The air smelled like lightning and burnt pig.
The spinning mechanism slowed. The pale blue fire snapped off. Jean noticed a shriveled blob at one end of the copper coil. A workman with a macabre sense of humor appeared to have painted a caricature on it. Bright white teeth inside a skinless jaw. Blackened, eyeless sockets.
He retched. Champagne and bile puddled his shoes.
“It’s human!” he gasped.
“Was human.” The anger in Jenny’s eyes was almost violent enough to spark her explosion.
He wiped his hand across his mouth. “But why?”
“To power Leopoldville. Did you really think it was all natural gas?” She looked back at the charred, shriveled corpse being removed from its copper cocoon.
The Jovian opened the carpetbag. From it he began removing and screwing together several pieces of shiny pipe. Though his mitten hands moved clumsily, he assembled his apparatus expertly.
Jenny touched the Jovian’s translucent arm. “Wait for the next one,” she told him. “I want Jean to see how it’s done. So he knows.”
The Jovian nodded, and continued his work.
“They’ll be changing armatures soon,” she said to Jean.
“Armatures?”
Disgust dripped from Jenny’s voice. “That’s what Dr. Kurtz calls these poor people once he’s connected them to the works. That blue light is an aetheric field. By spinning a human artificially stimulated with khat and ibigo within that field, aetheric current of the same sort the Jovians use to power their ships across space is generated. That poor man down there, and two more in rooms like this one, generate enough aetheric energy to power the entire city. And of course the fans. Now do you understand why I have to do this?”
He understood. And he wished with all his heart that Jenny had made her discovery after the war with the Jovians was won.
The mechanics left the theater with their blackened burden. An armed overseer entered, leading a shackled woman. A white-jacketed scientist followed.
Jean recognized the man’s pince-nez and trim goatee. “Why, that’s Dr. Kurtz! He cured my mother’s last bout of malaria.”
“Yes,” Jenny sneered. “Africa’s foremost man of medicine.”
Jean shuddered, remembering how he had paid the man in South African gold sovereigns, and shaken his hand as well.
The new victim could have been any of the women he had seen in the hall. She did not struggle as the overseer led her to a small bench in the center of the room. But when Dr. Kurtz approached with an enormous syringe, she screamed. The overseer cuffed her; Jean gripped the railing tightly to keep from vaulting over the wall to her rescue. Horrible though it was, one woman’s pain was more than offset by the need to stop Jenny and the Jovian.
Dr. Kurtz plunged the hypodermic into the woman’s neck. Her body went stiff. Her eyes rolled until only the whites showed. Removing her chains, the overseer slid her feet first into the coil.
The blue fire reappeared as the mechanism began to spin. The woman screamed. Sheets of tiny lightning leapt from flame to coil. The woman’s face turned red, then yellow, and finally white before disappearing in a blur of speed.
Jean’s skin crawled. For a moment, she had looked just like his mother.
“Now,” Jenny told the Jovian.
Assembled, the Jovian’s weapon looked like an ancient fowling piece crossed with a sextant. As he raised it to his shoulder, the sextant began to rotate. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. A spot of pale blue fire appeared in the spinning center.
With a single kick, Jean knocked the weapon from the Jovian’s hands, and reached for Jenny’s revolver. Rather than grab it from her, he aimed it toward the Jovian while it was still in her hand. The revolver fired, but the shot missed, and then the three of them were wrestling for control.
Jean grabbed for the alien’s weapon. A powerful hand closed around his ankle, and pulled him back. Twisting around, he kicked his free foot at the Jovian’s chin. The Jovian’s head jerked agreeably, and his grip on Jean’s ankle loosened enough for Jean to slip free.
Jenny raised her revolver. Jean danced back behind the Jovian. Jenny shouted for the Jovian to move aside. The Jovian picked up his own revolver from the floor. Jean grabbed its spongy arms and pulled. Employing the baritsu techniques he had learned in London before the war, he rolled backward, caught the Jovian in the stomach with his feet, and kicked him over the low wall. But the Jovian grabbed Jean’s arms as he flew over Jean’s head, and the two of them plunged to the operating theater floor.
The Jovian landed first. His revolver skittered away. His body gave slightly as Jean landed on top of him, like a tightly packed pillow, enough so that Jean did not have the wind knocked out of him. The Jovian, of course, contained no wind. Or bones. And though he got up slowly, it was no slower than usual.
Unfortunately, he was between Jean and the revolver.
“You!” Jean shouted at the armed overseer, who was gaping in the middle of the floor. He pointed at the Jovian. “Shoot him! He wants to destroy the works!”
The guard stared dumbly. Dr. Kurtz and the rest of the scientists reacted no better. Judging the armed overseer to be his most immediate danger, the Jovian picked up his revolver with cool aplomb, and shot the man through the head.
The guard’s rifle clattered to the floor. Jean rushed the Jovian once more. His kick caught the Jovian in mid-turn, but this time the Jovian was ready for him, and knocked him away with a swipe of his arm. Jean landed on the floor with a loud crunch. His grandfather’s watch fell out of his pocket, smashed to pieces. Shards of glass and a hook of jagged spring gleamed.
The Jovian stepped forward, and aimed his revolver at point-blank range. Jean twisted away desperately.
The Jovian’s foot came down heavily on the broken watch. With a loud whoosh, the mansuit rocketed crookedly into the air. The Jovian’s insides foamed from the pierced foot. Smashing into the aetheric fire, the mansuit disintegreated. Jean covered his face against the toxic explosion, and collapsed to the floor.
“Are you all right?”
Jean looked up. Jenny was leaning over the wall, her voice oddly gentle.
“Potentially,” he answered. His hands stung horribly.
“If you can walk, you’d better get out of there.”
“I am in no hurry.”
“Suit yourself. I’m going to fire the Jovian weapon. I don’t know what effect it will have on you if you’re too close.”
“What?” He looked at her dazedly. The Jovian was aspirated. Why would she use the weapon now?
“The Jovians told me how it works. It will send an overload through the entire clockwork, destroying it utterly. I don’t know if you’ll even be safe up here with me, but it has to be safer than where you are now.”
Jean looked at the mechanism humming in the center of the room. Wisps of smoke plumed above the woman’s horribly spinning face. The smell of ozone and searing flesh had returned. What had been done to this poor woman—and who knew how many others?—was horrible. As vile as anything any human had ever done. But what would happen to humanity if the works were destroyed?
“You cannot,” he said weakly.
“Excuse me?” Jenny’s eyebrows rose.
He found the last of his strength. “I said you cannot. Not now. We have seen it. We know the evil that is being done here. Those responsible will be brought to justice. But you cannot do this now. The Jovian fleet is probably hovering over Leopoldville at this very moment, waiting for the fans to stop. It will be a massacre every bit as bad as what we have committed against the Africans.”
“No, it won’t.” Jenny’s gentle mood vanished. Her eyes glittered, hard as steam and iron. “This massacre will be deserved.”
She shouldered the alien weapon.
“You don’t have to do this,” he pleaded. “The Jovians will take over the entire world.”
“Better them than us, if this is the best we can do with it.”
Layin
g her cheek on the barrel, Jenny aimed and fired. A spark of jagged lightning, blue and gold and red, streaked across the room.
The world exploded.
Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare
Seanan McGuire
1.
“I sometimes think it would have been better had my first encounter with humanity been a man, and not a woman of low station with no family to mourn her. Better for who, I cannot say.”
—from Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare, first printing.
* * *
It is customary to begin one’s memoirs at birth. As I was not “born” in the gross mammalian sense, I shall begin instead at a more logical point in time. To wit:
I was borne to Earth on cosmic winds, falling through chance and the grace of the heavens to root in the soil of Notting Hill. There I grew rapidly to adult stature, devoured a lady’s maid who had the misfortune to come too close to my tendrils, and assumed her form. It was a discourteous way to introduce myself to the human species, but I must beg forgiveness: my kind are not precisely well-mannered when we first bud, and must be taught proper behavior before we can be trusted in polite society.
As servants are rarely found with skin the color of young watercress and hair the color of mature nettles, I presented quite a curiosity when I staggered through the doors of the house which previously employed the now-devoured lady’s maid. I was still in the process of absorbing her memories, and had discovered the directions to her place of employment without acquiring the context that would have allowed me to understand that returning there might be bad for my chances of continued survival. Indeed, I was not the only seed to fall to Earth that day. I was simply the only one fortunate enough to eat a lady’s maid whose mistress was sister to a man of science—Sir Arthur Blackwood, botanist in the service of Her Majesty, the Queen of England.
Where most men would have looked upon my vibrantly green face and seen a monster, Sir Blackwood saw a miracle in the making: something entirely new to present to Queen Alice, who was so very fond of novelty. Alice had been raised a princess, with no hope of the throne, only to find herself elevated and her engagement to the Grand Duke of Hesse cancelled after an ill-timed smallpox outbreak left her the heir to the British Empire. God save the Queen.
I was presented to Queen Alice on my third day of adult growth, after my mind had finished processing the linguistic and behavioral data harvested from the unfortunate lady’s maid. I was able to curtsey and offer a polite greeting to Her Majesty.
She was charmed, of course. Who wouldn’t be? I was a very well-mannered sapling, and have only grown into my graces as I bloomed and cultivated my better nature. Jill Lane—the lady’s maid I have spoken of—was a great help. She had in her an endless eagerness to please, and I often returned to her deep well of knowledge and propriety as I navigated the echelons of British society. But ah, I am getting ahead of myself.
How vividly I recall that first day in the Queen’s presence, me still unsteady on the bifurcated stems of my legs, Jill’s voice still reedy and uncertain in my mind. Queen Alice looked me up and down and then turned her attention to Sir Blackwood.
“Does your green girl have a name?” she asked.
“She came before us with nothing but her pretty face,” he said. “I have taken the liberty of calling her ‘Antheia,’ after the goddess of flowers and floral garlands.”
The Queen had smiled. That was all it took to seal my fate within the Empire—for you see, after that, I was a favorite of the Queen, and a novelty unlike any other. That made me the toast of every great house in Britain, opening endless doors, and the manners I borrowed from dear Jill opened still more, until some spoke, half-jesting, of my successful invasion of the nation. They called me their flowering princess, representative of some savage fairy race that dwelt beneath the hills of Ireland, and oh, how they laughed at the idea that I could represent their downfall.
How they laughed.
2.
“It is important that we record the last days of the Planet Earth in their own languages, for these languages contain the concepts with which the meat-based life forms of that world were most familiar. They could no more express the delight of fresh sun falling upon their roots than an unbonded pod could explain the intricacies of a lady’s undergarments. By preserving the manners and culture of the planet in this way, we can better understand them and, should we ever encounter another such species, we can bring about an even swifter and more efficient conquest.”
—from Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare, first printing.
* * *
It was a Thursday afternoon when the advance scouts broke through the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, announcing their arrival with the usual chromatic displays in the thermosphere. The lights drew attention across the globe, stargazers and young romantics alike clustering in the fields as they strained to watch these strange and heretofore undocumented rainbows of the night. I was less interested in the phenomenon, naturally; I have always done better during the daylight hours, and the things I do in open fields are better not shared with those of delicate mammalian sensibilities. I was seated in the parlor at home, working on my needlepoint and snacking from a tray of cunning little sandwiches, when Sir Blackwood burst into the room, his hair mussed and his jacket askew.
“Antheia!” he cried. “Why are you here, and not out on the veranda with the guests? They’re asking about you.”
“I have no interest in watching the excited collision of atoms,” I said, tugging another loop of thread carefully through the muslin. A fine cabbage rose was taking form under my fingers—some of my best work, if I did say so myself. “The colors will be there with or without me to watch them, and besides, it was time for my tea. You do prefer that I continue to take my meals in private, do you not?”
Arthur blanched. It had taken the household some time to adjust to my predilection for eating only raw animal flesh and drinking only fresh blood. Sir Arthur’s sister, Julia, had adjusted rather faster than he had—she’d already known I was a beast, as evidenced by the fact that I had eaten her lady’s maid. Dear, sweet Arthur had devoted his life to the study of plants, and even the fact that I was not the first flesh-eater he had encountered had not prepared him for the notion that one day he might meet a flower who could smile and curtsey and request a hot bowl of pig’s blood for her supper.
“Yes, but the lights—”
“Are better left to those who can appreciate them.” I reached for a sandwich. The delightful smell of raw, fresh-sliced beef addressed my nose. “Really, I thought your sister had banned you from her stargazing party. Something about the noises coming from the basement?”
“I don’t understand why she gets so upset,” he said, dropping into the seat on the other side of my sewing table with a loud thump. He automatically reached for my plate of sandwiches, and looked offended when I smacked his hand with my needlepoint frame. Rubbing his fingers, he continued, “My steam-powered sun will make us richer than she can imagine.”
“You see, that is her trouble: she suffers from a shortage of imagination, and as such, cannot see where a loud, clanking clockwork machine could possibly improve her life.” I took a dainty nibble from my sandwich. “Remember, she forbade poor Jill to use any modern machinery in maintaining the house.”
Arthur blanched again. He enjoyed being reminded that I’d eaten Jill even less than he enjoyed being reminded of the rest of my diet. “Julia is a traditional soul, that’s all,” he mumbled.
“We live in an age of wonders,” I said. “The fact that she cannot embrace them is a shame. The fact that she can stand on her veranda marveling over a scientific curiosity while forbidding the pursuit of more concrete sciences is a sham. I will never understand how you can tolerate her willful interference with your business, Arthur.”
“She’ll wed eventually. One of her hulking suitors will make an honest woman of her, and she’ll have no more grounds to interf
ere.” Arthur looked wistfully at my sandwiches, but didn’t stretch out his hand again. “What do you think of these lights?”
“Natural atmospheric distortion, of no more interest than any of the other things one sees in the sky.” I nibbled my sandwich, swallowed, and added, “Excepting, of course, Her Majesty’s airship, which is a wonder and a blessing and is in no way an eyesore that blocks the sunlight from reaching my roses.”
Arthur laughed. “I swear your tongue gets sharper every year, Antheia.”
“What good is a rose that has no thorns?” I smiled, pleased when his cheeks reddened in reply. Blood-based circulatory systems are such traitorous things, betraying the emotions of their owners even as they struggle to keep them alive. “I presume you have some motive for asking these questions, apart from the pleasure of my company?”
“I was speaking with Lord Harrington of the Royal Astronomical Society about the lights,” said Arthur, carefully. “I thought he might have something interesting to offer on the topic, and in fact, he did. He said similar lights—similar in color and design, although less grandiose in scope—were seen in various locations around the world some six years ago.”
“Is that so?” I asked politely, before taking another nibble of my sandwich. The bread, made specially from bone meal and ground fish scales, was deliciously nourishing. I kept my eyes on Arthur, waiting for him to finish his explanation with the inevitable and begin the next phrase in our little dance.
I had been waiting for so long, and as ever, Arthur did not disappoint. “The lights were last seen on the night before you appeared,” he said. “Antheia, I have always assumed, in some vague way, that you were one of the fairy-folk of legend, escaped from beneath the hill and come to grace us with your presence. Fairy-folk have sometimes been said to be green of skin, you see. But now I come to wonder … did you come from beneath the Earth? Did you come from the Earth at all?”
Clockwork Universe Page 27
