Asimov's SF, July 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  When I was a child, I was not allowed to have friends. Other children, “young horrors,” as Mother called them, would be too softening, said Dr. Templeton, too trying, said Dr. Bransby. One day, so lonely that I could have cried, I wandered through the corridors, almost losing myself, and discovered the library. ("Over a thousand volumes,” said Miss Jenkinson. “The gilding on the books alone is worth more than a thousand pounds.") Dr. Templeton's regimen had confined me to the schoolroom, but Dr. Templeton had been summoned to Windsor Castle, to attend the King himself. And Dr. Bransby, whose carriage was expected that afternoon, had not yet arrived. Miss Jenkinson, thinking I was asleep, had put her feet up and fallen asleep with a handkerchief over her face. I could hear her snoring.

  I tiptoed, frightened, down the endless corridors of Rosings, with de Bourghs and d'Arcys frowning at me from the walls. At the end of one corridor was an archway. I walked through it and saw shelves of books going up to heaven. ("The fresco on the ceiling was painted by an Italian, Antonio Vecci,” said Miss Jenkinson. “Although unlikely to appeal to our modern tastes, in his day the painting, of classical gods disporting themselves in an undignified manner, was considered rather fine. If you look in the corner there, up to the right, you'll see where the painting was left unfinished when Vecci eloped with Philomena de Bourgh. He was later shot in the back by Sir Reginald.")

  Will you laugh if I tell you that the first book I read, other than my Bible and the Parent's Assistant, which Miss Jenkinson appreciated for its edifying morals, was Aristotle's Metaphysics? How little I understood of it then! How little I understand still, even after discussing it with Dr. Galt. But Dr. Galt seldom has time for long discussions.

  My cousin Fitz teased me about my serious reading matter. “You don't read like a girl, Anne,” he said, “but as if you're prepping for Oxford. Look, I brought you some grapes from the conservatory.” I was not allowed to eat fruit, which Dr. Bransby said was not sufficiently supportive. But how tired I was of soft-boiled eggs and beef tea! “If you won't tell, I'll teach you a little Latin.”

  From his window, Fitz could see when Dr. Bransby walked to the Parsonage, where he could smoke his pipe without Mother finding out. She did not approve of tobacco. When Dr. Bransby was out of sight, Fitz would say, “Come on, Anne, let's go down to the maze!” We would laugh at the triton, with his absurdly distended cheeks, and crouch among the rosebushes, where no one could see us, feeling the pleasure of being unsupervised and completely hidden.

  Of course, I knew why Fitz came, or had to come. Those portraits of the de Bourghs and d'Arcys—they haunted us both like ghosts.

  Once, when I was fifteen, I said to him, “I'll never be a beauty, will I?”

  “You're distinctive in your own way, Anne,” he said.

  That wounded me, although he had meant it as a compliment. Was woman ever wooed thus? No, I don't think so either.

  Finally, Dr. Galt said, “It's your heart, Miss de Bourgh, and there's nothing to be done about it. You must live as normally as you can.” Thank goodness for Dr. Galt.

  * * * *

  It was Pug who showed me the door.

  “Take that dog out of the drawing room at once!” said Mother. “Can't you see that he's shedding on the cushions? Really, Miss Jenkinson.”

  She would never, of course, say it directly to me. I was the delicate one, the last of the de Bourghs, who must be coddled and tortured into health. Into marrying and producing an heir. She steadfastly treated Pug as Miss Jenkinson's dog, although every night that he was at Rosings, he slept in my bed, curled beside me, snorting in his sleep. She would never give in to something as vulgar as fact.

  I took Pug into the garden. It had rained the night before. I had seen the lightning from my bedroom window, flashing over the avenue of lime trees, over the park where the tourists fed the deer. The triton looked wet and somehow glum. The privets were bent awry, as though they had been engaged in a mad dance. The path through the rose garden was covered with petals, like wet rags. Pug ran over them, toward the lime alley. And suddenly, he was no longer there.

  “At first,” said Eliza. “I couldn't see the door at all. But now I always see it, that—shiver, when it opens. Mary could always see it better than I can. And she seems to be able to—call it, sometimes.”

  “I don't know how I do it,” said Mary. “I just call, and it comes. But not always. Don't worry, Miss, you'll see it better after a while. And you've got Pug. He seems to be able to smell it, almost. As soon as the door opens, he goes right to it.”

  That first time, the door opened into another garden. It surrounded a house, modern, not particularly attractive, smaller than Rosings. I wandered around the garden, curious and confused, not certain where I was or what I should do. Finally, I looked in through a window. A woman, stately, placid, as old as Mother but without her appearance of constant activity, sat on a sofa. “Why, Pug,” she said, “wherever have you been?” Pug jumped up on the sofa and sat beside her, like a cushion.

  “The strangest thing,” said Eliza, “is that when you go through the door to another place—or time—no one seems to notice that you're there. And when you come back, no one seems to notice that you were gone. It's like being a ghost.”

  “Do you think it's wrong for us to go through it, Miss?” asked Mary. “Perhaps it's a devilish device, as Mr. Elton would say, designed to tempt us.” She seemed genuinely distressed. I put my hand on hers.

  “Don't be silly,” said Eliza. “Miss de Bourgh has already told us that it can be explained naturally, like that machine at the Royal Society. Like lightning. Surely nothing in nature is of the Devil. Surely everything in nature has been created by God. And think of what finding the door has done for us! We've been to London, to Bath. Do you think the Miss Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm would have been able to travel to those places? And thank you again, Miss,” she nodded to me, “for showing us around Pemberley. It was a kindness my sister and I will never forget.”

  “Do you believe, Miss, that the door is created by God?” asked Mary.

  “I don't know,” I said. “But you said, once, that we are the people to whom nothing happens. I wonder if, perhaps, there is a provision for us. I know this sounds silly, but—a provision for us specifically, for the people to whom nothing happens. Perhaps the door has been sent—to allow us to communicate with one other, so that we will not be, you know, lonely.”

  “But then why only the three of us—and Pug?” asked Mary. “Surely we aren't the only ones to whom nothing happens.”

  “Don't forget Mrs. Churchill,” said Eliza. “Although she did not encourage the acquaintance, after that first meeting in Bath. I think, to her, the Miss Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm were of no consequence. She was not as condescending as you are, Miss. And we have not seen her now for more than a year.”

  “But that shows there are others,” I said. “That we have not found them does not mean they do not exist. Perhaps it's time we started looking for them.”

  * * * *

  Here are the things my mother wanted me to have. Beauty, in which I failed her completely. Come to the mirror, let us look at my face, so pale, so insignificant. Wit, ditto. Once, when I was a child, Fitz's sister Georgie came to visit. She said to me, after an afternoon during which we were supposed to be playing, “I would like you better, Anne, if you weren't so dull.” Accomplishments, of course, I could not have. Dr. Templeton and Dr. Bransby agreed: I must not hold a pencil or paintbrush, must not practice the pianoforte, must not under any circumstances learn to dance. I must not exert myself in any way. Dr. Galt said, “What a pair of quacks.” But by then it was too late; I was neither beautiful, nor witty, nor accomplished. I had nothing to recommend me except a fortune.

  And of course, Mother wanted me to marry Fitz.

  Fitz said to me once, as we were walking in the garden, “Anne, we can talk to each other, can't we? I mean, we used to be friends when we were children.”

  He looked, as he always looked, sad and u
neasy. I think he had read too much German philosophy. Once he had told me that at Oxford he had lost his faith in both humanity and God.

  “There's no reason we can't be friends now,” I said.

  “Then—would you care terribly if we didn't marry?”

  I put my arm through his. “Oh, Fitz. Marry that girl, the one who came with the Lucases, who plays the piano so badly.” She did play badly, I was jealous enough to say that. I cared, of course. It was difficult not to love Fitz. But I remembered what Dr. Galt had told me.

  “It's your heart, my girl. It's like a lake in there, sloshing around. I wish it had a good, steady beat like a piston. Someday, we'll be able to replace the human heart with a machine.”

  “That doesn't sound at all nice,” I said. “How can a machine love?”

  There were other things I asked him: “Am I going to die?”

  “We're all going to die. And if you're careful, you won't die any sooner than most. But that means no marrying. You must learn to content yourself with the pleasures of an old maid. The first child you have—then you will die, Anne. And perhaps the child will die as well. Do you understand?”

  “If Mother were here, she would dismiss you at once. Do you know I've been destined to marry my cousin since I was born? It's a sort of dynastic alliance.”

  Dr. Galt laughed. “It's time the de Bourghs and the d'Arcys had some new blood. You've been marrying each other too long.” Then he shook his finger at me. “But I'm serious, Anne. You can live long and well, but you must find another way.”

  And: “What if there were a door that could take me, in an instant, between two places that are far away from each other, perhaps even far away in time—into the past for instance, or even the future, when Napoleon will be defeated.”

  “As we all hope he will be!”

  “If there were such a door, how would it work?”

  “So you've been following my advice.”

  He had told me, “Most of the women I know waste their lives embroidering on silk and reading French novels. You should hear my own daughters, talking about the regiment! It's soldiers, soldiers all day long. But you, Anne, with your natural ability and the library here at Rosings, can develop the intellect that God gave you. Read philosophy, read history. Learn Greek. There is nothing in the field of scholarship that you can't accomplish.”

  “Despite my broken heart?”

  “Because of your broken heart.”

  “Doors that transport you through space and time are not my specialty,” he answered. “But at a meeting of the Royal Society I once saw a mechanical apparatus with two arms, which resembled a headless doll. A spark of electricity jumped from one arm to the other, instantaneously, without seeming to have passed through the space between. Later that day, at a lecture attended by the King, I heard a philosopher say that we are all composed of energy. Why should we not, with a mechanical device, or a door as you called it, pass from one place to another, like that spark?”

  And he smiled at me, as though I were a clever child. That is what we see in the mirror, a sick child, although I am almost twenty.

  “Keep reading, Anne. Keep exercising your mind as much as you can. If you can't have the life that other women have, remember you can still have a life that is fulfilling, even in some ways superior to theirs.”

  This is what I told Fitz: “Marry her with my blessing. And if you accomplish nothing else, you will have made Mother thoroughly angry. That in itself will be an accomplishment, I think. Life at Rosings will be so much more interesting for a while.”

  He looked down at the path. “I don't even know if we could be happy together. But I can't help loving her. Oh, I'm a fool!” My introspective, morose cousin. Would he make a good husband for anyone? He would, I thought, have made a good husband for me.

  “You must get out into the sun more often, Anne,” he said. “You look like a fish that has lived in a cave for a hundred years.” I was startled and gratified that he had noticed.

  “What sun?” I said. “The sun never shines at Rosings.”

  * * * *

  Once, when I was in London with Mother, I saw a blind man being led by a dog. A black dog, a labrador mostly, and it led him to a street corner where the dog sat, and then the man sat and put his cap on the pavement. The dog lay down beside him, leaning into his ragged coat.

  At first, Pug led me. I could not see the door myself. Eventually, I learned to see the shiver, as Mary described it, when it appeared. And eventually, I even learned to summon it—at least, when it wanted to come.

  What I liked best was going to Lyme. I would sit on the Cobb, watching the ships come in and the fishermen unloading their nets, the fish gleaming orange and purple in the evening light. The smell of the fish, the smell of the sea, the harsh voices of the fishermen. The feel of rough stone. It was as though I had been transported to fairyland.

  I did not like going to London, but the door opens where it wants to. Its intentions are inscrutable, the destination not under our control. And that is where I met the Miss Martins.

  They were walking down the street, still with their aprons on, looking into the shop windows as though they had never seen shops filled only with ribbons, or only with ladies’ shoes. I knew immediately that they had traveled through the door, as I had. We recognize each other, we travelers through the door.

  “Please forgive my forwardness,” I said, “but—I am Anne de Bourgh.”

  It was the first time they had been to London. We went to the Queen's Palace and the park, with its strutting ducks and tubs of orange trees. Mary admired the parterres, which were, she said, “even fancier than at Donwell Abbey,” and Eliza laughed at the French fashions. “Imagine,” she said, “if I wore that bonnet at home!” We walked down Pall Mall and finally stopped to have cakes at a shop near Marlborough House, although the attendant did not seem to realize we were there. We took what we wanted, and I left some coins on the counter. It was evening and I was trying not to show that I was at the end of my strength when the door appeared again, in the middle of St. James's Square, and took us back to Abbey-Mill Farm. They could see that I was not well, so they made me lie on the sofa and bathed my forehead with rosewater. Then there was the door, right in the parlor wall, and it took me home to Rosings.

  “What have you been doing?” asked Dr. Galt. “Running up and down stairs? I told you, my girl, you can live a normal life, but within reason. Whatever you've been doing, you must not do it again.” I lay sick in bed all that week, and Miss Jenkinson brought me interminable cups of beef tea. But I had found friends.

  * * * *

  We have tried to understand the rules by which the door operates.

  It appears and disappears unexpectedly. When we step through it, we do not know where we will be, or how long we will be there. When it comes back for us, it usually takes us home. But not always.

  At first, only Mary could see it—and, presumably, Pug. Now we can all see it—as a sort of shiver in the air, as though the brick wall, or hedge, or whatever is behind it, were behind a waterfall.

  It does not like to be ignored. If we do not step through it, the door sulks. Sometimes it does not come back for days.

  Sometimes, when we call for it to appear, it comes. At other times it will not come, no matter how we call. Sometimes, it will take us where we ask. At other times, it will not. “Door, could you please take us to Pemberley?” has worked in the past, as has “Open, Sesame!” As has “Here, door, door, door!”

  The door appears to have limits. We have never traveled earlier than the King's reign, nor later than the defeat of Napoleon. (Imagine our relief to learn of Waterloo.) We have never traveled outside England, although Eliza has asked, again and again, to go to Italy.

  Wherever we go, we are ghosts. We walk unnoticed. And when we return, we have not been missed. Life seems to flow around us, as though we were pebbles in a stream, eternally still in the midst of motion. Once, Eliza said, “Is it the door, or is it just us? I ca
n go to Highbury for hours, and when I return Mother says that she thought I was home all the time, in the garden or with the cows. Perhaps we are just like that, going through life unnoticed.”

  We call it a door, but is it a door at all? We say that it opens, but can what it does be called opening? What happens when it appears? What determines where it will take us? We do not know.

  “I think,” I said to Mary and Eliza, “that we should begin attempting to summon the door. I believe it has a purpose, and that we must fulfill it.”

  “What sort of purpose?” asked Mary.

  “I believe that we should find others like ourselves. They must exist, and I think the door will take us to them.”

  We were in Bath, walking along the Crescent. The sun was bright and Mary's nose was beginning to freckle. The door does not wait for one to fetch a parasol.

  “You don't know how lonely I was until I met Pug. And if there are others like me, who are also lonely, I want to find them.”

  I said it with steady conviction, although I was not sure, myself, that the door was not simply a Devil, an impish device that had decided to play with us for a while. But there is something I have wondered since the days of Dr. Templeton and Dr. Bransby, while being lowered into a cold bath or drinking beef tea. Is there a force in the universe that understands us, as we long to be understood? And if so, is this force compassionate? Does it, even as it metes out ill, long for our good? If so, it is the force that will give Fitz the girl he wants, the happy ending he deserves. But what about those of us for whom there can be no happy endings? Perhaps it gives us something else, a secret. A companionship that even Fitz would not understand.