Clockwork Universe

by Seanen McGuire

  Women have wings now, and a war to fight.

  * * *

  Hyde Park is on fire. There are flames and smoke everywhere. You are still in the air, borne aloft by your powerful bronze-and-workings wings, ready to destroy the enemy.

  But there is no enemy, just smoke and fog and other angels, flocking around you.

  “A retreat!” you hear screamed across the sky. “Is it a retreat?”

  The thought that it might be over chokes you up, but you know better than to cling to that sort of hope.

  It has been two Christmases now, and the only shock is that London is still here, that there is anything of London left. You have seen the Alexandria Arcade from the air, the most beautiful place you knew, and it is twisted, damaged, parts of it blown apart. The wrought iron railings have burst free like so many spider’s legs, unraveling across the wide pavement of the King’s Road.

  You are eighteen years old, and killing aliens is what you do.

  As the clouds part, revealing a phalanx of ships in attack formation, you soar towards them, musket at the ready, yelling like a fishwife for every angel in the sky to join you.

  This is it. This time, you will not make it out alive.

  And yet …

  Your wings are strong, and your armor is tough. As you fall into the haze of smoke that is the city below, you can be satisfied that you take half a dozen of the bastards with you.

  * * *

  Christopher Robin dreams of angels: beautiful creatures in pantaloons and bronze armor. The strength and power of their wings make them more than a match for the Fleet.

  He (he is the closest approximation, and yet remains a poor translation) did not expect to find angels here in this wasteland planet of primitive industry. Something has gone terribly wrong, somewhere along the way.

  Christopher Robin misses his ship, much as he might miss an arm or a leg now that he has got used to this many-limbed body that was chosen to match the natives of this world. She (in the absence of pronouns which mean other and the same simultaneously) was destroyed in the air, and it was only a last minute ejection bubble that allowed Christopher to survive the fall.

  He should be fine with his suit for protection, until help arrives to recall him safely to the Fleet. His suit is a thin filmy layer of artificial fabric with the computing power of a city and the strategic ability of a War Cabinet. It has, however, stopped talking to him, which is something of a problem. He is not even certain if his call for help has been heard.

  It has been three days, which suggests that he is on his own.

  Sheltering in the ruins of a city structure, he has had time to contemplate everything that has happened since his Fleet first began their occupation of Earth. He has had time even to sleep, though this is a disturbing experience because of the dreams. He has shot down thirteen of the glorious bronze-winged angels since his shift began, four months of this world’s calendar ago. It is a good record, something of which he can be proud when he returns to his hive.

  Why, then, does he feel so wretched about it? Why does he dream of these shining men and women with their beautiful, primitive wings, in those moments before the lasers from his ship tore them apart?

  Why does he dream at all? It is a new symptom, one that Christopher Robin might never have known about before this planet wormed its way inside his head.

  He has built himself a nest in part of a bomb-blasted shopping complex, tearing up the remains of the various long and impractical dress tunics he found here, in order to be snug and warm.

  The air of this city is distressingly thick with smoke, coal dust, and steam, which makes it painful to breathe. Christopher Robin misses his hive, the warm cleanness of his lungs and the close presence of his husbands.

  He is hungry, but has not yet been able to identify which of the produce items in each of the surviving pods of this structure are food as opposed to artifacts, ornaments, clothing, and so on. It is all far too difficult, without his suit to translate the world to him. He is hungry, and too frightened to eat in case he poisons himself and dies.

  He sleeps again, and wakes to find a creature from his dreams standing over him.

  The angel, armored in blackened bronze and leather, smelling of battle, stands over him with a long weapon pointed at his torso. She is magnificent, her wings spread out to frame her warrior’s shape. “My name is Lieutenant Peggy Danvers,” she says in a steady voice. “And you, sir, are a prisoner of war.”

  * * *

  Peg has lost so much. So many friends, so many potential futures. Daisy was shot down earlier tonight, and Peg could not find her body. She might have made it, but who can say? No word from Madge.

  Peg is tired. Tired and worn out, and even with all the losses she has endured, nothing has made her angrier than the destruction of the Alexandria Arcade. This one, perfect place loomed so large in her childhood. The aliens have taken everything good from her now, everything that mattered.

  She has one of them now, in her power. She wonders how badly she is going to misuse that power.

  The alien is small and slight. He looks like a paler, bluer version of a twelve year old boy. They look human, but not quite, not enough to feel real. There’s a disconnect to them, an otherness she cannot quite explain. His uniform is a pathetically thin layer of cloth. Do his generals not even allow them to be armored against the enemy?

  He is humble and quiet, which is what Peg wants as she collects her thoughts. They walk along the remains of the covered walkway in silence, heading for the food hall. There may be some supplies in the kitchens, something to stave off the hunger that gnaws at her stomach. She can’t think when she is so very, very hungry.

  “What is your name?” she asks him as they pause to step over rubble and climb under some fallen beams. She never lowers her musket, not for a second.

  “Christopher Robin,” says the alien.

  Peg hesitates at that. “Christopher?” Such a normal-sounding name.

  “It’s from a book of your culture that hasn’t been written yet. They issued us new names to aid communication between our species.”

  “To aid communication?” Peg says, incredulous. “When have you tried to talk to us? When have you done anything but raid and shoot and kill?”

  Christopher Robin gives a small, plaintive shrug. He looks wretchedly vulnerable. It upsets her that she might have to shoot something that looks like a child.

  “What is your real name?” she demands.

  Christopher Robin gives a series of chitters and numbers which string together into nothing that will ever make sense.

  “Stop,” she says, interrupting him. “I don’t care. Stop making that noise.”

  They make their way towards the food hall in silence.

  * * *

  There is glass everywhere. The food hall once had a magnificent domed glass ceiling, when Peg was Little Miss Margaret Alice Teasdale, and came here with her aunts for tea. She remembers looking up, marveling at how the dome looked like a clear summer sky on one side, and a star-filled night sky on the other. Day and night, both at once. The ceiling of the Alexandra Arcade food hall won architectural awards for its magnificence.

  Now it is dust and shards on the floor, and a few spiky corners of glass still clinging up there to the metal framework. It makes Peg want to cry, but she has not drunk any water in eight hours and there are no tears in her body. Rubble and sawdust, that’s all you’re made of now, Peggy girl.

  She is hurt. She hasn’t admitted to herself yet how badly hurt she is inside. There may be bleeding, but she hasn’t taken off her armor to check.

  The armor is all that’s holding her together at this point, and besides, she’s not altogether sure she would be capable of removing it.

  “Come on,” she says abruptly. This alien creature has torn her world apart. The least he can do is help her open a few doors.

  It’s hard to believe that there will be anything left. The destruction of the Alexandria was days ago, maybe wee
ks. Peg has already seen evidence of looting back in the main arcade. Armor and silks, weapons and chemises—all stolen. She likes to think that the gowns have gone to women who might appreciate them, but they have probably been torn into strips for bandages, or chewed into fuel for the making of more armor, more wings.

  This looks promising, though. There are marks all over the kitchen door as if someone has taken both a mallet and a hacksaw to it, and yet the lock holds fast. The contents might yet be secure, and yet Peg has no mallet or hacksaw, and how is she to do anything but place her hands plaintively over the rough, damaged surface, and wish?

  The alien comes up beside her, his head barely reaching her shoulder. He places his palms on the door as well.

  “It won’t work,” says Peggy, holding back the tears. So tired, so hungry. “The lock’s too good. It kept everyone out.” She has her musket, but little ammunition left, and a shot would bring snoopers and looters. She does not have the strength to fight a mob for food.

  Christopher Robin reaches into the door, his fingers passing through the substance like an aunt running a piece of fine dress silk over her critical hands. The lock on the door goes, “click.”

  And just like that, Peggy is in Paradise. Perhaps Paradise should not smell quite so much like curdled cream, but there is real unspoiled food here too, a whole ham in the larder, several smoked fish, faded fruit, hardened white bread. She finds crumbly cakes that have escaped a patina of mold, and eats them, one after the other, until her stomach rebels.

  Tea. The kitchen is rich in dried tea, she could drink cup after cup if she could only boil water. When her hands stop shaking, she might be able to find a way to light the stove.

  Giddy with it all, she leans against the wall and watches the alien’s own methodical search. He finds a cupboard of boxed biscuits, and jar after jar of fine pickles, jam and oily fish. So many provisions.

  He does not eat, though, and she wonders why he did not break into this treasure trove long before she got here. Did he not know it was here? Does he not eat food?

  Finally, the alien turns and passes her a beautiful, satin-lined box. Inside, she finds an assortment of Harrods chocolates, hand-rolled and perfect, and it is impossible now to hold back the tears.

  Daisy and Madge would have squealed and squabbled over the chocolates, but she can barely stand to put one in her mouth. After everything else today, it is too much.

  * * *

  Christopher Robin climbs the iron frame that he can see once held a domed ceiling of colored glass over this hall. He swings easily across the melted, damaged fronds of metal, scrambling up high so that he can see the battle.

  He has cowered enough.

  The damp fog of the city is closing in, but he has a good view of the Fleet, streaking in their glowing saucers across the gray and darkening sky.

  Perched up here, so close and yet so far away from his unit, he feels very alone. So many supplies behind the door below, and yet with his suit malfunctioning, he still cannot tell what would be safe for him to eat. It is no signifier that some of the food was evidently right and proper for the angel Lieutenantpeggydanvers, as what is good for her might be poison for his biology.

  Better to eat nothing at all.

  There are so few angels left in the sky. Is this the end, then? Is the battle phase nearly over? Can the occupation truly begin, once the last of the resistance is stamped out?

  Christopher Robin does not enjoy fog and he wonders not for the first time why the Fleet were ordered here, to invade this particular city, when he is certain there are warmer zones on this world.

  He hears a whir of steam-powered wings, and the angel Lieutenantpeggydanvers steps up through the air beneath him, holding a vessel in each hand. She rises above Christopher Robin and then lowers herself gracefully to perch upon the twisted metal framework, as he is doing. She hands him one of the vessels, which is warm to the touch and full of a swirling fog all of its own.

  “This must be the last battle,” she says. “Your fleet has all but won.”

  He does not, will not, apologize. Not with this cup in his hands that might be a peace offering and could very well destroy him from the inside out. It smells enticing and strange, and his stomachs twist for craving it.

  The angel lets out a long sigh, as if she has been holding it in for months or years. “I don’t care any more,” she says, and drinks a long draught from her warm cup before closing her eyes. It is not a safe place to sleep, and yet her wings and armor seem fused to the metal of the ruined dome. She does not fall.

  As the evening draws dark, a new sound of steam and bronze gears fills the air, a cranking and a wheezing. Christopher Robin watches, quite amazed, as a brand new fleet of humans rises into the sky from somewhere near the building he has identified on maps as Buckingham Palace.

  Angel ships, brand new, made of the same stuff as angels and their armor, all bronze and leather and steam. They make a slow swooping sound as they take to the sky against the saucers, wings flapping, cannons at the ready.

  A great hissing boom fills the air, and then another. Cannons roar, and the twisted railings shudder beneath Christopher Robin. One by one, as he watches, the perfect silver saucers of his Fleet are blown to pieces in clouds of steam and rubble.

  One, and another, and another, and then the final twelve, and then only six, and then every single one until nothing remains of the occupation force but a sparkling, acrid smoke even now disappearing into the London fog.

  Even if he could fix his suit, there is no one to call for help now. His hive is too far away. They will assume that he has been blasted apart like the others.

  This has happened before, on other worlds. The destruction of one Fleet is a sign that the Hives must look elsewhere for conquest. There will not be another sent here. No rescue, then. No hope of return. Nothing left.

  Christopher Robin drinks the tea. What has he left to lose? It does not poison him, though it is less of a comfort than he imagined it would be, now that it has grown cold. Still, it is good. It is something.

  When he reaches over to brush the angel awake, she is cold too.

  “I don’t know what to do now,” he whispers to her. She has no answer for him.

  The steam-and-bronze ships of the angels retreat in ungainly victory, leaving no trace of the invaders in the air behind them. Finally, the sky is empty. Christopher Robin keeps watching long after there is nothing more to see.

  Airship Down: A Sound and Fury Adventure

  Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin

  “Three orbs at three o’clock, over the Homestead Works.” Mitch Storm’s voice carried over the hum of the dirigible’s engines.

  “I see them.” Jacob Drangosavich leaned over to speak to the airship pilot, who veered their craft like a black ghost over the Monongahela River. “Get in close,” he said to the pilot. “I want to get as close to the sons of bitches as we can.”

  “They match the description of what they sent us out to find,” Mitch replied. “Too far away to see detail. Is the camera working?”

  Jacob checked over the camera controls. The Department had outfitted the airship with the best new, secret technology the folks in Rochester could come up with, small cameras that ran on a remote switch, something the agents could operate from the bridge of their airship. “They’re set, if they work,” he sighed.

  “And there go the lights,” Mitch said, pointing. As if on cue, the Edison lights that illuminated Carnegie Steel’s flagship factory dimmed to brown, flickering out several times before struggling back to their original glow.

  “Same as the other times,” Jacob said, scribbling in his journal with a Waterman safety pen and still managing to get ink on his fingers.

  Mitch sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know why you bother,” he said, resignation coloring his voice. “No one will be able to read that chicken scratch.”

  “I will,” Jacob replied. “You think it’s bad in English; even my mother can’t read my Cr
oatian.”

  “Sir,” the pilot, Captain Nowak said. “The lights are moving.”

  Mitch and Jacob dropped their banter and scrambled back to the observation window. “Keep them in view,” Mitch ordered. “Don’t lose them.” Dark-haired and dark-eyed with a five o’clock shadow that showed up at three, Mitch Storm looked like what an adventure-book illustrator would come up with for an army captain and sharpshooter. Mitch was a few inches shorter than Jacob, but what he lacked in height he made up for in attitude. He had a pugilist’s build, all-muscle, and a gleam in his eyes that promised mischief.

  “I’m on it,” Nowak replied. He was a good ten years older than either Storm or Drangosavich, with a little gray starting to show in his brown hair around the temples. To Jacob’s eye, Nowak looked more like he belonged at the prow of one of the river barges than high in an airship. He had the rumpled, lived-in look of a man who has spent his life in one cramped ship or another, either on the Oder River in his native Poland, or navigating the traffic on one of New Pittsburgh’s famed three rivers. Instead, a stint in the Navy had landed him in the nascent airship corps, and the Department had snapped him up for their own uses.

  The airship’s engines whined as Nowak increased the power, steering their ship above the black ribbon that was the mighty Monongahela River, or as New Pittsburgh locals liked to call it, the Mon. Behind them, the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers joined to become the powerful Ohio, which in turn found its way into the Mississippi. Beneath them, the burn-off flares from the Jones and Laughlin steel mill on the south banks of the river reflected off thick clouds of coal smoke from factories that churned out coke and steel around the clock.

  “What’d that reporter say it looked like?” Mitch asked. “Hell with the lid off? He got that right.”