Lightspeed Issue 33

by Tad Williams

  “Just when we think we’ve seen all that Aetherian mechanisms can offer, someone finds a new terrifying use for them. This was exactly why the archives were kept secret.”

  Marlowe said, “It was only a matter of time before nations on the continent stole the secrets of the Surrey crash. That’s what this whole war is about.”

  “It’s not so simple as that. The Aetherian secrets may be the excuse. But war would have come eventually, with or without the crash. Dreams of European empire building didn’t end with Napoleon.”

  “No, of course not. But now nations have the power to destroy Europe as well as conquer it. I fear those who do not see the difference.”

  “Which is why Britain must not lose,” she declared, fearing her own frustration at her inability to do anything about the situation tainted her voice.

  “Indeed. The archives hold plenty more secrets to be exploited, I’d say. We must look there.”

  “You seem like a man who has ideas on that score.”

  “I’m an aerialist, Your Highness. An engineer with the Royal Navy, though I occasionally volunteer for other duties.” He gave a smirk at this, indicating the oddness of an aerial engineer being stuck on the ground in Paris. “We’re all battling for supremacy of the air. Bigger airships, greater armaments. But I believe supremacy lies in altitude. We must go higher. We must conquer beyond.”

  Currently, airships regularly reached fifteen to twenty thousand feet in altitude. Many had the capability of flying higher than that, but the safety of the crew prevented regular trips to more extreme altitudes—the air was simply too thin to breathe. But crossing that barrier must have been possible; the Aetherians themselves had done it.

  She said, “You want to go where the Aetherians came from.”

  “Yes.” After another long stretch of walking, Marlowe said, tentative, “Your highness, may I ask you a question?”

  Here—bombs and smoke drenching the air, muscles aching, the embassy destroyed, their own preservation not yet ensured—her royal status seemed somehow irrelevant. Useless, really. If the status leant her any sway at all, she ought to be able to snap her fingers and have this all be done. Make it all stop.

  “You may, lieutenant,” she sighed.

  “The archives,” he said, then waited.

  “That isn’t a question.” She glanced at him in time to see his smile flash. Lovely that he could smile in such circumstances.

  “What did you find, when you examined the archives? Did you find anything that might save Britain?”

  “Those are very large questions.”

  “They’re the only questions.”

  “Yes, indeed.” They walked another half a block. Bombs echoed in the distance, and she did not flinch. “Most of the Royal Academy scientists would disagree with me, but I believe the Surrey crash was not the first time an Aetherian craft has visited this planet.”

  “That hypothesis has been circulated.”

  “There are pieces from the Aetherian ship the purpose of which we haven’t yet discovered. Imagine taking apart a pocket watch, putting it together, and having pieces left over. Consider the civilization that built the Aetherian vessel—what other technologies might they have produced? If all you found was a locomotive, what might you deduce about British civilization? You might not even guess at the pocket watch. We don’t have everything that the Aetherians have. Perhaps, then, the mechanism that will save Britain hasn’t yet been discovered. However, most current research is concentrating on developing technologies we already have.”

  “I’ve noticed. I believe the crash archives must contain the secret of reaching the highest part of the atmosphere. The Aetherians traveled in airless spaces, and the autopsy of the pilot suggests that they require some sort of respiration, which means they must have had a way to produce an artificial atmosphere. The technology is there, we simply aren’t recognizing it.”

  “Or it was destroyed in the crash. Much was lost, I fear.”

  “May I ask another question?”

  “Yes,” she sighed, stretching her back to adjust her corset, which was growing damp with sweat. She would have enjoyed this discussion with Marlowe immensely had they been anywhere else—perhaps over tea at Kensington, not tromping around war-torn Paris.

  “Why are you so interested in Aetherian mechanisms? It doesn’t seem …”

  “Becoming for a young lady of royal blood?” she said, because she’d heard it before.

  “I would think a princess has more pressing matters occupying her time.”

  She said, “I’ve grown up with Aetherian machinery, quite literally. I was born the year of the Surrey crash. I was there with the rest of my family when Dr. Carlisle made his first demonstrations of Aetherian-powered locomotives. The Aetherian revolution has always … intimidated me, and I’ve sought to overcome my fears by understanding it completely.”

  “Has understanding come to you?”

  “I believe that if we do not control the Aetherian technology we’ve wrought upon the Earth, it will come to control us. That is my understanding.”

  They were close to Gare du Norde, now. Finally, crowds appeared. All those empty streets and neighborhoods had emptied here: the population of Paris’s north half attempting to escape. No purposeful roadblock could have been more effective than the solid wall of people ahead of them.

  Harry stopped and stared, frozen in a moment of unexpected panic. She had very likely never been so close to so many people in her entire life. At least, not without her family and her family’s guards present. She liked to think of herself as a populist royal. This surge in her gut, the jolt of—call it by its right name: fear—running up her spine was odd. Deeply unpleasant. Her mouth had gone dry.

  Marlowe shaded his eyes and scanned the crowd. “Nothing for it but to plunge in,” he said. “Highness?”

  “You might perhaps not want to call me that here,” she said, after swallowing to find her voice again. “Call me Harry.”

  “I heard your brother call you that. A nickname?”

  “A silly joke from when I was little, but it’s stuck. It seems to suit.”

  “All right, then. Harry. Are you able to continue?”

  “Yes, only I wonder if I’ve inherited a royal fear of mobs.”

  “In this case, our safety might lie in numbers. This is the only reasonable route to Calais.”

  “Indeed. Yes.” She took his arm, capturing the crook of his elbow, and held on. She was fairly certain he flinched back at her status and title rather than her personally. The gesture shouldn’t have made her the least bit disappointed. And yet.

  His resistance lasted the barest second before he took firm hold of her arm and side by side, bolstered by one another’s presence, they entered the crowd.

  After a long, loud, sweaty three hours, Harry and Marlowe were on an old-fashioned steam-powered train traveling north to Calais, and to the Channel.

  Harry had worried about purchasing tickets—she certainly wasn’t carrying any money with her, and she doubted Marlowe had more than loose change with him. But the situation was long past money and tickets. Soldiers were present and loading as many people onto as many trains as they could to evacuate the city. Thanks to Marlowe’s persistence and his ability to force his way through rather than waiting for the crowd to move forward of its own accord, they reached a platform and got themselves aboard the very last carriage of one of the last passenger trains to leave Paris. Harry’s French was good; in the chaos she was able to ask one of the soldiers where the train was going. “Calais!” he called, and her relief felt like blood draining from her limbs.

  The seats were filled. More than filled, many of them doubled up, three times as many people crammed into the carriage as should have been. The train seemed to move slowly, overburdened, clacking tiredly on its tracks, but that may have only been her impatience.

  Harry and Marlowe did not sit; they stood together in the back, shored up precariously near the door to the next carr
iage. The clanking of the wheels on the tracks seemed loud here. Too loud for them to speak, especially without revealing themselves as English. Neither wished to draw attention to themselves.

  She found she had grown used to leaning close to Marlowe’s body. He had a comforting solidness to him. Oh, the scandal of it. But considering her alternative was being crushed in the destruction of the embassy … even her grandmother could not argue with the situation.

  Harry happened to look up and saw Marlowe looking back at her, lips pressed in a wry smile. He quickly looked away, though. Awkward, indeed, and she would likely never see him again once they reached the coast. What a sad thought.

  “I’m sure George got to the fleet safely,” she said, for no particular reason at all.

  “I’m sure he did. You’ll see him very soon.”

  And everything would have to go back to the way it was. She sighed.

  Night had long since fallen when they finally reached Calais.

  “We’ll go to the consulate,” Marlowe said, taking her hand and holding tight as they let the crowd carry them off the train and away. He might not even be aware that he’d done it, but she didn’t argue. In this situation, it was security, nothing more.

  The streets here were crowded and harrowing, refugees from Paris arguing with locals, soldiers milling, and everyone shouting for news: What was the word? What had happened? How soon until the Germans reached the coast? Harry bent her head, hunched her shoulders, and ignored it all. She had a job to do, and it was almost done.

  At one point, they turned a corner, and Harry looked between buildings to see open space rather than more buildings. Water, glorious sea, lapping waves glinting with the reflected lights of the town, extending as far as she could see in the darkness. And above the water, miles away and barely visible, a row of lights hovered: the half dozen airships of George’s fleet. She might have wept, but she scrubbed her eyes, took another deep breath, and calmed herself. In the pause, she held her breath and listened for the comforting hum of the ships’ Aetherian engines, but they were too far away.

  They reached the consulate at last, then spent half an hour arguing with a guard outside the front gate. They were English, they’d fled from Paris, could they please be let in. The flustered young man claimed that with all the day’s madness they couldn’t be letting just anyone in, could they?

  Marlowe became a bit angry. “I am Lieutenant Marlowe with the Aerial Navy, this is Her Highness the Princess of Wales, and you will let us in.”

  The soldier gaped. “Yes. But. Well sir. How do I know you are who you say?”

  Marlowe showed his rank pins and kindly asked him to send for the officer in charge, who arrived shortly, did some gaping of his own, and let them in, escorting them to a comfortable parlor and calling for tea while he notified the fleet via the wireless.

  The tea was divine. Harry had not realized how chilled she had become, even after the long, crowded train journey. The chill had come from fear, and she was happy to leave that fear behind. Through the reflections on the parlor window, she could see that a mist had fallen over the Channel, masking even the lights. At least there were no storms. And no bombs.

  “I can’t tell anyone about this, can I?” Marlowe said, bemused, lips quirked in a wry smile. They sat across from one another in armchairs, the tea service on a round table between them. Maids hovered, and Marlowe kept his voice low. The real world was settling over them more quickly than Harry imagined it would.

  She hadn’t thought as far ahead as to what she’d tell anyone about the day’s adventure. “You can tell them, it’s a matter of whether they’d believe you. I’m the one who can’t tell anyone about this.” Her clothing was not designed to wear while fleeing a city under bombardment. She was sure she’d ripped some seams, and her hair had become tangled, and she very much didn’t want to look in a mirror. Merely stepping inside the consulate in this condition would start rumors that the Home Office would diligently quash. Which meant she had to remain ever so quiet, lest she feed those rumors herself.

  “Surely you won’t receive any blame for this,” Marlowe said. “You couldn’t help circumstances.”

  “My brother won’t blame me, certainly. My grandmother won’t. She understands duty better than anyone I know, I think. But my mother? My sisters? Polite society in general? No, they will not understand, and so we will not tell them.”

  His expression furrowed, as if he was trying to understand a difficult problem. “What will you do next, then, Your Highness?” He’d slipped easily back to the honorific. She smiled sadly, because along with not saying anything else about the day, she could not tell him she’d rather he kept calling her Harry.

  “Whatever George and my grandmother need me to do.” She sounded so tired when she said it.

  “May I ask you another question, highness? A favor, really.”

  His voice had fallen to a whisper. The room had emptied of servants—Marlowe would have checked, before speaking so.

  “What favor?” she said.

  “Can you arrange for me to see the Surrey Archives?”

  “It’s not for me to decide—”

  “But you have influence.”

  “You overestimate me.”

  “This isn’t for me, this is for the realm. For the war. You’re right, you know—the Aetherian mechanisms will be the end of us, if we’re not careful. Those creatures that destroyed the embassy—do our enemies even know what they’re building, or are they mad scientists from a penny dreadful, trusting in machines they don’t understand? I want to understand Aetherian science, and I’m sure I can use it.”

  “To do what?”

  His gaze turned upward. “Do more than play tin soldiers. We have their ship—if we can piece together the puzzle, we can do what they did. Control the skies. We can reach fifty thousand feet, a hundred thousand, even. And what of this—instead of building a better weapon, what if we had a device that could neutralize Aetherian-based weaponry? Act directly on the power source. Think of how many lives could be saved. We could build generators to power entire cities, fully convert the transportation system to eradicate coal pollution—this machinery could change the world, were we not so distracted by war.”

  They were caught in a bubble of soft light from the room’s gas lamps. Old-fashioned gas—what the world would look like without the Aetherian Revolution. This might be anybody’s parlor, and they might be any two people talking. Unless they were the two people who could change the course of the coming war.

  Harry watched him wonderingly. His thoughts reflected so many of her own. The Aetherians had come from another world, for God’s sake. Why did the world’s governments insist on limiting their visions to this one? Aetherian technology might not just change the world, but destroy it, if humanity kept to its current course. Affecting that outcome was such a daunting task. But not if she didn’t have to face the effort alone.

  “George can give us access,” she said. “Unfettered access, if you can win him over. And I can get you an audience with George. The Crown Prince will be most grateful to you for bringing me back safely, I’m sure. Eager to listen.” She’d convince him herself if she had to. “It occurs to me that all this time Aetherian research has been dominated by established scientists, set in their ways and unable to move forward.”

  “Using the new technology for old purposes instead of looking for new purposes,” he said.

  “Just so. Lieutenant Marlowe—”

  “James.”

  She blushed. That was going too far, really, so she didn’t call him anything. “I want to help. Not just by talking to George for you. I can help you directly. I have researched the possibility of other, ancient Aetherian crash sites throughout the world. I’ve read the journals, I’ve seen the archives, and I may not be an engineer like you, but I know what I’m talking about. And I can shoot what I aim at.” He would tell her no. George would tell her no. They’d all tell her no, like always, and she was sick of it. On this, s
he would not accept no. She glared hard at Marlowe, daring him to deny her.

  “Of course you must help,” he said. “I can think of no one better.”

  She started when the consulate officer came into the room. Her teacup chimed against its saucer.

  “Yes?” Marlowe said flatly, innocently.

  “They’re sending a ship for you, it will arrive within the hour. You’ll be away before anyone even knew you were here.”

  “That’s ideal. Thank you, sir,” Marlowe told him, and Harry remembered herself, nodding graciously to the man.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said as evenly as she could. The man beamed at her. They’d probably put a bloody plaque on the wall, commemorating that she drank tea here.

  The officer excused himself, leaving them to tea and assuring them he’d return when it was time to go.

  “We’re agreed then?” she said, offering her hand for him to shake. Even her gloves were tattered. Ah well, she’d worry about that later. He did not seem to notice their sad state when he took her hand in his own for a brief touch before anyone noticed.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  So began the adventure.

  © 2013 Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

  Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series. The eleventh novel, Kitty Rocks the House, is due out in March 2013. She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragonsand Steel, and the fantasy novels, Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has appeared many times in Realms of Fantasy magazine, and in a number of anthologies, such as Fast Ships, Black Sails and Warriors. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

  Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Chílde Phoenix

  Marly Youmans

  Perhaps you’ve heard an anecdote about a child named Cresencio who was skipping barefoot between hills of corn when a shallow bowl in the field, long turbulent with mutterings, broke into pieces. Cresencio spied a tongue of smoke, like the mockings of a demon; he bent, staring into the jagged mouth that was about to spatter the nearby trees with sparks and set his childhood on fire. Liquid stone shouldered through streets, plugging everything but the bell tower of a church. In a last indignity, after obliterating the houses of Cresencio’s village with a relentless black confetti, the volcano stole its name: Paricutin, no longer home but a district of hell.