTERS HOME
Genevieve Valentine
GENEVIEVE VALENTINE ’s (www.genevievevalentine.com) first novel, Mechanique, won the Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula the same year. Her second, The Girls of the Kingfisher Club, appeared in 2014 to acclaim, and was followed by science fiction novels Persona and Icon. Valentine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy, Apex, and others, and in the anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, Teeth, After, and more. Her story “Light on the Water” was a 2009 World Fantasy Award nominee, and “Things to Know about Being Dead” was a 2012 Shirley Jackson Award nominee; several stories have been reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared at NPR.org, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and Fantasy Magazine, and she is a coauthor of Geek Wisdom (Quirk Books). She has also been known to write Catwoman and Xena: Warrior Princess comics! Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable.
THE WATER HERE is never going to make good bread. If I’d known, I would have requested sturdier flour—we’ll be waiting six years for the next transport pod. Agosti told me today my bread’s good for massaging the gums, like he was trying to focus on the positives. Woods threatened to arrest him anyway, which was nice of him.
But that’s really the only thing that makes me sad. Otherwise, I promise, I’m getting along here very well. I miss you, too. Every time I’m up late with the dough I imagine you’re at the table working, and when I look up it takes me a second to remember. But everyone here is pitching in. Marquez and Perlman and I are figuring out how to cheat an apple tree into producing fruit sooner, and Agosti’s building equipment out of our old life support systems. If it works out, we’ll have our own cider in two years. (“We can dip the bread in it,” Perlman said, and Woods threatened to arrest her, too. Gives him something to do. Imagine being in charge of five people. Good thing he has a knack for building.)
The sun’s different than back home—they told us about particles and turbulence on the way over and I was too stupid to understand it and too afraid to tell them, so just pretend I explained and you were really impressed. The planet’s locked, so there’s really only water on the equator—nothing makes it toward the sun and it’s ice by the time you go ten miles further darkside. You’re never 100% sure what time it even is, except that it’s a little more purple in the daylight for the hour we get it, and at sunset it looks like the whole place was attacked by vampires. It’s sunset most of the time. That’s not too bad if you can just avoid the river; that river never looks right with the dark coming in.
Agosti and Perlman were up until 3:30 shouting about which route will get us over the mountains, which would be more understandable if there were any mountains. But the movie bank’s still broken, so it’s just as well. I’m betting on Perlman. If anyone could lead us over imaginary mountains, it’s her.
My other entertainment is staying up late, trying to f
ight the water and make bread that will actually rise, and the bird that sings all night. Samara— Perlman—says we’re not supposed to assign characteristics from home to the things we find here until they’ve been observed and documented and whatever else, but—thrush family.
It’s most active during our night hours, and we’re working on why (trying to make sure it’s not drawn to the lights we brought with us, which would be bad news), but in the meantime it seems happy to sit in the trees outside the kitchen and sing. Three little bursts, then a longer one that’s so many notes it sounds like showing off, then a little pause to see if anyone’s listening, so it’s definitely showing off. If I whistle anything, it tries to repeat it, and it’s a fairly good mimic, but nothing I do really takes. It knows what it likes.
It has the same woodwind sound as the one back home, the house I lived in when I was young. Hermit thrush? Wood thrush? Something I used to hear all the time and never thought about, of course. Good news is that now it’s just me and this one bird and I’ll get to start over again with every new animal. This time I’m going to pay better attention.
Perlman will officially name it—they don’t ask the cooks how to classify animal species, that’s why the company hauled a biologist out here. But Perlman knows I like it, so maybe she’ll consult me. I know it best. That should count for something.
All my love.
PROXIMA CENTAURI PERSONNEL Status Report: Day 1187 Author: Dr. Samara Perlman
Crew Health: Reiterating that as a biologist, I am not in a position to diagnose or treat any major medical issues, am not sure how I was tasked with this position, and am deeply concerned about how soon we can expect a qualified physician rather than a group of people who had slapdash medic training for three days before they left Earth. That said, all six residents currently seem in good health. Carlos Marquez claims a slight cough, but as the scans came back negative, my money’s on allergies. If he dies of tuberculosis next week we’ll know I was wrong.
Crew Injuries: Anthony Agosti nursing a minor wrist sprain after having punched a wall. Should he resort to violence again I’ll be sending him to Officer Woods for a formal report and some time in the brig. We shouldn’t build a new planet with the same problems as the old one.
Crew Mental Health: Marie Roland continues to claim she can’t see the mountains to the northwest of Themis. No other signs of psychosis appear, and when questioned or shown pictures of the mountains, Roland becomes distracted and mildly agitated. No tendency to violence. Suspect a minor mental block prevents her from fully acknowledging the terrain— homesickness? For now, as she’s still willing to train for the mission, there seems to be no point in forcing the issue; have asked Woods to stop pushing it and will let Marie come to it in her own time.
Crew Mission Training: Expedition prep continues. Entire staff follow regimen of five-kilometer runs on hilly terrain every morning, weight lifting three times a week, rock climbing on nearby hills twice a week. Once the snow melts a little off the pass we’ll be able to determine the actual level of dexterity required for the climb and train accordingly. Vigil until then.
TO WHOMEVER there’s nothing here left to build and the mountain project is on hold until the thaw and I don’t care about sunset
please get the movie bank going again before I throw myself in the river full stop
anthony
TO WHOMEVER there’s nothing here left to build and the mountain project is on hold until the thaw and I don’t care about sunset
please get the movie bank going again before I throw myself in the river full stop
anthony
SORRY SENT IT twice by mistake
wouldn’t do that kind of thing if the movie bank worked though probably
anthony
SAMARA AND I did a perimeter walk today, a kilometer out from the camp. I picked almost more plants than I could carry, and I’m fairly sure at least half are edible, which will make meals much more exciting. Samara insisted on running tests for poison, don’t worry, but I think if I have to measure one more judicious use of dried black pepper I’m going to scream. I want something that tastes like it grew in the ground.
Samara’s amazing. I don’t even remember first meeting her; it just feels like I’ve always known her, which I guess is what close quarters will do to you. We cataloged five species of bird (none of them my bird, so I guess the animals here really can tell day from night and it’s something we’ll get used to), and she spent a lot more time with insects than I was interested in.
The air here smells just like home. I don’t know why—the water’s different, so the soil should be different, but it smells exactly like the dirt from my grandmother’s garden. It helps stop me from getting lonely, that the soil here might be the same as what we left behind.
Marquez showed us pictures of his children a few nights ago; it’s his daughter’s birthday. Samara cried, but nobody pushed it. It’s strange how much we left behind to be here, and I think no matter how much work you’re getting done, sometimes it just hits you how separate you are. We must have really wanted this. I must still.
I know you weren’t ready, and you might never be ready. These letters aren’t meant to convince you, I promise. It just makes me feel closer to home.
All my love—
DR. MARCH: Mixed results, as always. Sunset was a little longer than yesterday, so the seasons function is working. None of the subjects have noticed yet that Vivian and Carlos are interfaces, which bodes well for long-term use of constructed intelligence inside Themis. (Suggest we minimize the rock-climbing training until we can work out the uncanny valley problem in the weight distribution. Can the development team extend the thaw?) But overall, investors should be pleased—let me know if you need any demo footage, I have a clip of everyone working on the gardens that should go over well.
Technical glitch, first incident: Anthony’s punch should have broken his hand. I’m not sure if the safety settings are appropriately set or too schoolmarmy. We might need to dial them down and get someone to break their leg as a test run for more realistic game play.
Gigantic fucking technical glitch, ongoing: Marie can’t see the mountains. I’ve checked her equipment, and there’s no other potential hardware problems (attached is the most recent server diagnostic for your review, but there’s nothing in it that would account for it). Either she has an actual mental block that we can’t do anything about, or there’s a subjectivity issue somewhere in the code for Themis and we have to find it and fix it. I can’t tell which one is more likely, because you made me military instead of medical and I can’t just put her in jail until she tells me she sees them. Do we have a timetable for getting security clearance on that or are we going to have to settle for imperfect data?
-Woods
WOODS DROPPED INTO the chair in Benjamina’s cubicle so hard her BIRDS OF MONTANE ECOSYSTEMS reference chart came loose and sank to the floor.
“You gotta fix those mountains,” he said.
“My chart, please.”
“It’s going to break the sim,” he said, scooping it up and smoothing a bent edge. “We’ll have done four years of work for nothing because Marie has some synapse you can’t outsmart.”
“The problem’s her head, not the software.” After a pointed pause, she turned around. He carried some ego out of a Themis session and it took a day or so to wear off; the faster you could remind him that everyone else was actually busy, the better. “You can see the mountains when you’re in Themis, and you know they’re not there. Sounds like you should take it up with the psych team.”
“I’d have thought you wanted to keep her out of all that.” He wasn’t quite threatening her; he wasn’t quite sympathizing. (The reason Woods got chosen for beta-test jobs was how good he could be at Not Quite.)
Benjamina didn’t bother to recite any anonymity bullshit. Woods had been in Themis a long time; they read letters out loud to each other. He knew what she sounded like. “I’ve been trying.”
“We need to look at her file—I can’t reverse engineer a synapse misfire.” “They fixed Agosti’s color blindness.”
“That’s different,” said Benjamina, picking crumbs off her keyboard.
She didn’t like that fix, for no particular reason. It was productive; it just itched.
“Listen, I like her, but this is going to kill the beta, and you and I will be under the knife.”
“Get the psych team to request Marie’s file from the warden. Is Perlman at the same place?”
“Nah, Perlman stabbed her husband, she went someplace serious. Roland’s just in a prison for fuckups.”
“Fine. So get Dr. March to show me the file. I can port into Carlos for eyes on the ground. Then I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
“Nobody in this building’s willing to talk to the shrinks but me. That should tell you something.” Woods stood up, the little bird poster still in his hands. He was holding the very edges, like it was an expensive library book.
One of the things nobody at Othrys talked about was that the longer you spent in Themis, the weirder physical objects were when you came back. Officially, nobody was talking about it because it was just Woods, and no one liked Woods enough to make him for a martyr of motor-skill dissociation. Unofficially, nobody wanted to think Themis came back with you. Benjamina hoped that wore off, too.
“How are you doing?”
He was smoothing the edges of the chart with the pads of his fingers as he set it down. He looked up at her like he was surprised.
“I’m going to go eat some decent bread,” he said finally, and left.
Benjamina’s computer pinged. It was waiting for her letter.