The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “You persist in using that word, but I don’t understand the context. All I did was attempt to be his friend.”

  “He doesn’t want to be your ‘friend,’ Babbage. That’s the last thing he wanted.”

  “And now you say he’s leaving Lytton?”

  “My understanding is that he already has.”

  Ada sat down suddenly in the seat by the telephone, sending up a jot of dust. “This is all very dramatic, Sebastian. I’m not sure I…”

  “He told you he was leaving, did he not? That his business was concluded?”

  “Certainly. And I told him I would ask him to stay.”

  “Did you say it as Lady Babbage, or as his friend?”

  “…Ah.” She nodded seriously. “I shall never be married, Sebastian. That much is clear.”

  “You don’t sound disappointed.”

  “I assure you, I am not.”

  “But you gasped when you heard that he was gone.”

  “Indeed! I cannot bear the thought of him thinking less of me. That he would consider our evening together in such a…”

  “Then you will be delighted to learn that you’ve been granted a reprieve.”

  “Sebastian…”

  “He remains in the Counties. We dine at eight. Please attempt to dress in a human manner. You may bring the children.”

  As Sebastian rung off, she could have sworn she heard uproarious laughter.

  COMMONPLACE WHAT SHALL I DO?

  NOT A GOVERNESS

  NEITHER YOUNG NOR OLD

  GOOD AGAINST IMAGINARY INDIANS

  CAN PLAY THE DRUMS

  PARALLEL REQUEST

  I AM LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS LATEST THING

  PLEASE ADVISE: HUMAN MANNERS

  PLEASE ADVISE: CLOTHING FOR HIDEOUSLY AWKWARD DINNER

  PLEASE ADVISE: HOW TO DEMONSTRATE AUTHENTICITY

  PARAMETERS FOR TIME: IMMEDIATELY

  Came back the answer:

  PROGRESS UPDATE REQUESTED

  VOCAL ACTUATION PROJECT

  She sighed, turned off the Commonplace Book rather more abruptly than usual, and attempted to dress in an apologetic yet flattering manner. She knew she’d have no further help from Sebastian this time; his disappointment was palpable, regardless of his other motivations. She looked at herself in Commonplace’s mirrored carapace, addressing that double as firmly as she could.

  “Consider this evening an A Level in the Compartmental Arts, Babbage.”

  Nurse took her time tick-tocking to the door. Once she opened it, the children crowded her as they always had, wrapping their arms around her and tapping her hump playfully. She nodded at Lady Adelaide, then whirred away to the back of the house.

  Adelaide managed to get the children inside and up the stairs to the dining room with only slight disaster—while Adelaide was busy monitoring Little Darcy’s slow, deliberate conquest of each step, Wild Charlotte slid down the banister a total of three times, crashing at each crest into the wall opposite—and found the boys standing near a large bowl of punch. Her head was still aching, but she accepted a cup gratefully.

  “Mr. Willoughby, I am relieved to see you tonight. I thought that you had left the Counties without saying goodbye!”

  “I should never, Lady Babbage.”

  Then he stepped aside, revealing a guest heretofore unseen. “You’re familiar with Miss Lucia Mapp, yes?”

  Time stood still in a strange way, born less of awkwardness than an entirely unfamiliar sensation.

  The children took to Maximilian Willoughby as ducks to their duck mother. By the time the first dish was served by Nurse, slowly circumambulating the table, he had one upon either knee and Miss Mapp was pulling sour faces. It would have been satisfying, if Adelaide were not sure that her expression mirrored Lucia’s.

  By salads, Mr. Willoughby had promised to take Little Darcy to see a real working newspaper press—the rolling, folded pages dropping from shelves and belts—and Wild Charlotte had extracted from him an overnight camping trip. His occasional grins at Adelaide were pleasing, but curiously without affect. On the other hand, he seemed to have forgotten Miss Mapp altogether.

  By the time the joint was served, he’d begun explaining to all of them, by way of the children, exactly how his speaking lanterns worked, and speaking of his hope to bring them to every theatre house in Lytton.

  “It would not supplant magic lantern shows or lumières any more than cinema has replaced the theatre or opera. Variety is my aim, not destruction.”

  The children’s eyes were bright and glassy from the late hour, but their affection for the man was still apparent. They looked to their sister entreatingly, as if asking if they could keep him as a pet.

  “But surely you have seen the decline of those entertainments,” she said, addressing him with more than four words at a go for the first time that night. “Is it not to be assumed that people, no matter their vulgarity, will naturally be more attracted to the new thing than the old?”

  “Perhaps it is the old thing that has neglected them,” Willoughby responded ably.

  “Perhaps when the makers of those entertainments see what is possible, it will spur them to new action. Of curious blends, or knowing returns to form. Lantern films which comment on the fact of lantern films themselves. There is no end to creativity, Lady Babbage. There is no development in art which rules out the art that came before. There is only…”

  She nodded. “Translation.”

  “Exactly!” shouted he. “Precisely! You see it. It’s blasted difficult—sorry, Lucia—it’s quite difficult to explain this to people, but you’ve seized on it immediately. A commonality. I shall employ your terminology when I next try to sell my wares.”

  Ada smiled fiercely and turned to Lucia. “I’m afraid Mr. Willoughby did not impress my father on first meeting. I’ve offered to broker a peace on his behalf, as I do believe there’s something to…”

  Lucia snapped her fingers at eye height, suddenly, as one would to a fussing dog. “I must confess that I stopped listening at the soup. You’ll have to reprise your conversation for me if you expect me to join in at this late hour, Adelaide.”

  “Lucia, I shouldn’t want to trouble you.” Adelaide nodded once—a quick quirk of the head to the left, like a bird—and turned to Max.

  “Now, Mr. Willoughby, please do explain in detail the mechanism of your technology. I have a gramophone that gives me some capability to reproduce moving images with my steam-brain. And in Papa’s theatre, we have the ability to play wax-presses along with the stories, when our organist is ill. But you seem to speak of something else entirely?”

  “Oh, my, yes, Lady Babbage. It actually employs many of the techniques of your quantum engines. The audible information is kept on a separate track of the filmstrip itself, invisible but reproducible with a machine of my invention, and the film contains its own full version of the…Tell me, have you studied the art of holography?”

  Ada leaned forward and began to speak. Lucia made quite a fuss, but eventually left, and when she went, she went unnoticed. Everyone else, the children and Sebastian and Henry, were swept away by the torrent of words that coursed, between those two, late into the night.

  “Papa. We must speak.”

  He grumbled and grunted, complaining of his back and the imperceptibly tiny amount of time he could actually use as his own, to spend as he liked. But he sat quietly, as she knew he would, and listened. And when she had completed her business, explaining in detail the way Willoughby’s exploits dovetailed with her own, the look upon his face was of such graceful and regrettable sadness that she nearly fled the room, backing away, ducking her head.

  “You’ve been bewitched, my dear. He’s coming at me using my only daughter, the bastard. And you none the wiser.”

  She knew not how to respond. She couldn’t tell her father that she had already visited and revisited this very set of Data from many angles. She couldn’t tell her father that she had been well and truly bewitched by Maxi
milian Willoughby, for she couldn’t bear to admit it to herself. She could not even tell her father that he was being silly, though that was implied by the very facts she’d just unleashed upon him.

  “Papa. For all your words of encouragement, and all the responsibility I bear, you still think of me still as your stupid little girl.”

  “I do nothing of the sort. But this is a case in which—”

  “—in which you know best, and I should keep my mouth shut. I do understand.”

  “My dear, don’t be…You mustn’t think that I…”

  “Speak no more of it, Papa. I hear and understand you completely. I won’t offer my silly opinions again. I must go and make your dinner now, and then I’ll repair to my room.”

  And as she left him spluttering, she realized that it was true: She had earned her badge in the Compartmental Arts, and no mistake.

  It was a matter of mental health, this last-ditch effort to push her father into accepting Willoughby. The children pestered her night and day to see him again, but Papa’s interdiction on the carpetbagger had explicitly forbade any social engagements. She was, for all purposes, a prisoner in her own home. It was unacceptable.

  Commonplace offered no help at all, simply pestered her for information about the vocalization program. She knew that if she could only get Willoughby to stay in town and get her hands on his equipment, she could modify or duplicate his quantum engines and map them onto her own. It was as simple as rebuilding the typewriter, really; only a matter of finding a way to communicate the steam-brain’s powerful calculations to the world outside.

  She spent the afternoon working with Commonplace, feeding her more information at a go than she’d ever chanced before, almost resentfully. There was something, wasn’t there, to Commonplace’s love of music? Perhaps if she could engage that attraction more fully, she could tease out a more complete personality. For she was sure now that Commonplace was developing a real mind, an intelligence. She’d seen glimmers before, and had hoped in vain, but of late the questions and answers about her project had become too regular, too obsessive, to be anything but a real desire.

  Desire signified personality. She was sure of it.

  When the front doorbell rang later in the week, the children rushed to answer it. She hoped with an air of defeat that they could somehow smuggle Willoughby up into her study. Then they could all go away again, into Charlotte’s savage lands perhaps, and leave this madness behind. If it came to it, she’d even desert Commonplace, rather than stay in this house trapped by all of Lytton’s good intentions.

  But when Little Darcy appeared at the door, he was shivering and white as a sheet.

  “It’s her, ma’am. She’s come.”

  Adelaide fetched refreshments for Miss Lucia Mapp herself, explaining that they had not yet contracted a Governess or staff in a fashion that she hoped portrayed a classed distaste for clockwork labor. She refrained from asking Miss Mapp if she preferred tea or the blood of innocents. It was, after all, a social call.

  “It’s that tiresome Maximilian Willoughby, Babbage. I can’t take it. All day and all night, talking of machines and fractals and diamond intelligences. And you, always you.”

  “I was unaware that you and Mr. Willoughby were…”

  “Oh, that’s right, nobody ever tells you anything. He’s a servant in my house, Adelaide. I had hoped for more, but…”

  “I heard he was living in a one-room boarding…”

  “Momentarily. He’s been in our servants’ quarters since the party, wretched thing. Sebastian said he could find him a better placement, but I remain unsure. He is quite a lovely thing to look at, and though I am certain it would kill my mother dead should I elope with him, that plan has gone right into the river. You and your machines! I am here to beg your mercy, Adelaide. Take him off my hands, or I shall murder him.”

  “I’m not sure what you…”

  “I care not a whit what you do with him. He stays in that room all day bashing at those bongos and building his queer little machines and talking about this…Future. He is a bore as single-minded as you, and, as you’ve proven, no amount of loveliness can compensate for that. If you do not save him, I shall drug his coffee—coffee, if you can imagine it! In my house!—and bludgeon him and deposit him at the gates of the nearest poorhouse. I shall become infamous.”

  “Lucia, why would you…”

  “I have no particular interest in hurting you, Babbage. I never did. I can’t stand you, but that only makes you irrelevant—not an enemy. You’re no fun. What I can’t stand about you is your fear.”

  “My fear?”

  “Of everything. You’re afraid of every single thing, Adelaide, and it makes me ill. Just physically, ethically, mentally ill. You fear men, you fear women, you fear leaving your house and you fear going home again, you fear finding a suitable staff, you fear boys and girls and fun and clothes and…It’s sickening. When I see you huffing down the road with those terrible children, you look no one in the eye. You speak only when spoken to. You dress like a debtor. You carry your life with you upon your back. I thought if I could make you like Max, you’d…I don’t know. You would wake up.”

  “Lucia, your game bewilders me, I do confess it. Speak me plain, for I have work to do.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. A person can look you in the eye and speak the truth, and you look for hidden agendas and secret panels and poison pinpricks. You’ve been this way since we were girls.”

  Was it true? Was that the way she appeared? Adelaide supposed it would seem that way to an outsider. But she could hardly expect Lucia Mapp to believe the truth: That she simply and authentically preferred the company of Commonplace and her experiments to anything that lay outside the house. That it was not fear, but distaste.

  “Lucia, you measure yourself against me, and you assume that because we are different, I must be deficient. But can you not imagine that perhaps we are simply different? Neither wiser, neither better?”

  “I can believe that. I wouldn’t spend a second with that cretin Gerald if I believed otherwise, and neither would Rupert. But I know it’s not entirely true, because I know how dearly you love Sebastian. And Henry. And the children. It’s a half-truth, if anything. I’ve seen the way you look at Max. I know that you want him.”

  “How can you, when I am unsure of that myself? Or of his aims?”

  “Look here, Adelaide. It is of no consequence to me whether you believe me, or Willoughby, or the rest of your friends, or if you even believe that we exist at all. You might as well be a clockwork mind, or a brain in a jar. You look at us like specimens. But I am here to tell you that it does not matter: Your homely fears, your philosophical confusions and obfuscations, they signify nothing. At the end of things, which comes closer every minute, you will look back and you will see the path of your life. Do you want that girl to be a cringing swot, a spinster who loved and lost; or do you want to be strong enough to design your life to your own specifications? I assure you, I shall hate you either way. But you shouldn’t hate yourself.”

  To her own specifications? She liked the sound of that.

  But Lucia had known that she would. Hadn’t she?

  “Lucia,” Adelaide said, as Lucia rose and fussed with her coat and gloves, “I believe you are a better friend than you know. Perhaps especially to your enemies. Thank you for your warning. I will take it into consideration.”

  “I doubt you will, Babbage. He’ll be dead within the week. I swear it.”

  She wondered if Lucia were serious, but decided it did not matter. Then she called Sebastian, readied the guest quarters, and announced to the children that they would have their new nanny that very night.

  And that he played the drums.

  Sebastian stamped his feet like a thoroughbred outside the renovated theatre. He wore a topcoat of some strange silk that changed color as it turned in the lights, and the cuffs of his dungarees dragged in the dust of the road. With him stood Henry, wearing
his usual formal black and looking altogether more patient.

  “Where are they? It’s damnably late already.”

  Adelaide smiled past the screwdriver between her teeth, and continued making the final adjustments to some wires.

  On a small table near the theatre’s doors sat Commonplace, drinking greedily from the building’s electricity. A small copper trail led from her quantum engines to the back panel of Sebastian’s clockwork, Nurse. Within her rib cage lay another quantum lump, which Adelaide had obtained at great cost. It sparkled like diamonds in coal.

  COMMONPLACE, ARE WE READY?

  The answer came, quick as anything.

  WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN READY, DEAR ADA.

  They could hear the twins round the corner before they saw them: Charlotte, thin as a wilding apple, always taller than her brother but now shooting skyward, wearing the black lace, striped stockings, and kohl she affected these days. Her hair was black as night. Darcy wore a blue-black military costume with epaulets and a waistcoat tight around his middle, clipping painfully along in shining, pointed shoes. And between them was Max Willoughby, one bag slung crossways on his chest and the shopping in his arms, looking nearly dead of exhaustion.

  Max pecked her on the cheek and inspected the mechanics as the children milled about, poking at Henry and dancing gaily with Sebastian.

  The mood was palpably electric. Lytton crowded round as Papa emerged, dressed as a carnival barker—his idea, as was the theme of his new entertainment complex—and sent his voice soaring.

  “Step right up to the Magic Carnival! First night special entertainments, free to children and gentlefolk alike! Hear the sounds of wonder and of terror, brought to you by Babbage and Willoughby’s Independent Devices! Thrill to the…oh, bugger. Thrill to the sounds of, well, other terrors, and miscellaneous wonders! Watch our organist befuddled! Take in the majesty of one man’s beloved livelihood, now wasting in attrition, given over to flash-in-the-pan amusements and willful daughters!”