Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “Which is why,” Tacy observed acidly, “I found you preparing to help him dismember the poor Reasoning Machine.”

  Sir Arthur raised his thumb to his mouth and nibbled at the nail. “I cannot deny that appearances are against me,” he said after a moment. “At first I was indignant, and refused to answer a single question Mr. Holmes put to me. Then Angharad’s automaton broke down and I felt obliged to do what I could to fix it—for Angharad’s sake, of course. But between working over her together, and his distress when all our efforts failed, and the Reasoning Machine’s reaction to the installation of the Illogic Engine—well, one thing led to another.”

  “I see,” Tacy said. And she did. Sir Arthur lived to experiment. For the sake of an untested theory, he would flout convention, bend laws, and fly in the face of common sense. It was this spirit of experimentation that had led him to hire the sixteen-year-old daughter of a blacksmith as his housekeeper, to have her educated and to work with her as a colleague and an equal. It was one of the things she loved in him. “You thought it would be interesting.”

  Sir Arthur nodded.

  “And the experiment did not work quite as you expected.”

  “It did not.” Mr. Holmes, who had been observing all this time, spoke with some feeling.

  “Well, you see for yourself.” Angharad indicated the Reasoning Machine, who was following the conversation with a painful intensity. “All full of emotions, the poor creature is, and not a notion what to do with them—like a baby, really. Only more clever. The things he called poor Mycroft!”

  “Just so,” said the inventor. “It is quite unable to control its emotions. After some discussion, Sir Arthur agreed to help me remove the Engine until we could design a better model.”

  “Mr. Holmes,” Sir Arthur added eagerly, “has some very sound ideas about regulation and control, Tacy. It is his opinion that—”

  “No!” The Reasoning Machine’s voice quivered with terror. “I don’t want to be regulated and controlled! They’re my emotions, and you can’t take them away from me!” He clutched at Dr. Watson’s arm. “You won’t let them take my feelings away, will you?”

  The doctor looked alarmed. “My dear chap! Of course it is wrong to deny you your emotions, even temporarily. Yet you must know I have no power to stop Mr. Holmes, should he decide to do so.”

  “You have a revolver!” the automaton cried. “Threaten him with it, and we will make our escape into the stews of London and live by my wits and your strong arm.” A smile blossomed on his lean face. “I shall be the Emperor of Crime, and you shall be my consort!”

  His words were met by an astonished silence, broken by Mycroft Holmes’s rich laughter.

  Her temper in shreds, Tacy turned upon him. “The poor creature has a right to his feelings, look you. Though you forced them upon him, now that he has them, a crime it would be to remove them because you find them inconvenient.”

  Which, she realized in the silence that followed, could well be said of her feelings as well. Having discovered that she loved Arthur, she could not un-know it again. Nor would she wish to, aware though she was that such an unequal affection must come to nothing. A baronet, even a Welsh baronet, was unlikely to marry a blacksmith’s daughter, particularly if she was his apprentice. Particularly if he regarded her in the light of a younger sister. There was nothing for it but to go home to Mam and think how a clever spinster might keep herself. A schoolmistress, perhaps, or a mechanic’s secretary. She felt very low indeed.

  The Reasoning Machine’s pale gaze flicked from her to Sir Arthur. “I do not entirely understand what is happening. But I have a strong feeling that Sir Arthur should kiss Miss Gof without delay.”

  Tacy gave a little mew and covered her blazing face with her hands.

  “Oh,” Arthur said. And then, “Oh! Of course,” and pulled her awkwardly to him.

  Feeling his arms around her and his lips on her hair, Tacy lifted her face, clutched the bib of his apron, and pulled his mouth down to meet hers.

  Someone, possibly Dr. Watson, exclaimed “I say!” in a startled tone. She disengaged herself reluctantly.

  The Reasoning Machine was wistful. “I wish I had someone to love, too, and a home, and a proper name, like a real person. Jabez would be nice. Or Algernon. Algernon Holmes.” He turned to the doctor. “What do you say?”

  Watson gave him a wary smile. “I’ll give it some thought, old chap. But first things first.” He turned his clear brown gaze on the inventor. “You will let him keep his emotions, will you not?”

  The big man cast up his hands in defeat. “I will. He must learn to control them, however—he’s all but useless as he is.” He considered Watson. “Do you think you could undertake to teach him?”

  The Machine turned a radiant countenance to the doctor. “The very thing! Oh, do say you will!”

  “I…”

  “It is settled, then,” said Holmes. “In his current state, London is likely to be too much for him. I have a cottage in Sussex, near Bognor Regis, quite sequestered from the world. You shall take him there.” He divested himself of his apron and gauntlets. In his shirtsleeves, with his braces showing, he seemed far less formidable, almost human. He fixed Watson with a measuring eye. “Have you any interest in mechanical engineering?”

  Dr. Watson looked startled. “Why, yes. Considerable interest.”

  “Excellent. I shall give you a grounding in basic maintenance before you go.”

  “And I, myself, shall teach you everything else,” the Machine broke in happily. “I know a great deal about mechanical engineering. Do you think there will be bees, Watson? I have a great desire to observe the communal intelligence of bees. Oh, what fun we shall have!”

  Here he showed every sign of throwing his arms around Watson and serving him as Tacy had served Sir Arthur. Watson gently deflected the embrace without absolutely spurning it.

  Sir Arthur possessed himself of Tacy’s hand. “I think,” he said, “that I should like to go home now.”

  But the dawn of reciprocal love had not entirely robbed Tacy of her common sense. “One more question there is to be settled, before we make an end,” she said, turning to Mr. Holmes. “You have our prototype and all our notes. Without them, we can neither refine our work, nor present it to the Royal Society, nor apply for a patent. In short, it will be as if the Illogic Engine was never invented. Unless, perhaps, you intend to present it as your own work?”

  The inventor looked shocked. “I may be a thief, Miss Gof, but I am not a scoundrel.” He rubbed his face with his well-kept hands. “Well. It seems we have a great deal still to discuss. Doctor, would you be so good as to walk through that door behind you and put the kettle on the hob? I think we could all use a cup of tea.”

  April 1882

  On a bright, chilly spring morning, Sir Arthur and Lady Cwmlech sat at breakfast in the cozy morning room of their house on Curzon Street. Sir Arthur was reading a book he had propped up against the saltcellar and absently dripping egg over his waistcoat. Lady Cwmlech, a plate of toast and marmalade at her elbow, was poring over the flimsy sheets of the popular journal, the Thames-Side Monthly.

  Turning over a page, she uttered an excited squeak. “Here it is at last, Arthur!”

  Sir Arthur looked up from his book, pale eyes bleary behind his spectacles. The patent application for the Illogic Engine had kept him up half the night. Bad as a new baby, Tacy thought, and smiled. He smiled back wanly. “Here is what, my love?”

  “John’s account of the Bootlace Murders. Never tell me you’ve forgotten! Five cobblers strangled with bootlaces and laid out on their benches all neat and tidy, and the police as baffled as sheep at a gate. Last spring it was, just after the wedding.”

  “After the wedding,” Sir Arthur said, “I had more important things to think of than deceased cobblers.” He gave Tacy a grin that brought the blood to her cheeks.

  “Of course, my dear. But John wrote us about it, remember? Their first case after the move to B
aker Street, and so proud he was of how well Sherlock and the police dealt together, after that unfortunate misunderstanding about the purloined letter.”

  “Damned silly name, Sherlock,” Sir Arthur observed.

  “No sillier than Mycroft, when all’s said and done. None of our concern, in any case.” She gave him a wifely look. “Will I read it to you, then, while you wipe the egg off your waistcoat?”

  Sir Arthur stared down at the congealed yolk festooning his chest. “Oh, dear,” he sighed. “Tacy, do you think…?”

  Dipping her napkin in her husband’s tea, Tacy dealt with the waistcoat, then rang for Swindon, who bore off the spoiled napery.

  “I’m sorry, my love.” Sir Arthur said. “I’ve forgotten what you were saying.”

  “The Bootlace Murders.”

  “Ah. The Bootlace Murders. I am all attention. Who did the Great Detective deduce had done ’em?”

  “There’s pity,” Tacy said severely, “to set aside all John’s hard work in unfolding the mystery step-by-step, with all the characters of the shoemaker’s wife and Inspector Gregson and the man with the limp drawn as clear as life. Furthermore,” she went on, “we are to dine with them tonight, before the concert. Churlish, it would be, not to mention his literary debut.”

  Sir Arthur shook his head. “I dare not, dearest. The patent application—”

  “Will be the better for an evening’s holiday. A program of Bach, it is. You like Bach.”

  “I thought Watson preferred Chopin.”

  “He does. But Madame Neruda plays tonight and Sherlock has conceived a keen interest in the violin. He speaks of learning to play.”

  “Heaven help us,” Arthur said. “Very well. Bach, Neruda, and dinner, it shall be. And the Bootlace Murders. I do not wish to disoblige John.”

  Tacy had just reached the second murder when Mistress Angharad Cwmlech swept into the room on the arm of Mr. Mycroft Holmes, visible to all and very pretty indeed in a plaid walking dress, with a saucy hat perched on her dark curls. Her lips were soft against Tacy’s cheek, if a little chilly.

  “Going to a meeting, we are,” she announced, “with Rosebery and Ball, about the Bill of Mechanical Rights. Mycroft”—she cast a proprietary glance at the big man—“thinks it possible it may pass, if we can coax the prime minister into speaking in support.”

  Arthur groaned. “But, my work!”

  Mycroft Holmes fixed him with a keen and pearly eye. “This is your work, Arthur—or should be. The patent office will wait—this bill will not.”

  “Do I not deserve to be a person before the law?” Angharad demanded. “Does not Sherlock?”

  “To be sure,” Tacy answered her. “And so do all thinking mechanicals.”

  Sir Arthur sighed and rose to his feet. “You are right, of course. Tacy, ring for the carriage. There is not a moment to be lost.”

  About the Author

  Delia Sherman writes stories and novels for younger readers and adults. Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, as well as the collection Young Woman in a Garden. She has written several novels for adults: Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, and (with Ellen Kushner) The Fall of the Kings. Novels for younger readers are Changeling, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen and Norton Award-winning The Freedom Maze. The Evil Wizard Smallbone is published by Candlewick Press. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching, editing, knitting, and cooking. Though the road is one of her favorite places to be, home base is a rambling apartment in New York City with spouse Ellen Kushner and far too many pieces of paper. You can sign up for author updates here.

  Copyright © 2016 by Delia Sherman

  Art copyright © 2016 by Victo Ngai

  In Irish lore, when children go under the hill, they don’t come out again.

  Ever.

  When children go under the hill, they stay where they’re put.

  Forever.

  When children go under the hill, parents, though they pray and search, don’t truly think to see them anymore.

  Never.

  In Finnegan’s Field, South Australia (POP. 15,000), the inhabitants had more than enough Irish left in their souls that, despite a century and a half since emigration, they bore these losses with sorrow, yes, but also with more than a little acceptance. A sort of shrug that said, Well, it was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Eire’s soft green sadness with its inherited expectation of grief ran in their veins so they did little more than acquiesce, and they certainly did not seek explanations.

  Until Madrigal Barker came home.

  And when she did, three years after she’d disappeared, there was great rejoicing and wonderment, and not a little resentment from those adults whose offspring remained lost. A good many questions were asked and terrible few answered, and eventually everyone except Madrigal’s mother took her return as a happy miracle.

  * * *

  The child wasn’t the same.

  Anne Barker had loved her daughter as a good mother should, with an irrational bias about her talents and perfections, but she knew Madrigal had not returned as she’d left. Out in the back garden, the girl played with D-fer; the dog acted as though it was only yesterday since his two-legged friend had been throwing the rubber bone for him to chase. As if he’d not aged in her absence, as if no grey and white had grown at the roots of his fur and around his whiskers, as if he didn’t trip on every third step as his hip gave way. If the dog didn’t notice, then why did Anne?

  “Does she look different to you?” she asked her husband. Brian sat in the lounge in front of the huge television he’d insisted on buying to watch the football. It was too big for the cosy room, too big for the house, really. And he wasn’t even paying attention to the game, the violent coloured flashes of meat that tore from one side of the screen to the other, nor had he been for some time. His fondest gaze had been diverted through the glass sliding doors to the girl and canine, capering together with shouts and barks of glee. To the child who’d been born long after their first, long after they thought they were done.

  Brian shook his head. “She’s a little taller. I’d have thought she’d have grown a few more inches, but perhaps she didn’t eat well while she was away.”

  While she was away. It struck Anne that they were discussing their daughter’s absence as if she’d been at a holiday camp or boarding school or staying with a relative. Not acknowledging the fact that she’d been disappeared for thirty-six months. That there’d been no trace of her at all and their hearts had been daily broken with neither signs nor hints to give them hope. No clues, no evidence, as if she’d simply evaporated surely as dew on a flower petal when the sun hits.

  And they’d not talked about it, her homecoming, except for the But where has she been the day Aidan Hanrahan called—on his mobile, no less, an instrument he’d used precisely four times in six years, for he didn’t like wasting money—to say he’d found her wandering his paddocks, not far from Deadman’s Mount. That he was taking her straight to the hospital but wanted them to know they had their marvel.

  Arriving at Emergency, they saw her grubby as an urchin, hair knotty and matted with dirt and leaves and twigs, mud smeared over face and arms and legs as if she’d endured a long crawl through a puddle. But, aesthetics aside, she’d looked the way a nine-year-old girl should. More importantly, with her night-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, faded freckles, pert little nose, and the rosebud pout Anne so loved, she looked the way their nine-year-old girl should; as if she’d not aged a day.

  But Madrigal wasn’t right, after she came home, though Anne couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  “Just her size? That’s all?” she asked, digging but not too hard, afraid he might begin to question her sanity. Afraid of the avalanche such small pebbles might start. If her husband was honest, he knew it too, that their youngest wasn’t as she’d been, but Brian wasn’t honest, at least not in his heart.

  It was why he’d sta
yed married to her long after he’d stopped loving her; Anne knew it and he didn’t. She thought it probably meant he was kind. It was all equal to her: with him there, the bills got paid, with enough left over to put some savings by; he’d kept Jason fed and cared for when she couldn’t bear to get out of bed; and there was a warm body beside her at night when she needed it. After the loss of Madrigal, so much had changed in their lives that these small things were what she clung to when she felt most adrift, on the days when her imagination went hyper and she saw all manner of terrible acts being repeatedly visited on her daughter. Acts that made her long for the child to be dead, killed outright, and not kept alive to suffer the deeds Anne conceived.

  Time had passed; Jason left home for university. She and Brian shuffled the cards of their lives, papered over the great gaping hole. Just when she thought that some scar tissue might grow, that they might move on, Madrigal came back.

  “Can’t you just be happy, Annie?” Brian’s eyes were sad. “Can’t you just accept we were given a tremendous gift, and we should be grateful?”

  Anne nodded slowly, let him think he was right. “Of course, love. I just meant … I don’t know what I meant. I’m getting used to seeing her; that’s all. I can’t stop watching because I think she’ll be taken away again.”

  “No, Annie. She’s here to stay. God gave her back to us.”

  She smiled, though his religious belief riled, and when she peered through the kitchen window once more, every single thing she spotted was something that was off. Something about the way the girl moved; if Anne squinted, she seemed to see a ghostly outline around her daughter. A shadow-shape that was slightly larger than Madrigal and a split second slower, as if just out of synch so that when she swung about, ran, jumped, and skipped, there was the blur like a butterfly’s wing in her wake, but only for the slenderest of moments. The hair seemed too dark, sucking in light but not sending it back, and it didn’t matter how often Anne washed the girl’s locks, they still came up oily. And the little girl’s smile seemed simultaneously too quick and too slow, as if it also carried its own spectre, leaving a short-lived smear as it slid into place.