by Kage Baker
“The Compassionates of Allah?” she prompted, as he began to murmur the words to an old song. He nodded. “What is that, my golden beloved?”
“A religious order,” he replied. “Black brothers who help the poor. They had houses in every big city. And Joseph told me—he said you could leave a message for Suleyman with them, and they’d see he got it. Oh, but that was years ago. I wasn’t always here, you know. I was a good operative.”
“The very best, my darling,” Tiara assured him, but she was getting impatient. “So all we have to do is go to Compassionates of Allah and say, ‘Here is a message for Uncle Suleyman’?”
The slave was silent a moment. “I suppose we could do that,” he said in a clearer voice. “I suppose so. But… warning him wouldn’t be enough. If there were only a way to send him some of the biomechanicals themselves …”
“Why, my heart’s darling?”
“Because if he could analyze them, he could devise an upgrade that would protect the rest of my kind,” said the slave, thinking very hard. “Latif is a genius. Little Latif, he was only a baby then, neophyte in his school uniform and he sat right there at the table with us, with Joseph and Mendoza and I… and he’s the only one left now.” He drew a deep breath. “She held me. She stroked my hair. But she never saw me, me or anyone, she just looked straight through us all with those black, black eyes because she was seeing him. Only him, ever, like a nun meditating on the names of God. I used to wonder what it would be like to love someone that much, and then I… What could I have said to her? She was going away in the morning and I was going to England, and I never thought, my God I never thought—”
“But you’re thinking now, my darling,” Tiara crooned. “And Mendoza has gone away happy with the brave commander. So no more crying. How do we get Uncle Suleyman some of the biomechanicals?”
The slave calmed at her touch, gradually. His face worked with the effort of thought. “A blood sample from me,” he said at last. “I’m still rotten with the damned things. There’s a war going on inside me all the time, I can hear them fighting. My nanobots versus the ones your uncle designed. We could ship it off to Suleyman parcel post, I suppose … except how? Let leeches suck on me and send them in a biopouch? Ah, but they’d die.” He began to shiver. “Don’t cut me.”
“Nobody will cut you.” Tiara pulled his face down and kissed him. “Come now, my warrior of the sun. Lie down and I will soothe your heart.” He obeyed her, shaking as though he had a fever, and she stretched out next to him again.
“‘I have been a prisoner on the rack,’” he murmured, “‘I have been a slave pierced with hot irons. I have been a supplicant for my own murder. I have been consigned to the house of the dead … ‘“
“No, my adored, of course you haven’t.”
“What story am I in?” he asked faintly.
“My story,” Tiara replied, and sang to him until he fell asleep.
It was only a stupid. It had no visible gender and no life of its own, not that it would have known what to do with an independent life if it had one. When one of the Uncles or Quean Barbie gave it an order, then it felt alive; then there was work to be done, a sense of purpose! And that was all it knew of pleasure or pain.
It could think, but not in the same ways or for the same reasons you or I think. Indeed, some of its thoughts were deep and profound, even brilliant, impossibly detailed and splendid constructions of a logic we would find incomprehensible. But it never thought unless it was ordered to.
It hadn’t been ordered to think in a while, because it had gotten lost in a less frequented section of the hill, wandering in the wrong direction down tunnels that were darker and colder and more choked with trash the farther it went. Quean Barbie was unlikely to notice it was missing and send others to look for it. She never knew from one moment to the next how many stupids she had.
Sooner or later it would stumble and fall, and forget to get up, and it would die. A complex enzymatic reaction would then take place, reducing its body to a powdery shell. If the other stupids were with it at the time, they would carefully break and scatter the shell, so as not to leave anything lying around in the way; but if it died alone, its husk might lie there forever, ashes and chalk, perfect image of a living thing. As much of a living thing as it had been, that is.
But then!
She was there in the darkness like a white flame, and Her glorious hair streamed upward like white fire, and Her eyes blazed with meaning. Its little lipless mouth gaped in wonder. It tottered to be closer to Her, even as She struck out at it, a glancing blow to make stars dance in its eyes. Trespasser! she screamed at it. I will kill thee!
I will die, it agreed, and knelt to oblige Her.
But before it could shut down its heart, She had seized it by its fragile arm and was staring intently into its eyes. No, She told it, thou shalt not die. I have work for thee.
Work. Now it knew pleasure, now it was alive, and its breath came quickly in its shallow chest and it blinked its moist eyes. It waited, trembling, for the impetus of Her will. She told it what She needed it to make. She described what the made thing must do, and its qualities. Yes, it agreed. Yes, yes.
So intent on the work was it that it did not even notice when She withdrew. It crouched on the floor, sorting quickly through the piled debris there, adding this bit of wire or that oddment of glass to a small but steadily growing heap, discarding some as new concepts suggested themselves, grabbing up others as solutions to certain problems occurred to it.
It didn’t need light. It didn’t need food or rest. Nothing mattered except its work.
When She returned it had completed its task, and held up proudly what She had required of it. She took the work from its hands, and it felt its arms grow suddenly heavy, its heart falter. She had retreated from it and now its life was retreating, too. It felt neither grief nor resentment nor weariness nor peace. There was nothing there to feel. Between one moment and the next it was gone, like a soap bubble vanishing.
Tiara knelt beside her slave, examining the device the stupid had made for her. It looked for all the world like a perfume atomizer, a little globe of colorless glass with a nozzle and a bulb. Gingerly she held the nozzle to the slave’s left arm, the useless one, and squeezed the bulb.
There was a hiss; the nozzle suckered into the dead arm and a red fog began to roil inside the globe, spinning and condensing. The slave woke, opened his blind eyes and drew breath to scream. She clapped her free hand over his mouth. The hissing stopped; she looked down and saw that the globe now seemed to be made of ruby-colored glass, and was heavy and suddenly very cold. She pulled it away and set it down. Droplets of chill began to frost it. On the slave’s arm, there was a tiny red wound where the nozzle had been, but it crusted black almost at once.
“Poor dear, it’s only me,” she told the slave, and lifted her hand. His head rolled to one side and he gasped for breath. She pursed her little mouth. “You have to tell me how clever I am, now, because I’ve just done a splendid thing, my lover,” she informed him.
“You’re very clever,” he whispered. “Please let me out of here.”
“Sweet brave darling, it’s me,” she reminded him. “Your own Princess. I’m trying to help us, remember?”
His lips moved as he repeated what she’d said, but silently, and then his face was a study in confusion. His eyebrows drew together. “Princess,” he said. “All right.”
“You have got to stop this,” she told him, sternly but graciously. “We’ll never get anything done if you’re crazy all the time.”
“No, we won’t,” he agreed feebly.
“Now, listen to me. I took the blood sample we need. Here it is, see?” She lifted his good hand and put the blood-globe in it. His face twitched in surprise at the coldness. “It’s going to stay nice and fresh and cold and not die, so Uncle Suleyman can look at it and make an upgrade. Remember?”
“I remember,” the slave replied, but he said it too fast; she could t
ell he was just saying it. She took the globe away lest he drop it and gathered him in her arms with a resigned sigh.
“Poor baby,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “This is all too much stress and nervous tension for you. You need to relax and have a lovely vacation. We’ll go to London to look at the Queen, frighten the little mouse under her chair. And we’ll stay at Claridge’s … and we’ll drink champagne … and we’ll buy beautiful clothes in all the shops… and we’ll go to the British Museum … and all the men will dance with me. Remember how we’re going to do that, my own?”
“Claridge’s,” said the slave wonderingly. “Oh, my …”
“But you must tell me, my truest love,” she went on, and her voice sharpened a bit, “you must tell me what I’m to do next. How do I get the blood sample to Uncle Suleyman? Think for me, now.”
The slave thought until sweat beaded on his brow. At last the pieces of broken chain connected, and he was able to tell her.
Tiara fed him well before she left, trout and snails and young greens from the field, as much as she could find in haste. Then she covered him up in the towels and her afghan, telling him to go to sleep. As an afterthought she took pieces of dead men and arranged them around him to obscure the view of anyone unwelcome looking into the room. Then she made her way swiftly to the old tunnel, and ventured out into the night.
It was a bigger night than it had ever been. The horizon was much wider, and there were greater wonders and worse dangers than there had used to be. She looked past the familiar little light of Sweeney’s farm and considered the pale curve of the road that ran beyond it, out of sight beyond the black hill that had been the limit of the known world for as long as she could remember.
Anything was out there. Everything was out there. London was out there, and all the people in the stories. And she was Bess the landlord’s daughter, and she was all the other heroines, about to go into the unknown, and bravely, too.
Tiara drew herself up and sprang forward with a salmon’s leap, and ran down across the heather like a breeze passing through the night, so light was her footfall. She reached the road sooner than she had expected to, and sped off along its dark length.
Knockdoul was no place at all. Three houses and two shops? And one of them doubling as parcel office and public house? But Tiara had never seen any place so huge, and she cringed in its shadows with her heart pounding.
She did not know which were the shops, but one had a big bowfront window, and peering into its darkness she saw shiny things arranged on shelves, all neat, and the Memory insisted this must be what she wanted. There was no one within. She had to climb up to a high window and glare in at a lumpen big lady who stirred at last from beneath her quilt and came slowly downstairs to the back door.
The shopkeeper opened the door and stood gazing thoughtfully out into the night, drinking in the cold air and listening to the distant lowing of cattle, all of which got into a dream she was having… She moved aside absently to let Tiara pass, never seeing her.
Tiara ran to the front of the shop and paused, staring, breathing deep. So many smells! None that she knew at all. Fighting her panic, she made herself pace carefully along the shelves, looking for the things the slave had described.
There, by the rows and rows of printed picture cards, were the shiny boxes and silly spangles of ribbon, all flat and ready to be assembled into a pleasing gift for a loved one. She jostled the rack slightly as she poked among them and the pretty cards began to call out their recorded greetings in tinny voices, faint in the night, To my loving wife! Happy birthday to a dear nephew! Congratulations on the occasion of your civil union! Deepest sympathy! She bared her little teeth at them until they stammered into silence. And there were bright carry-bags, too, and that was useful. She took what she needed and thrust it into a rustly bag, and dragged it after her as she continued her search.
In a high case Tiara found the brown bottles arrayed, and had to spring up on the counter to reach them. She peered at each one, searching for the long writing that the slave had told her about, writing that began with a mark like a bird’s foot or a cleft stick; and that was how she found the vitamin supplements. She loaded them into the bag and sprang down. What else, now, was lacking?
Easy to find the polarized dark goggles she needed, though they were dusty and flyspecked on their display rack. Who needed such things in that gray rainy country, except holidaymakers hoping to ski? And easy to find the writing things, the thin cylinders. Her eye was drawn to a lovely one, thicker and bigger than the others, its case and cap all decorated with swirly patterns. As she pulled it from the display there was a click, and a ghostly voice told her: You’ll be glad you’ve selected the Little Book of Kells Calligraphy Master! Price is One Punt Eightpence. For information on entering the all-parish schools penmanship competition for 2355, kindly apply to the keeper of this shop.
One punt eightpence? Yes, that was the other thing she needed. She found the cashbox and puzzled over it only a moment before she got it to disgorge the greasy leaves of paper marked with pictures of bearded men and harps. They smelled fearfully of big people, but she crammed a good wad of them into her bag.
Nothing left, then, but to sprint up the stairs to the big lady’s bed-sitter and rifle her closet. These weren’t Princess clothes at all! Bulky cable-knit things and floppy frumpy stuff. No gauzy moonbeams or cobwebs. Tiara wrinkled her nose at the sight of them, but selected what she needed without lingering, reflecting that this was a disguise after all.
Her bag was quite heavy, tearing now. Tiara helped herself to one of the pillow slips off the big lady’s bed: much better. She rearranged her goods and, hefting the bag over her shoulder, ran lightly down the stairs and out into the night.
The big lady woke with a start and drew back from the doorway, realizing that she’d been sleepwalking again. Muttering to herself, she shut and locked the door and creaked back up to bed.
Tiara made for the garden wall, but found she was unable to vault it again with her bag. She turned to find another way out, and stopped, staring.
She’d scarcely glanced at the place on her way in; now it took her attention fiercely. A square of green walled by stone, with roses tidy all along the wall, white roses echoing starlight, and how the stars were glittering down! And such perfume, and the bright shimmer of water in a stone basin. And a man.
He did not move. After a moment Tiara understood that he wasn’t a real man but a stone figure, no taller than she was, really; only the distance and the starlight had made him seem big. She ventured close.
The man was smiling so kindly, with such a gentle face, but staring past her with blind stone eyes, just as her slave stared. He was holding out his cupped hands before him. Clear water welled from his palms, and trickled down over his fingertips to drop into the stone basin. He seemed to be offering Tiara a drink.
She came forward, enchanted, leaning close to look into his hands. There were rippling stars reflected in the water. She bent her head and drank thirstily. It was good water. She could taste the stars.
“You have our royal thanks,” she told him grandly, but he said nothing. Suddenly Tiara wanted her slave very much.
There was an arched gate in the wall just beyond, and she slipped out through it and ran away. So light her footfall was that even with the bag, she made no sound as she left Knockdoul behind her.
It was quick, the journey back. Was this all it took to cross the boundaries of her old life? Tiara looked out in astonishment at the wide world she’d explored, beginning to go pale in the creeping dawn, and saw it was only a little place.
And yet her old world was smaller still. She pushed her way down through the crawlhole to the bone room, and her heart pounded against her ribs to see her slave still there, huddled where she’d left him. She swept the old brown bones aside and knelt to kiss his cheek. He jumped and shivered, opening his eyes.
“It’s me, darling one, jewel of my heart,” she told him. “Such presents
I’ve brought you!”Tiara upended the pillow slip and spilled out her loot, the bright stuff and the clothes and the brown bottles. The slave heard them rattling out and his eyebrows drew together in confusion, then arched wide with amazement. He levered himself upright.
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” he cried hoarsely. “You did it? You’ve gone and come back? Oh, where’s my time sense? My Princess, my beautiful brave one!” His nostrils flared as he caught the scent of what was in the brown bottles. “And you’ve brought me vitamins—” He groped frantically for them.
“To be sure I have, sweet lord,” she crowed, and pressed a bottle into his hand. He turned it between his fingers, unable to get it open, until she saw what was the matter and took it back. “‘Having said this, Calypso laid her table, setting out in abundance Ambrosia and pouring the red nectar; and so the way-opener, the Swift-Arriving, drank and ate,’” she quoted teasingly. She twisted the neck from the bottle and gave it back to her slave, who gulped the contents down as though they were nectar and ambrosia indeed.
“Oh,” he cried, when he had swallowed them, “oh, well done, Princess. That was a high-mineral supplement. God Apollo, I’ll be walking down Brook Street in no time! Is there any more?”
“Long-vexed royal Odysseus, there is so,”Tiara chanted. “Bottles and jars, jars and bottles, and all for the darling one. Will you have more, my hero?”
The slave laughed wildly. “Ah, I could fill myself so full I’d rattle! No, no, best to be temperate. Drink down some water, yes, metabolize a little at a time. And you’re the hero, the heroine, my little goddess, you’re rosy-fingered Dawn herself.”
“‘And the goddess gave him a skin of dark wine, and another of water,’” Tiara recited, fetching him the beer bottle they kept water in. He drank it down as she watched gleefully. “But wait! There’s more.”
