The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13
Page 100
I shivered and found my way out in the direction of the waterfront.
Not long afterwards I arrived at the loading area where I had been desultorily employed for the last month. I made my entrance staggering slightly, doing my best to murder “You Can’t Guess Who Flirted With Me” in a gravelly baritone.
The mortal labourers assembled there turned to stare at me. My best friend, an acquaintance I’d cultivated painstakingly these last three weeks, came forward and took me by the arm.
“Jesus, Kelly, you’d better stow that. Where’ve you been?”
I stopped singing and gave him a belligerent stare. “Marching in the Easter Parade, O’Neil.”
“O, like enough.” He ran his eyes over me in dismay. Francis O’Neil was thirty years old. He looked enough like me to have been taken for my somewhat bulkier, clean-shaven brother. “What’re you doing this for, man? You know Herlihy doesn’t like you as it is. You look like you’ve not been home to sleep nor bathe since Friday night!”
“So I have not.” I dropped my gaze in hung-over remorse.
“Come on, you poor stupid bastard, I’ve got some coffee in my dinner pail. Sober up. Was it a letter you got from your girl again?”
“It was.” I let him steer me to a secluded area behind a mountain of crates and accepted the tin cup he filled for me with lukewarm coffee. “She doesn’t love me, O’Neil. She never did. I can tell.”
“Now, then, you’re taking it all the wrong way, I’m sure. I can’t believe she’s stopped caring, not after all the things you’ve told me about her. Just drink that down, now. Mary made it fresh not an hour ago.”
“You’re a lucky man, Francis.” I leaned on him and began to weep, slopping the coffee. He forbore with the patience of a saint and replied:
“Sure I am, Jimmy, And shall I tell you why? Because I know when to take my drink, don’t I? I don’t swill it down every payday and forget to go home, do I? No indeed. I’d lose Mary and the kids and all the rest of it, wouldn’t I? It’s self-control you need, Jimmy, and the sorrows in your heart be damned. Come on now. With any luck Herlihy won’t notice the state you’re in.”
But he did, and a litany of scorn was pronounced on my penitent head. I took it with eyes downcast, turning my battered hat in my hands, and a dirtier nor more maudlin drunk could scarce have been seen in that city. I would be summarily fired, I was assured, but they needed men today so bad they’d employ even the likes of me, though by God next time –
When the boss had done excoriating me I was dismissed to help unload a cargo of copra from the Nevadan, in from the islands yesterday. I snivelled and tottered and managed not to drop anything much; O’Neil stayed close to me the whole day, watchful lest I pass out or wander off. He was a good friend to the abject caricature I presented; God knows why he cared. Well, I should repay his kindness, at least, though in a manner he would never have the opportunity to appreciate.
We sweated until four in the afternoon, when there was nothing left to take off the Nevadan; let go then with directions to the next day’s job, and threats against slackers.
“Now, Kelly.” O’Neil took my arm and steered me with him back toward Market Street. “I’ll tell you what I think you ought to do. Go home and have a bit of a wash in the basin, right? Have you clean clothes? So, put on a clean shirt and trousers and see can you scrape some of that off your boots. Then come over to supper at our place, see. Mary’s bought some sausages, we thought we’d treat ourselves to a dish of Coddle now that Lent’s over. We’ve plenty.”
“I will, then.” I grasped his hand. “O’Neil, you’re a lord for courtesy.”
“I am not. Only go home and wash, man!”
We parted in front of the Terminal Hotel and I hurried back to the HQ to follow his instructions. This was just the sort of chance I’d been angling for since I’d sought out the man on the basis of the Genetic Survey team report.
An hour later, as cleanly as the character I played was likely to be able to make himself, I ventured along Market Street, heading down in the direction of the tenement where O’Neil and his family lived, the boarding houses in the shadow of the Palace Hotel. I knew their exact location, though O’Neil was of course unaware of that; accordingly he had sent a pair of his children down to the corner to watch for me.
They failed to observe my approach, however, and I really couldn’t blame them; for proceeding down Market Street before me, moving slowly between the gloom of twilight and the electric illumination of the shop signs, was an apparition in a scarlet tunic and black shako.
It walked with the stiff and measured tread of the automaton it was pretending to be. The little ragged girl and her littler brother stared open-mouthed, watching its progress along the sidewalk. It performed a brief business of marching mindlessly into a lamppost and walking inexorably in place there a moment before righting itself and going on, but now on an oblique course towards the children.
I too continued on my course, smiling a little. This was delightful: a mortal pretending to be a mechanical toy being followed by a cyborg pretending to be a mortal.
There was a wild reverberation of mirth in the ether around me. One other of our kind was observing the scene, apparently; but there was a gigantic quality to the amusement that made me falter in my step. Who was that? That was someone I knew, surely. Quo Vadis? I transmitted. The laughter shut off like an electric light being switched out, but not before I got a sense of direction from it. I looked across the street and just caught a glimpse of a massive figure disappearing down an alley. My visual impression was of an old miner, one of the mythic founders of this city. Old gods walking? What a ridiculous idea, and yet . . . what a moment of panic it evoked, of mortal dread, quite irrational.
But the figure in the scarlet tunic had reached the children. Little Ella clutched her brother’s hand, stock-still on the pavement; little Donal shrank behind his sister, but watched with one eye as the thing loomed over them.
It bent forward, slowly, in increments, as though a gear ratcheted in its spine to lower it down to them. Its face was painted white, with red circles on the cheeks and a red cupid’s bow mouth under the stiff black moustaches. Blank glassy eyes did not fix on them, did not seem to see anything, but one white-gloved hand came up jerkily to offer the little girl a printed handbill.
After a frozen motionless moment she took it from him. “Thank you, Mister Soldier,” she said in a high clear voice. The figure gave no sign that it had heard, but unbent slowly, until it stood ramrod-straight again; pivoted sharply on its heel and resumed its slow march down Market Street.
“Soldier go.” Donal pointed. Ella peered thoughtfully at the handbill.
“ ‘CH-IL-DREN’,” she read aloud. What an impossibly sweet voice she had. “And that’s an Exclamation Point, there. ‘Babe – Babies, In, To – Toy –’ ”
“ ‘Toyland,’ ” I finished for her. She looked up with a glad cry.
“There you are, Mr Kelly. Donal, this is Mr Kelly. He is Daddy’s good friend. Supper will be on the table presently. Won’t you please come with us, Mr Kelly?”
“I should be delighted to.” I touched the brim of my hat. They pattered away down an alley, making for the dark warren of their tenement, and I followed closely.
They were different physical types, the brother and sister. Pretty children, certainly, particularly Ella with her glossy black braids, with her eyes the colour of the twilight framed by black lashes. But it is not beauty we look for in a child.
It was the boy I watched closely as we walked, a sturdy three-year-old trudging along holding tight to the girl’s hand. I couldn’t have told you the quality nor shade of his skin, nor his hair nor his eyes; I cared only that his head appeared to be a certain shape, that his little body appeared to fit a certain profile, that his limbs appeared to be a certain length in relation to one another. I couldn’t be certain yet, of course: that was why I had manoeuvred his father into the generous impulse of inviting me into his home.
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br /> They lived down a long dark corridor towards the back of the building, its walls damp with sweat, its air heavy with the odours of cooking, of washing, of mortal life. The door opened a crack as we neared it and then, slowly, opened wide to reveal O’Neil standing there in a blaze of light. The blaze was purely by contrast to our darkness, however; once we’d crossed the threshold, I saw that two kerosene lamps were all the illumination they had.
“There now, didn’t I tell you she’d spot him?” O’Neil cried triumphantly. “Welcome to this house, Jimmy Kelly.”
“God save all here.” I removed my hat. “Good evening, Mrs O’Neil.”
“Good evening to you, Mr Kelly.” Mary O’Neil turned from the stove, bouncing a fretful infant against one shoulder. “Would you care for a cup of tea, now?” She was like Ella, if years could be granted Ella to grow tall and slender and wear her hair up like a soft thundercloud. But there was no welcoming smile for me in the grey eyes, for on the previous occasion we’d met I’d been disgracefully intoxicated – at least, doing my best to appear so. I looked down as if abashed. “I’d bless you for a cup of tea, my dear, I would,” I replied. “And won’t you allow me to apologize for the condition I was in last Tuesday week? I’d no excuse at all.”
“Least said, soonest mended.” She softened somewhat at my obvious sobriety. Setting the baby down to whimper in its apple-box cradle, she poured and served my tea. “Pray seat yourself.”
“Here.” Ella pulled out a chair for me. I thanked her and sat down to scan the room they lived in. Only one room, with one window that probably looked out on an alley wall but was presently frosted opaque from the steam of the saucepan wherein their supper cooked. Indeed, there was a fine layer of condensation on every thing: it trickled down the walls, it lay in a damp film on the oilcloth cover of the table and the blankets on the bed against the far wall. The unhappy infant’s hair was moist and curling with it.
Had there been any ventilation it would have been a pleasant enough room. The table was set with good china, someone’s treasured inheritance no doubt. The tiny potbellied stove must have been awkward to cook upon, but O’Neil had built a cabinet of slatwood and sheet tin next to it to serve as the rest of a kitchen. The children’s trundle was stored tidily under the parents’ bed. Next to the painted washbasin on the trunk, a decorous screen gave privacy to one corner. Slatwood shelves displayed the family’s few valuables: a sewingbasket, a music box with a painted scene on its lid, a cheap mirror whose frame was decorated with glued-on seashells, a china dog. On the wall was a painted crucifix with a palm frond stuck behind it. O’Neil came and sat down across from me.
“You look grand, Jimmy.” He thumped his fist on the table approvingly. “Combed your hair, too, didn’t you? That’s the boy. You’ll make a gentleman yet.”
“Daddy?” Ella climbed into his lap. “There was a soldier came and gave us this in the street. Will you ever read me what it says? There’s more words than I know, see.” She thrust the handbill at him. He took it and held it out before him, blinking at it through the steamy air.
Here I present the printed text he read aloud, without his many pauses as he attempted to decipher it (for he was an intelligent man, but of little education):
CHILDREN!
Come see the Grand Fairy Extravaganza BABES IN TOYLAND
Music by Victor Herbert
Book by Glen MacDonough
Staged by Julian Mitchell
Ignacio Martinetti and 100 Others!
Coming by Special Train of Eight Cars!
Biggest Musical Production San Francisco Has Seen In Years!
An Invitation from Mother Goose Herself:
MY dear little Boys and Girls,
I DO hope you will behave nicely so that your Mammas and Papas will treat you to a performance of Mr Herbert’s lovely play Babes in Toyland at the Columbia Theatre, opening Monday, the 16th of April. Why, my dears, it’s one of the biggest successes of the season and has already played for ever so many nights in such far-away cities as New York, Chicago, and Boston. Yes, you really must be good little children, and then your dear parents will see that you deserve an outing to visit me. For, make no mistake, I myself, the only true and original MOTHER GOOSE, shall be there upon the stage of the Columbia Theatre. And so shall so many of your other friends from my delightful rhymes such as Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son, Bo Peep, Contrary Mary, and Red Riding Hood. The curtain will rise upon Mr Mitchell’s splendid production, with its many novel effects, at eight o’clock sharp.
Of course, if you are very little folks you are apt to be sleepyheads if kept up so late, but that need not concern your careful parents, for there will be a matinee on Saturday at two o’clock in the afternoon.
WON’T you please come to see me? Your affectionate friend, Mother Goose.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Mary.
“Daddy, can we go?” Ella’s eyes were alight with anticipation. Donal chimed in:
“See Mother Goose, Daddy!”
“We can’t afford it, children.” Mary’s mouth was a set line. She took the saucepan off the stove and began to ladle a savoury dish of sausage, onions, potatoes and bacon onto the plates. “We’ve got a roof over our heads and food for the table. Let’s be thankful for that.”
Ella closed her little mouth tight like her mother’s, but Donal burst into tears. “I wanna go see Mother Goose!” he howled.
O’Neil groaned. “Your mother is right, Donal. Daddy and Mummy don’t have the money for the tickets, can you understand that?”
“You oughtn’t to have read out that bill,” said Mary in a quiet voice.
“I want go see the Soldier!”
“Donal, hush now!”
“Donal’s the boy for me,” I said, leaning forward and reaching out to him. “Look, Donal Og, what’s this you’ve got in your ear?”
I pretended to pull forth a bar of Ghirardelli’s. Ella clapped her hands to her mouth. Donal stopped crying and stared at me with perfectly round eyes.
“Look at that! Would you ever have thought such a little fellow’d have such big things in his ears? Come sit with your Uncle Jimmy, Donal.” I drew him onto my lap. “And if you hush your noise, perhaps Mummy and Daddy’ll let you have sweeties, eh?” I set the candy in the midst of the oilcloth, well out of his reach.
“Bless you, Jimmy,” said O’Neil.
“Well, and isn’t it the least I can do? Didn’t know I could work magic, did you, Ella?”
“Settle down, now.” Mary set out the dishes. “Frank, it’s time to say Grace.”
O’Neil made the sign of the Cross and intoned, with the little ones mumbling along, “Bless-us-O-Lord-and-these-Thy-gifts-which-we-are-about-to-receive-from-Thy-bounty-through-Christ-Our-Lord-Amen.”
Mary sat down with us, unfolding her threadbare napkin. “Donal, come sit with Mummy.”
“Be easy, Mrs O’Neil, I don’t mind him.” I smiled at her. “I’ve a little brother at home he’s the very image of. Where’s his spoon? Here, Donal Og, you eat with me.”
“I don’t doubt they look alike.” O’Neil held out his tumbler as Mary poured from a pitcher of milk. “Look at you and me. Do you know, Mary, that was the first acquaintance we had –? Got our hats mixed up when the wind blew ’em both off. We wear just the same size.”
“Fancy that.”
So we dined, and an affable mortal man helped little Donal make a mess of his potatoes whilst chatting with Mr and Mrs O’Neil about such subjects as the dreadful expense of living in San Francisco and their plans to remove to a cheaper, less crowded place as soon as they’d saved enough money. The immortal machine that sat at their table was making a thorough examination of Donal, most subtly: an idle caress of his close-cropped little head measured his skull size, concealed devices gauged bone length and density and measured his weight to the pound; data was analyzed and preliminary judgment made: Optimal Morphology. Augmentation Process Possible. Classification pending Blood Analysis and Spektral Diagnosis.
“How kind of you to say so, Mr Kelly,” she replied, collecting the dishes.
“Chocolate, Daddy?” Donal stretched out his arm for it. O’Neil tore open the waxed paper and broke off a square. He divided it into two and gave one to Donal and one to Ella.
“Now, you must thank your Uncle Jimmy, for this is good chocolate and cost him dear.”
“Thank you, Uncle Jimmy,” they chorused, and Ella added, “But he got it by magic. It came out of Donal’s ear. I saw it.”
O’Neil rubbed his face wearily. “No, Ella, it was only a conjuring trick. Remember the talk we had about such things? It was just a trick. Wasn’t it, Jimmy?”
“That’s all it was, sure,” I agreed. She looked from her father to me and back.
“Frank, dear, will you help me with these?” Mary had stacked the dishes in a washpan and sprinkled soap flakes in.
“Right. Jimmy, will you mind the kids? We’re just taking these down to the tap.”
“I will indeed,” I said, and thought: Thank you very much, mortal man, for this opportunity. The moment the door closed behind them I had the device out of my pocket. It looked rather like a big old-fashioned watch. I held it out to the boy.
“Here you go, Donal, here’s a grand timepiece for you to play with.”
He took it gladly. “There’s a train on it!” he cried. I turned to Ella.
“And what can I do for you, darling?”
She looked at me with considering eyes. “You can read me the funny papers.” She pointed to a neatly stacked bundle by the stove.
“With pleasure.” I seized them up and we settled back in my chair, pulling a lamp close. The baby slept fitfully, I read to Ella about Sambo and Tommy Pip and Herr Spiegleburger, and all the while Donal pressed buttons and thumbed levers on the diagnostic toy. It flashed pretty lights for him, it played little tunes his sister was incapable of hearing; and then, as I had known it would, it bit him.