Clockwork Universe

by Seanen McGuire

  I smiled dazzlingly, showing him my teeth in parody of the primate grimace that he and his sister wore so often, and to such good effect. Jill had taught me my manners properly, you see: no deportment coach could have been better than my own internal lady’s maid. “I never claimed a terrestrial origin, you know. I simply felt that such matters were better left behind us than discussed in polite company.”

  “Antheia …” Arthur frowned, his brows furrowing together as he looked at me with such gravity as to make my breath catch in my chest. “These lights. Are they more of your people?”

  “Oh, no,” I said blithely. He began to relax. “If this were merely more of my people, you would need only to lock up your lady’s maids and gentleman’s companions long enough to let them take their human forms from the less desirable levels of society—or at least from the parts of society where the people would be less dearly missed. This is the invasion.”

  His mouth fell open. He stared at me, shocked into silence, as I set my sandwich aside, picked up my teacup, and took a dainty sip of its bloody contents. He continued to stare. I put the cup down, folded my hands in my lap, and offered him a tight-lipped smile.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you knew.”

  3.

  “As with so many worlds, Earth’s dominant life forms were mammalian: hot-blooded, quick to anger and to passion, and unwilling to pace their lives to the rhythm of the world around them. This allowed for some incredible leaps forward of technology and science, and we should work to retain these streaks of stubborn inventiveness and, dare I say, emotional engagement, within our own cultivars. They may serve useful, after all, even if they did not serve the human race with particular efficacy.”

  —from Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare, first printing.

  * * *

  Julia and her friends had watched disdainfully as Arthur bundled me out of the house and into the waiting steam-powered carriage below, as if the method of our conveyance somehow rendered us low-class and common. I spared a smile and a waggle of my fingers for Julia, who glared and turned her face away. Then I was in the carriage next to Arthur, and we were being carried into the night, with the rainbow blaze of ships piercing the atmosphere dancing in the sky above us.

  “I have already sent a telegram to Lord Harrington, asking him to be prepared for us,” said Arthur, watching out the window as if he expected my brethren to be stalking the streets already. “He’ll want to know everything you can tell him about this ‘invasion.’ No detail is too small. We’re all going to need to do our part to beat these blighters back!”

  “Well, what about the ray guns atop the palace and the Royal Observatory?” I asked. “Won’t they automatically take aim at anything larger than Her Majesty’s airship that enters England’s skies?”

  “Yes, and we can take comfort in that, but—and please don’t take this as a criticism of your fair self, my dear, you have never been anything but a blessing to my house—they didn’t shoot you down, and that leads me to worry about the strength of our aerial defense net.” Arthur looked at me solemnly. “Are you positive that this is an invasion? Couldn’t it be a simple atmospheric disturbance?”

  “I am not positive, as I have been on this planet and in this form for six years, and that does rather limit one’s communications with one’s fellows,” I said. “That aside, six years is roughly the time needed to travel here from the nearest habitable star, if said travel is undertaken in faster than light seed-ships.”

  Arthur’s mouth fell open. “F-faster than light? But that’s beyond the reaches of modern science. Why, even Professor O’Malley’s moon-ship only traveled at a rate of seventeen thousand miles an hour. Light is—”

  “Light is a far faster beast,” I said agreeably. “I am sorry. I thought you knew.”

  It was a bald-faced lie, and not the first I had told him during our acquaintanceship. Lying is wrong, miss, said Jill’s small, stern voice.

  Ah, but the lies are coming to an end, and sometimes things which are wrong are also comforting, I told her. Now hush, be still. I have a scientist to attend to.

  “Faster than light travel would be a discovery great enough to put the British Empire ahead of the rest of the world forever,” said Arthur. “You must discuss this with Lord Harrington.”

  “I will, if you bid me, but I am no engineer.” I refolded my hands in my lap. “I’ve never seen the drives, nor do I understand the physics behind them.”

  Arthur frowned like he was seeing me for the first time. “So you remember yourself before you were—” He waved a hand, indicating my form in a most ungentlemanly manner. “This?”

  “You mean, do I remember my existence before I consumed Julia’s lady’s maid?” I asked, baldly. If he was going to forsake manners for expediency, then I saw no reason not to do the same. “Yes, and no. My seed was coaxed from a cutting of a specific cultivated line. I have never been anything but what I am: I was a seed, and then I was a sprout, and then I was the Lady Antheia, who has very much enjoyed your hospitality over these past six years. The line from which I was grown, however, is a strain of diplomats and explorers. All the seeds that came to this world with me were of that same strain.” Had any of them managed to sprout, I would have had siblings all across the globe—but alas, more and more, I had come to believe that I alone had found welcoming soil.

  “A … diplomat?” Arthur blinked at me as our carriage rattled to a stop, presumably in front of our destination. “But the first thing you did was eat my sister’s maid.”

  “I am aware,” I said primly, gathering my skirts as I waited for the doors to slide open on their well-oiled tracks. “But I was sorry afterward, which is the very definition of diplomacy.”

  Arthur didn’t have an answer to that.

  4.

  “Being only a cultivar of our greatest diplomat, the honorable and merciful Rooted in Many Soils, I cannot possibly know what it is to have conquered more than one world. I have offered my genetic material back to the trunk which grew me, and my experiences will be preserved for future generations, as is only right and just. Still, I know enough of what my parent and original experienced during their own explorations to know that the conquest of Earth was entirely unique, and extremely common, all at the same time. But then, this is always the way when we encounter a sapient race: they are all different, and they are all sadly, tragically the same. Meat is not capable of much variance.”

  —from Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare, first printing.

  * * *

  Lord Harrington was a walking mountain of a man, tall and broad-chested, with a ruddy complexion that spoke of much blood pumping very close to the surface. He always made me hungry in a faintly embarrassing way; it’s rude to stare at a man and think of how much his blood would do to nourish your vines.

  “Arthur,” he greeted, in his booming voice, before turning his attention on me. “And the Lady Antheia, who appears to be the woman of the hour, if what Arthur tells me is true. Do you know what’s causing the lights in the sky?”

  He knew the answer: I could hear it in his tone. I politely inclined my head, not quite looking at him, and asked, “How long ago did your telescope begin picking out the ships in the auroras?”

  “Perhaps half an hour; no more,” he said. “I never trusted you.”

  “I know.” I raised my head. “I did not press the issue. It seemed more sporting to allow you your little rebellion, rather than charming it out of you. Sportsmanship is not a uniquely human trait, you know. Very little is unique about any world, although they all assume themselves to be.”

  Lord Harrington’s lips peeled back from his teeth as he drew the gun from his belt and pointed it at the spot where my heart would have been, had I possessed such an inconvenient thing. “Lady Antheia, by my authority as a Peer of the Crown, I place you under arrest for treason to the British Empire.”

  “Oh, lovely.” I clapped my hands. “That is fantastic news, be
cause you see, as the diplomatic ambassador of the … .well, there isn’t a term in English that’s quite right for what we are, because we’ve never encountered English before, and thus far I’m the only one who speaks it, so let us say, the Vegetable Empire? As the diplomatic ambassador of the Vegetable Empire, I refuse to be arrested, but I’m happy to be taken before your Queen, as it seems the invasion is about to properly begin.”

  As if on a timer, the guns atop the observatory fired, their steam-fueled chambers expelling rays of hot light that seared across the sky. Several seed ships would be destroyed in this barrage; it was natural. They didn’t yet know to make themselves smaller, and would learn only through those losses. Those which survived the initial wave of gunfire would split into multiple vessels, and continue their implacable descent. I couldn’t mourn for the dead of this wave. They would only be seeds, after all, and of no more consequence than a promise, always intended to be broken.

  The guns fired again. And so, in the din, did Lord Harrington. His aim was true: the ray gun hit me squarely in the chest, burning a hole in both my favorite bodice and the bright green skin below, until it was possible to look through me to the room beyond. Arthur cried out. I looked down, considering the wreckage of what had been my sternum.

  “Oh, I do wish you hadn’t done that,” I sighed, my voice rendered weak and reedy by the damage to my lungs.

  And then I lunged.

  Lord Harrington had always treated me as a strange sort of pet, a harmless trinket to be either studied or ignored, depending on his mood. To learn that he had mistrusted my intentions all that time was almost a relief, as it meant that he was not quite as stupid as I had assumed. Still, like most men of science, he believed only in the evidence of his eyes, and what his eyes saw when he looked at me was a woman. Green of skin and hair, yes, but apart from that? In every other regard? I was the very flower of English womanhood, with my curves trained to the corset’s embrace and my skirts hanging full and demure down past my ankles. Why, had it not been for my face, and for the narrow band of skin between top of glove and bottom of sleeve, he could easily have forgotten my vegetable origins, as so many others had tried to do. Poor man. What he did not consider was that skirts can conceal more than legs.

  He jerked backward as my hands found his throat, my thorn-sharp nails piercing the skin beneath his jaw and finding purchase there, the tiny barbs that lined them making it nigh-impossible to pull me free without killing him in the process. Lord Harrington pressed his gun against my stomach, firing again; much of my midsection joined my chest in nonexistence before I could wrap a vine around the ray gun’s muzzle and rip it from his hands, hurling it away. As I did that, the creeper vines and long, thick roots I normally kept concealed—as a proper British woman would, had she found herself burdened with such things—emerged from beneath my skirt and wrapped tight around him, binding him in place.

  Arthur was shouting behind me. I knew that civility meant responding to him, or at least begging his pardon, but my injuries were too great; Lord Harrington might not have known my anatomy, but he had done a remarkably good job of reducing my overall mass. So I committed the unforgiveable sin of ignoring my friend and patron as I drove my roots into the body of his colleague, linking them into his circulatory system.

  His blood tasted of fine wine and excellent breeding. Perhaps there was something to be said for the aristocracy after all.

  It only took me a few moments to drain the life and fluids from Lord Harrington’s body. I leaned back, glancing down, and was pleased to see that new growth had covered the holes in my chest and stomach, replacing the gaping holes with smooth, if somewhat indecent, green skin. It was paler than the rest of me, but the patchwork effect that it created was not unpleasant, and would be mostly covered by my clothing under normal circumstances. I pulled my roots from the husk of Lord Harrington, unwinding my creeper vines until he remained upright solely thanks to the nails which remained wedged in his throat. I yanked them free, and he fell with a hollow rattle, like a dried-out old seed pod.

  “Well. That was uncivil of him,” I said, smoothing my skirt with the heels of my hands as I pulled all the pieces of me back into their proper places. “Arthur, dear, I don’t suppose I might borrow your jacket? I am quite underdressed, thanks to the holes your friend saw fit to shoot into my clothing.”

  “You killed him.” Arthur’s voice was as bloodless as his colleague. “Antheia … how could you?”

  “The mechanisms of it were easy, and do not really require explanation,” I said, turning to face him. It was no real surprise to find that he had retrieved Lord Harrington’s ray gun, and was aiming it at me. His hands were shaking. There was no way he would pull the trigger. “As to why I would do so, well. He shot me. Twice. You cannot blame me for protecting myself against a man who was so clearly determined to end my life.”

  “But you … but you …”

  “Did nothing you were not already aware I had the potential to do, Arthur.” I took a step toward him, chin up, eyes fixed on his. “We met shortly after I devoured dear Jill. You remember? You knew I had this in me. If I am a monster, then you are the man who nurtured me, and saw to it that I had good soil in which to grow. I am your fault as much as anyone else’s.”

  He whimpered. Just once, like a child.

  He’s frightened, miss, said Jill.

  He has reason to be. Now hush, I replied, and reached out to take the gun, gently, from Arthur’s hands. That was the moment when everything could have gone wrong: when the human race could have started truly fighting back, instead of simply lashing out against an enemy it did not understand. I was leaving myself vulnerable to attack—a foolish thing to do, more suited to a hot-blooded meat creature than to a diplomat of the Vegetable Empire, but ah. I did harbor some affection for the man. I might even have loved him, in my way, had my purpose on his world not been so antithetical to the very notion. So I left my throat unguarded, giving him the opportunity to deliver a killing blow.

  He didn’t. Then the gun was in my hand, barrel still warm from the two shots Lord Harrington had delivered to my body, and Arthur’s eyes were beginning to overflow with salty tears. I reached out, quite improperly, and brushed them away with a sweep of my thumb. My skin drank the moisture eagerly.

  “Come now, stop your crying,” I said. “It’s time we went to see the Queen.”

  The great guns atop the Observatory shuddered and fired again, blasting more of my people out of the sky, and Arthur wept.

  5.

  “It is not that the idea of invasion was incomprehensible to the humans: a simple visit to the breeding pens will expose the curious to dozens of pre-conquest humans who have no trouble accepting the reality of their situation. They were always prepared for the idea that an enemy might try their borders. No, the incomprehensibility came when they were defeated. The sun was said never to set on the British Empire. I am sure there are some who still cannot understand how they could have been so very wrong.”

  —from Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare, first printing.

  * * *

  London was in a panic. The streets were thronged with would-be defenders of the Crown, their ray guns and small sonic cannons clutched in sweaty hands and aimed toward the distant sky. Some of the buildings we passed were already aflame, no doubt ignited by falling debris. I schooled my expression into one of mild dismay as I gazed out the carriage windows on the spreading chaos. My people had not yet fired a single gun, nor killed a single head of state—Lord Harrington being far too close to common to count. All this was the humans’ own doing.

  “You were always going to rip it all down by yourselves you know,” I said conversationally, glad that our carriage was a clever conveyance of steam and gears, and not a thing driven by a living human who might have understood the meaning of my words. “That’s what meat does, when it gets control of a world. It devours itself, and then it goes looking for something else to eat. We’re simply shortcutting the p
rocess.”

  “I thought you were my friend.” Arthur’s voice was dull, lacking its usual fascination with the world. A pity. I hadn’t intended to break him. “I took you in. Supported you. Cared for you.”

  “Yes, and believe me, your assistance in gaining the access I needed to higher society is appreciated.” I allowed one of my climber vines to uncurl from around my leg, extending it to brush against Arthur’s cheek. He might not recognize the affection in the gesture, but that was of no matter. My days of pretending to humanity were coming to a blessed end. “This will be much less painful, thanks to you.”

  “I have betrayed my Queen and my country.”

  “No, darling, no. Betrayal implies intent. You have simply allowed something dangerous to flourish in your garden. A weed among roses, although that’s a terribly common metaphor, don’t you think? More like a rose among cabbages, all things considered.” I allowed the curtain to fall back across the window. “I have grown healthy in the fertile soil you afforded me, and now it’s time for me to bloom. Me, and all my brothers and sisters.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Why did your British Empire see fit to colonize so much of the planet? Superior force of arms was definitely a factor, and a misguided faith in your own sense of morality. ‘For Queen and country’ and all of that lovely jingoistic nonsense. But that’s all petals, isn’t it? Pretty blooms to hide the thorns. You did it for two reasons.” I leaned closer, smiling. He paled as he met my eyes.

  Now miss, it’s not polite to taunt a man by knowing things he doesn’t, chided Jill.