Asimov's SF, April/May 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "And on cold days, they keep you warm,” the girl said. “I like mine a lot.” She glanced back at the telpherman to see if he had heard.

  "It's all right that you like it,” her mother said. “But this is our stop.” The car entered a station atop a warehouse. The wide tar and gravel roof spread out in all directions like a high-altitude desert. Three beach chairs stood in a row, their slings blowing up in the wind. The old couple woke from their nap and, rested and ready for the rest of their day, got off, along with the mother and daughter, leaving Arabella and Andrew alone in the car, which now had nowhere to go.

  "Come on, Andrew,” Arabella said. “That's ridiculous. A carbide miner's lamp? Why would Father want something like that?"

  Andrew had to get something. He was just like that. He leaned back and addressed the telpherman. “Are there any more of these lamps up there, do you know?"

  "You'll have to see,” the telpherman said. “Follow me."

  * * * *

  The telpherman led them across the gravel, to a side route, one barely above freight-hauling. There wasn't even any glass in the car windows. It climbed quickly up the hills. Up to the brow of the first line of hills the houses got bigger. Then they got smaller again, and finally disappeared.

  In places, this route was almost vertical. There were a couple of pylons with double return wheels, no power. Only a really light car would make it all the way up here.

  Arabella looked across the foothills, which were just starting to look more like wrinkles than like obstacles, and saw the afternoon train north just pulling out of the northern rail yard.

  Andrew leaned across her. “You've never taken it, have you? Look at that locomotive! Two sets of eight drive wheels to get it up over the passes. And each one is six feet across! Tomorrow it will be hauling you. I hear they serve a nice supper. Linen tablecloths."

  "Never mind the linen."

  From this height the massive locomotive made no sound. Its cloud of black smoke showed how hard it was working, though, as it got that long string of white-and-maroon coaches moving up the slope. Amid the green wrinkles of the rising hills, the cylinder of the locomotive's boiler looked like a dropped pencil lead.

  It all seemed too complicated. How much easier it would have been to just take a telpher car to school in the morning and come home at night. That seemed to have the appropriate lightness to it. Everything about the night train north had a crushing heaviness.

  The telpher route had long ago left anything worth stopping at. They found themselves flying over rough country, with only the occasional farmhouse and flock of sheep to indicate that they had not passed into completely wild lands. The wind was stronger up here, and gusts made the light car rock back and forth.

  They cleared a stand of hemlocks, and there was the end of the line, where a lanky fire tower spread legs over jagged rocks. Nearby was a comfortable-looking log building with a green roof, and a series of pigeon coops. An ornamental pigeon with a huge crest perched on the finger of a woman with long red hair, who wore a forest-green jacket and sand-colored trousers. Neither of them seemed interested in who had just arrived.

  The telpherman pulled the car aside, then picked up his bucket and walked up to the red-haired woman.

  He'd had been heading for this woman all day. But it seemed he couldn't come to see her without some kind of offering: pigeons’ eggs. New blood for her brood. Some speed, or some color—something new that she could use for her breeding. But what else was he bringing her?

  The bucket didn't please her. “That's it?” Arabella imagined her asking. For, after the events of the day, there was only a single egg left in there. Maybe she recognized it as belonging to a common rock pigeon, one with nothing unusual about it.

  Andrew tugged at her arm. “Come on. See the tailings down the slope? They were digging just below here. Look, there's a trail."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake.” Arabella followed reluctantly. “Do you really think any of those stupid lamps is left here?"

  "I don't know,” he said. “But we have to look."

  There was a trail down through hillside shrubs onto a pile of cracked rock and gravel dug out of the mountain's hard side. Nothing of the city was visible from up here, not even its smoke. They looked down on a landscape of mountains and forests. A lake sparkled through the pines below. The sun hung uncomfortably low. They were as far from home as it was possible to get without actually joining the army or being kidnapped by pirates.

  Arabella imagined her mother working over the cake. Basketweave frosting. That was what she'd planned. Her mother hated all forms of entertaining, so, as a penance, made the events she did have as elaborate and labor-intensive as she could. She'd been making and straining stock all week. And, all this day, Arabella hadn't been there to help.

  She'd have to deal with the consequences when they finally got home. But only for one day. Then she'd be gone.

  A few steps into the blasted-out mine entrance made their problem obvious: you needed a light to search for lights in a dark tunnel. And they didn't have one.

  It was painful to watch Andrew. Her brother was as frustrated as she'd ever seen him, gasping for breath as if descending into the mine was like diving into deep water. He walked in slowly, feeling both walls, and descended the steep steps that started just inside. He paused, letting his eyes adjust, and then went farther.

  But all too soon he ran out of light. He felt forward with his fingertips.

  "Andrew! That's ridiculous. You'll fall into something eventually. If you want to look for a carbide lamp here, we'll have to mount a proper expedition, now that we know where this place is."

  "His birthday is in only a couple of days,” Andrew said dully. “We have to get him something. Let's ask the firewatcher. The redheaded woman. She must have something we can use."

  "You ask her,” Arabella said.

  "Um . . .” Andrew wasn't that quick with people, but even he had to have sensed the tension between the firewatcher and the telpherman. “There must be something around here. . . .” He walked forward. She held her breath, waiting for a cry and a long fall down an invisible pit. “Wait, wait! I've found something.” She heard him fumbling around in the dark somewhere. Then he reemerged into the light, holding . . . a metal mess kit. It looked in good shape, and had all its utensils clamped to its side.

  Andrew stared down at it in betrayal. Then he turned and threw it, with great force, back into the darkness. They waited for a disturbingly long time. Finally, there was a single dismal clang.

  Andrew slumped after Arabella as she walked back up the hill to the rudimentary telpher platform. The telpherman and the fire spotter had vanished. Pigeons fussed in their coops. The bucket stood near the water tank, empty. Arabella looked up at the fire tower. The woman was up there. The windows were open, and her long red hair flared out in the breeze.

  The telpher man sat, dismayed and long-legged, on the tower's bottom steps. Arabella glanced up again. It was clear that, even if she were inclined to let it down, the woman's hair was not long enough for him to climb up to gain access.

  It was pretty long, though.

  "Who's that?” Andrew said.

  Arabella squinted past him at the telpher wire. Far below them, another car was coming up. A small one.

  No, not a car at all. A man. A man clinging to the wire.

  A man on a hanger.

  He wasn't bothering to pedal, since this wire was still moving. As he came into view, Arabella saw a plump middle-aged gentleman with an official look about him, graying brown chin beard and whiskers, wearing a coat with a fur collar. He had a hunched posture, as Arabella certainly would have had, hanging on to a wire hundreds of feet in the air.

  He slid up to the platform, unhooked the hanger, slid it onto a different side rail than the telpher car . . . and collapsed gasping on his hands and knees.

  "I swore . . .” he said to the ground. “I swore I'd never do that again as long as lived. I remember being quite formal
about it."

  He seemed to realize only slowly that he wasn't alone. He rolled over, sat up, and looked up at Arabella and Andrew. “Ah. You're still here.” His blue eyes had a businesslike sharpness, not matching his slightly fussy demeanor.

  "Who are you?” Andrew asked.

  "The ghost of every telpherman who ever tried to turn a profit from this miserable form of transportation."

  He stood up slowly, brushing the dust off his knees. He looked toward the telpherman at the fire tower's base. He raised his voice. “Hey!"

  The telpherman looked up, then jumped as the man reached into a pocket, pulled something out, and threw it in a long underhand lob.

  The telpherman reached and, with his long arm, snagged it from the air. He held it up between his fingers: a pigeon's egg, a pale blue-green.

  Then he was running up the stairs to the top of the fire tower.

  "We've got to move along here,” said the man, who was clearly some kind of telpher high official. “Some of the lines have already let their fires go out and are running on stored steam pressure. Sparing of anthracite, but it might leave you in a difficult position."

  "He left that egg for you.” Arabella said. “As a sign to follow us. Why?"

  He sighed. “I should have caught up to you at the Balloon Market. It would have been a more convenient location for a negotiation, but I understand that my young friend got into some of his usual trouble there and had to move on. You are in possession of something I would dearly like to have."

  "Does this engraving contain a picture of you?” Andrew obviously wanted this to be Gibbon. Equally obviously, it wasn't.

  "Not a good one,” the man snapped. “You'd think after all that time looking at me, she could have given me a slightly sharper look—"

  "Dulcie did the engraving?” Arabella had been wondering about the identity of the artist, but had assumed it was just some unusually skilled newspaper employee.

  "That girl . . .” He shook his head. “That picture helped me in ways you won't understand, but I still didn't like being drawn like some kind of semi-invisible wraith. It told me too clearly what she really felt about me. But, no. I'm not interested in the engraving. I'm after that big black electrode of yours. I let the pieces of Dulcie's special arc light escape me back then, and I've been trying to collect them ever since."

  Andrew swallowed his disappointment at the man's identity. “Pardo. You've come back."

  "I never left. I've been running North Municipal Aerial Transport for over fifteen years, thank you very much. Our friend Gribbins is the one who left, on his adventures."

  ” ‘Gribbins'?"

  "You probably know him by his absurd nom de téléphérique, Gibbon. Say, did you know that gibbons are Old World—"

  "We did,” Andrew said, a bit rudely.

  Pardo, if indeed it was he, was not offended.

  "Well, if you know that, you realize that you can't possibly have the whole story. Maybe if I give it to you, it will smooth our exchange.” He looked up at the tower. Two figures stood up in it now, side by side. “That last egg seems to have done the trick. You can never tell what offering a goddess requires to unbend. Not as predictable as we'd like. Odd, though, that he brought so few."

  "He lost some along the way,” Arabella said.

  "He risked them to get us together,” Pardo said. “From the moment he saw that electrode in your hands, he knew he had to do it, even putting his own happiness at risk. He's a good man."

  Arabella remembered the telpherman borrowing the telephone in the office. He had been getting in touch with Pardo, while managing to take care of his own affairs at the same time.

  Pardo walked past them, took hold of the telpher car, and brought it down off its rail onto the moving wire. “Ready?"

  Arabella and Andrew exchanged a glance, then got on.

  "Could one of you, perhaps, run the grip?” Pardo was suddenly tentative. “I'll guide you. But . . . I've had a phobia about running a telpher car. I've run the entire system, but the idea of having a grip lever in my hand makes me queasy."

  Andrew and Arabella quickly did rock, paper, scissors. Arabella lost, as she usually did, and Andrew jumped up on the telpherman's seat.

  "The thing to remember is that the grip's normal state is on, holding the wire, almost a part of it. The work is in getting it to let go. So be easy when you bring it—"

  Something snapped, and they were jerked to full speed.

  "Sorry,” Andrew said above.

  "It takes a while. That was quite good for a start.” Pardo settled himself on a bench and looked out at the hills as they got gathered in beneath the car. “Let's see what you understand so far. Why do you think they threw me into Carcery?"

  Arabella hadn't expected to start with a quiz. “Ah, I thought it was because you had lost a telpher car in Clepsydra. And . . . because Hann was worried about you and Dulcie."

  Pardo smiled to himself. “Wouldn't the world have been a grand and brave place if that had been the reason? I could have sat happily in the dampest cell in Carcery's cellar in that case."

  "But it wasn't just because you were the victim of Gibbon's joke,” she said.

  "Oh, certainly not. That would have made Hann mad at me, but madder at ‘Gibbon.’ As it was, he saw it as convenient. Gibbon never knew the vengeance he had escaped because of that. No, Hann had good reason to want me out of the way. I had . . . I was young, understand. Young and ambitious. And I'd managed to develop some habits hard to maintain on a telpher clerk's salary. So I had been . . . skimming money from the operation."

  "Skimming?” Arabella said.

  "Okay. Stealing. I was good at it. Hann suspected where the money was going, but he could never figure out how I did it. Then I sank the car in Clepsydra and he had his excuse."

  The line bent around a deflector wheel and suddenly its full length down to the city was burning in the light of the setting sun.

  "I lay in my cell in despair. I could watch the construction of the Carcery Station. I'd had a hand in its placement, as part of our expansion plan to the north. It was like they were taunting me with it. But that was fine. I had been given a chance to consider my sins at leisure, and I did so. Of course, imprisoned in a cell, we all feel ourselves virtuous, because we don't have the freedom to commit further crimes. Still, thinking isn't nothing. And I thought.

  "Until the night I heard a clanking outside my cell. I looked out—and saw Gibbon. He was standing, looking across the square at something, and occasionally tapping a bar cutter against my bars. For a minute I thought he had repented of his humiliation of me and had come to make amends by freeing me. Which was, of course, what he had convinced Dulcie he was going to do. He'd sought her out, knowing she felt I had been unfairly treated—and knowing how she chafed under the restrictions her father had put on her. She wanted to build her devices, do her work, help out the line, and he had no interest in it. He just wanted her to make a good show at the ball."

  "Nothing wrong with that,” Arabella said. “Even a girl inventor likes to make a good show at the ball."

  Pardo smiled reminiscently. “And she did. But, even so, she made sure that Gibbon made his attempt the night she was there, across the square, able to keep an eye on him. She was overconfident. Gibbon was smarter than she thought. Than any of us did, actually. He always seemed like just a crazy man, but he knew what he was doing.

  "Dulcie was watching, but Gibbon knew she couldn't see that much. So he made a big production of cutting through my bars, as they had agreed, while actually doing almost nothing. I figured it out pretty quickly. He was going to fake freeing me, then run into some trouble, go over to get something, and sabotage the station in secret, at an angle Dulcie couldn't observe. Then, eventually, he'd pretend to give up, leaving me in my cell, and the station out of action. I couldn't let it happen that way.

  "Fortunately, Gibbon really was pretending to use his tool, not just waving it around. He didn't want to risk Dulcie's suspicion
, not yet. I begged him to let me out. He didn't laugh at me, or anything like that. He just ignored me. I whined and sniveled so that he worked harder at ignoring me.

  "As he pretended to free me, he'd look over at the party. He knew Dulcie couldn't stay watching him the whole time. As soon as he saw she was away from the window, he'd take his cutter and go to sabotage the station. So, once, while he was checking for her, I reached up and looped a length of bed sheet around the cutting head of his tool, tying it to the bar. Seems almost dumb, doesn't it? But it was all I could think of. It worked even better than I thought it would. First he thought he'd just gotten stuck on something and yanked at it kind of absentmindedly. Then he realized it was tied on. And he couldn't reach the part where it was tied without reaching through the bars—and when he did that I jabbed his fingers with the end of a sharpened toothbrush. It wasn't all fun and games in Carcery, and I'd learned a thing or two while there. He swore at me, then promised to leave the station alone, then told me Dulcie loved me.

  "I didn't believe anything he said, even though I wanted to, and we wrestled back and forth. Time was running out for him. He could only stay up there for so long before being seen. Finally, he took a risk. He let go and ran off to take care of the more important part of his job, sabotaging Carcery Station. After all, he hadn't been dumb enough to go up there with only one tool. Dulcie must have been taking a turn around the dance floor at that point. She was quite popular, and leaving too many slots on her dance card would have been suspicious.

  "I untied the head and pulled the tool into my cell. I had better leverage than Gibbon had had balanced up top. The bars were old, not hardened, and it only took me a few minutes for me to get out of my cell. So, in a sense, Gibbon had done exactly what he'd told Dulcie he was going to do: he'd freed me.” He looked up. “Let's take the left switch here, Mr. Andrew. As it is your first time, I will assist."

  Arabella gauged directions. “Is this getting us home?"

  "Eventually,” Pardo said. “But it is getting you a light first. Isn't that what you're after?"