Year’s Best SF 15

by David G. Hartwell; Kathryn Cramer

  “You should be working in my shop,” said Simone. “I offer superior conditions.”

  Petra looked over the top of the rattling machine. “You think?”

  “You can leave the attitude here,” said Simone, and went to the front of the shop to wait.

  Simone showed Petra her back office (nothing but space and light and chrome), the image library, the labeled bolts of cloth—1300, 1570, China, Flanders, Rome.

  “What’s the shop name?” Petra asked finally.

  “Chronomode,” Simone said, and waited for Petra’s exclamation of awe. When none came, she frowned. “I have a job for you,” she continued, and walked to the table, tapping the wood with one finger. “See what’s left to do. I want it by morning, so there’s time to fix any mistakes.”

  The lithograph was a late 19th century evening gown, nothing but pleats, and Petra pulled the fabrics from the library with shaking hands.

  Simone came in the next day, tore out the hem of the petticoat, and sewed it again by hand before she handed it over to the client.

  Later Petra ventured, “So you’re unhappy with the quality of my work.”

  Simone looked up from a Byzantine dalmatic she was sewing with a bone needle. “Happiness is not the issue,” she said, as though Petra was a simpleton. “Perfection is.”

  That was the year the mice disappeared.

  Martin Spatz, the actor, had gone Vagabonding in 8,000 BC and killed a wild dog that was about to attack him. (It was a blatant violation of the rules—you had to be prepared to die in the past, that was the first thing you signed on the contract. He went to jail over it. They trimmed two years off because he used a stick, and not the pistol he’d brought with him.)

  No one could find a direct connection between the dog and the mice, but people speculated. People were still speculating, even though the mice were long dead.

  Everything went, sooner or later; the small animals tended to last longer than the large ones, but eventually all that was left were some particularly hardy plants, and the butterflies. By the next year the butterflies were swarming enough to block out the summer sun, and Disease Control began to intervene.

  The slow, steady disappearance of plants and animals was the only lasting problem from all the Vagabonding. Plugs were more loyal to their mission than the people who employed them, and if someone had to die in the line of work they were usually happy to do it. If they died, glory; if they lived, money.

  Petra measured a plug once (German Renaissance, which seemed a pointless place to visit, but Petra didn’t make the rules). He didn’t say a word for the first hour. Then he said, “The cuffs go two inches past the wrist, not one and a half.”

  The client came back the next year with a yen for Colonial America. He brought two different plugs with him.

  Petra asked, “What happened to the others?”

  “They did their jobs,” the client said, turned to Simone. “Now, Miss Carew, I was thinking I’d like to be a British commander. What do you think of that?”

  “I would recommend civilian life,” Simone said. “You’ll find the Bore committee a little strict as regards impersonating the military.”

  When Petra was very young she’d taken her mother’s sewing machine apart and put it back together. After that it didn’t squeak, and Petra and her long thin fingers were sent to the tailor’s place downtown for apprenticeship.

  “At least you don’t have any bad habits to undo,” Simone had said the first week, dropping The Dressmaker’s Encyclopaedia 1890 on Petra’s work table. “Though it would behoove you to be a little ashamed of your ignorance. Why—” Simone looked away and blew air through her teeth. “Why do this if you don’t respect it?”

  “Don’t ask me—I liked engines,” Petra said, opening the book with a thump.

  Ms. O’Rourke decided at last on an era (18th-century Kyoto, so the historian must have been really good looking after all), and Simone insisted on several planning sessions before the staff was even brought in for dressing.

  “It makes the ordering process smoother,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, I’m easy to please,” said Ms. O’Rourke.

  Simone looked at Petra. Petra feigned interest in buttons.

  Petra was assigned to the counter, and while Simone kept Ms. O’Rourke in the main room with the curtains discreetly drawn, Petra spent a week rewinding ribbons on their spools and looking at the portfolios of Italian armor-makers. Simone was considering buying a set to be able to gauge the best wadding for the vests beneath.

  Petra looked at the joints, imagined the pivots as the arm moved back and forth. She wondered if the French hadn’t had a better sense of how the body moved; some of the Italian stuff just looked like an excuse for filigree.

  When the gentleman came up to the counter he had to clear his throat before she noticed him.

  She put on a smile. “Good morning, sir. How can we help you?”

  He turned and presented his back to her—three arrows stuck out from the left shoulder blade, four from the right.

  “Looked sideways during the Crusades,” he said proudly. “Not recommended, but I sort of like them. It’s a souvenir. I’d like to keep them. Doctors said it was fine, nothing important was pierced.”

  Petra blinked. “I see. What can we do for you?”

  “Well, I’d really like to have some shirts altered,” he said, and when he laughed the tips of the arrows quivered like wings.

  “You’d never catch me vagabonding back in time,” Petra said that night.

  Simone seemed surprised by the attempt at conversation (after five years she was still surprised). “It’s lucky you’ll never have the money, then.”

  Petra clipped a thread off the buttonhole she was finishing.

  “I don’t understand it,” Simone said more quietly, as though she were alone.

  Petra didn’t know what she meant.

  Simone turned the page on her costume book, paused to look at one of the hair ornaments.

  “We’ll need to find the ivory one,” Simone said. “It’s the most beautiful.”

  “Will Ms. O’Rourke notice?”

  “I give my clients the best,” Simone said, which wasn’t really an answer.

  “I’ve finished the alterations,” Petra said finally, and held up one of the shirts, sliced open at the shoulder blades to give the arrows room, with buttons down the sides for ease of dressing.

  Petra was surprised the first time she saw a Bore team in the shop—the Vagabond, the Historian, the translator, two plugs, and a “Consultant” whose job was ostensibly to provide a life story for the client, but who spent three hours insisting that Roman women could have worn corsets if the Empire had sailed far enough.

  The Historian was either too stupid or too smart to argue, and Petra’s protest had been cut short by Simone stepping forward to suggest they discuss jewelry for the Historian and plausible wardrobe for the plugs.

  “Why, they’re noble too, of course,” the client had said, adjusting his high collar. “What else could they be?”

  Plugs were always working-class, even Petra knew that—in case you had to stay behind and fix things for a noble who’d mangled the past, you didn’t want to run the risk of a rival faction calling for your head, which they tended strongly to do.

  Petra tallied the cost of the wardrobe for a Roman household: a million in material and labor, another half a million in jewelry. With salaries for the entourage and the fees for machine management and operation, his vacation would cost him ten million.

  Ten million to go back in time in lovely clothes, and not be allowed to change a thing. Petra took dutiful notes and marked in the margin, A WASTE.

  She looked up from the paper when Simone said, “No.”

  The client had frowned, not used to the word. “But I’m absolutely sure it was possible—”

  “It may be possible, depending on your source,” Simone said, with a look at the Historian, “but it is not right.”
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  “Well, no offense, Miss Carew, but I’m paying you to dress me, not to give me your opinion on what’s right.”

  “Apologies, sir,” said Simone, smiling. “You won’t be paying me at all. Petra, please show the gentlemen out.”

  They made the papers; Mr. Bei couldn’t keep from talking about his experience in the Crusades.

  “I was going to plan another trip right away,” he was quoted as saying, “but I don’t know how to top this! I think I’ll be staying here. The Institute has already asked me to come and speak about the importance of knowing your escape plan in an emergency, and believe me, I know it.”

  Under his photo was the tiny caption: Clothes by Chronomode.

  “Mr. Bei doesn’t mention his plugs,” Petra said, feeling a little sick. “Guess he wasn’t the only one that got riddled with arrows.”

  “It’s what the job requires. If you have the aptitude, it’s excellent work.”

  “It can’t be worth it.”

  “Nothing is worth what we give it,” said Simone. She dropped her copy of the paper on Petra’s desk. “You need to practice your running stitch at home. The curve on that back seam looks like a six-year-old made it.”

  Tibi cornered Petra at the Threaders’ Guild meeting. Tibi worked at Mansion, which outfitted Vagabonders with a lot more pomp and circumstance than Simone did.

  Tibi had a dead butterfly pinned to her dress, and when she hugged Petra it left a dusting of pale green on Petra’s shoulder.

  “Petra! Lord, I was JUST thinking about you! I passed Chronomode the other day and thought, Poor Petra, it’s SUCH a prison in there. Holding up?” Tibi turned to a tall young tailor beside her. “Michael, darling, Petra works for Carew over at Chronomode.”

  The tailor raised his eyebrows. “There’s a nightmare. How long have you hung in there, a week?”

  Five years and counting. “Sure,” Petra said.

  “No, for AGES,” Tibi corrected. “I don’t know how she makes it, I really don’t, it’s just so HORRIBLE.” Tibi wrapped one arm around the tailor and cast a pitying glance at Petra. “I was there for a week, I made the Guild send me somewhere else a week later, it was just inhuman. What is it LIKE, working there for SO long without anyone getting you out of there?”

  “Oh, who knows,” said Petra. “What’s it like getting investigated for sending people back to medieval France with machine-sewn clothes?”

  Tibi frowned. “The company settled that.”

  Petra smiled at Tibi, then at the tailor. “I’m Petra.”

  “Michael,” he said, and frowned at her hand when they shook.

  “Those are just calluses from the needles,” Petra said. “Don’t mind them.”

  “Ms. O’Rourke’s kimono is ready for you to look at,” Petra said, bringing the mannequin to Simone’s desk.

  “No need,” said Simone, her eyes on her computer screen, “you don’t have enough imagination to invent mistakes.”

  Petra hoped that was praise, but suspected otherwise.

  A moment later Simone slammed a hand on her desk. “Dammit, look at this. The hair ornament I need is a reproduction. Because naturally a reproduction is indistinguishable from an original. The people of 1743 Kyoto will never notice. Are they hiring antiques dealers out of primary school these days?”

  Simone pushed away from the desk in disgust and left through the door to the shop, heels clicking.

  Petra smoothed the front of the kimono. It was heavy grey silk, painted with cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums. Near the hem, Petra had added butterflies.

  The light in the shop was still on; Petra saw it just as she was leaving.

  Careless, she thought as she crossed the workshop. Simone would have killed me.

  She had one hand on the door when the sound of a footstep stopped her. Were they being robbed? She thought about the Danish Bronze Age brooches hidden behind the counter in their velvet wrappers.

  Petra grabbed a fabric weight in her fist and opened the door a crack.

  Simone stood before the fitting mirror, holding a length of bright yellow silk against her shoulders. It washed her out (she’d never let a client with her complexion touch the stuff), but her reflection was smiling.

  She hung it from her collarbones like a Roman; draped it across her shoulder like the pallav of a sari; bustled it around her waist. The bright gold slid through her fingers as if she was dancing with it.

  Simone gathered the fabric against her in two hands, closed her eyes at the feel of it against her face.

  Petra closed the door and went out the back way, eyes fixed on the wings at her feet.

  When she came around the front of the shop the light was still on in the window, and Simone stood like a doll wrapped in a wide yellow ribbon, imagining a past she’d never see.

  Petra turned for home.

  Disease Control hadn’t made the rounds yet, and the darkness was a swarm of wings, purple and blue and gold.

  Attitude Adjustment

  ERIC JAMES STONE

  Eric James Stone (www.ericjamesstone.com) lives in Eagle Mountain, Utah. He has a degree in political science and a law degree, and currently works as a website developer. He began publishing in the genre in 2004, when he was a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest. He has since sold seven stories to Analog, six to InterGalactic Medicine Show, and several more to various other publications. In 2009 he became an assistant editor for InterGalactic Medicine Show.

  “Attitude Adjustment” was originally written for a contest held by the Codex Writers Group (www.codexwriters.com), of which he is an original member, and was published in Analog, which survives by persisting in publishing the same thing it always has. This story is good old-fashioned problem-solving space SF in the Astounding tradition, done well. It has a touch of the Heinleinesque in its characterization and resolution.

  Danica Jarvis switched off the Moonskimmer’s main engine, and her stomach lurched in the familiar way that marked the change to zero gravity. She fired the attitude thrusters, turning the mushroom-shaped ship until it floated head-down over the Moon, so the long stem of the engine wouldn’t get in the way. The clear diamondglass of the Moonskimmer’s hull allowed an unobstructed view of the lunar landscape.

  From her pilot’s chair in the center, she looked around at the eight tourists strapped to their seats along the circumference of the cabin. “This is the fun part of the trip. Unbuckle your seatbelts and float while you enjoy the view.”

  “Fun?” A teenage boy—Bryson Sullivan, according to the manifest—snorted. “Can we go back to the Hilton now?” He sported a bright purple datavisor and a shaved head.

  Danica mustered her best be-nice-to-the-people-who-pay-my-salary grin and said, “Don’t worry, Eddie and I will have you back to Luna City before the basketball game tonight. Right, Eddie?” Lunar-gravity basketball was a major tourist draw.

  “Yes,” said Eddie, the Moonskimmer’s A.I. “Our total flight time is less than two and a half hours. You’ll get to see the far side of the Moon, something fewer than a thousand humans have seen with their own eyes. You should enjoy it.” Eddie’s voice was enthusiastic.

  The boy rolled his eyes, then opaqued his visor.

  Danica decided to ignore the useless brat and turned her attention to the rest of the passengers. She pointed to one of the craters below and began her routine tour-guide patter.

  “Okay, folks, if you’d please return to your seats and buckle up,” said Danica. “I’m going to turn the ship so you can see the Earth rise over the lunar horizon.”

  It took a couple of minutes for everyone to get settled. For most of the tourists, this was their first zero-gee experience, and it showed.

  “Wait, I want to try zero-gee,” said Bryson. He began unbuckling his seatbelt.

  Danica couldn’t believe it. The kid had stayed in his seat the whole time, probably playing videogames on his visor. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we—”

  Fwoomp!

  The Moonsk
immer jerked sideways, then lunged forward at its maximum acceleration of 0.75 gee.

  Bryson yelped as he hit the floor.

  “Eddie, what was that?” asked Danica.

  Eddie didn’t reply.

  Above the engine’s hum came the hiss of air escaping the cabin.

  Fix the air leak first. That was Sergeant Conroy’s first rule of disaster preparedness, drilled into Danica’s mind during space pilot training. She quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and stood in order to go get the leak kit off the cabin wall.

  But before she took a step, her conscious mind overrode her instinctive reaction.

  The Moonskimmer was accelerating toward the Moon. Every moment of delay in shutting down the engine meant more altitude lost. She looked at her control panel and found nothing but blank screens. Not just Eddie—all the computers were down.

  Manual engine shutdown required her to go down to the ship’s lower level through the hatch in the main cabin’s floor.

  And sprawled on top of the hatch was the teenager.

  She was beside him in two steps. “Out of my way,” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him off the hatch.

  “Get off me!” He yanked his arm away.

  She unlocked the hatch and pulled its recessed handle. It resisted her, and air rushed by her hand to flow down into the lower level. The leak was below.

  Pointing to the leak kit’s shiny red case, she said, “Someone grab that and drop it down to me.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled as much as she could while yanking the hatch open.

  Air swirled around her as she slid down the eight-foot ladder. There was still atmo on the lower level, although the pressure difference made her ears pop.

  The main engine cutoff switch was right next to the ladder. She twisted it clockwise a half turn, and the engine died. Even though she was now weightless, the airflow from above kept her feet pressed against the deck.