Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 50

by John Joseph Adams

  “Just a moment,” she said, looking back up at the cavity where she’d discharged her pistol.

  She grabbed back hold of the tentacle she had climbed down on. It slipped, dropping—starting to come loose. Her arm was bleeding more profusely, the lacerations unhappy with her exertions, but she ignored the discomfort. Carefully so as not to dislodge the vine further, she climbed, bracing her boots against segments of material that had grown together.

  Back at the edge of the tunnel’s mouth, she could examine the tentacles here further. She drew her knife out of its belt sheath. She couldn’t cut through the metallic tendrils and coils, but she could pry apart the segments, and the metallic appendages dropped away, giving her better access to the hollow place in the rock from which the tendrils emerged. Almost a cave, tucked away where no one could see it.

  She traded the knife for a hand lantern from her belt pouch and examined the interior. The surface was scorched, stripped and burned by the pistol blast. But yes, there was a space, and inside were the scattered and melted remains of her pistol, and of a device much like the one Marlowe had shown her. She collected the pieces, tucking them into her pouch. They were still warm.

  She dropped back onto the roof of the cab, then across the coupling and into the coal car, where Marlowe was clearing away tentacles and segmented tubes. The locomotive was appearing more like its old self, and less Aetherian monster, by the moment.

  “I think there must have been a cave or some pocket in the mountain side,” she said. “It might have been covered by debris until the rail company came along and blasted the tunnel. An Aetherian craft or being might have stashed away some artifact, by chance or intent. Maybe they meant to retrieve it later. When it was exposed, it was activated somehow.”

  “Harry, you’re hurt,” he said.

  She glanced at her arm. “Yes, but I think it just needs a bit of washing off—”

  “No. Here, sit.” He took her arm and guided her down to sit at the edge of the car. He touched her forehead; his glove came away bloody. She realized that throbbing wasn’t nerves or the noise of the explosion rattling in her brain. She’d been cut by a bit of shrapnel.

  “How bad is it?” Now that she noticed it, blood seemed to be running down her face. She didn’t have time for this.

  His expression furrowed as he leaned in to look, producing a handkerchief to dab at the mess. “You may need a stitch or two.”

  “My grandmother will never forgive me if I’ve ruined my face,” she muttered.

  He chuckled. “Not possible, Your Highness. Here, hold that.” He gave her the handkerchief to press over the wound.

  His touch lingered, resting on her chin a moment as he turned her face and seemed to study her eyes very intently. He was quite close, and her heart raced a bit. She would not lean in, not even a millimeter.

  “Your pupils are the same size,” he said. “Can you follow my finger?” He held up a hand and tracked it up, down, left, right. Obediently, her gaze followed the movement. “I don’t think you’re concussed, so that’s good.”

  “Yes, very good,” she murmured. Her chin felt cold when he finally let her go.

  “Your hypothesis seems reasonable,” he said. “Given what I think this might be.”

  He set the device from the firebox in the open. She produced the pieces she had retrieved, laying them alongside. Difficult, trying to make out what the thing had been. Whatever energy or glow it had had was gone now, but the same complicated pattern of minute wiring was visible on some of them. They were a matched set. The intact device pulsed a little when the pieces came along side it.

  “I think,” Marlowe said, “that these are a set of devices to create automation in machines. Self-directed automation.”

  “It’s . . . a mechanical brain?”

  “If you like.”

  “Then you’re saying it was alive.”

  He paused, furrowed his brow. “I don’t know that I would go that far. The thing needed a machine to control. The locomotive came along. You remember what Cooper said, they’d switched a steam engine for an adapted one—bug-rigged. Like called to like. The artifact might also have had some component to defend itself. Hence our poor victims down there.”

  Defense—a weapon that could defend itself? Oh, this was dangerous indeed.

  “But it had a will?” she asked. “Was it intelligent or merely carrying out some . . . artificial instinct? Like the German’s mechanized troops?” Comforting, to think this was simply another version of the same kind of controls that operated the fearsome mechanical beasts that the Germans sent into battle. But this . . . this had been something more. The alien-controlled locomotive had seemed to have intent. No one had set the train on its path. No one human.

  He tucked the device in a pouch and gathered up the pieces Harry had found—placing them in an entirely different pouch. “You wanted to make this expedition to learn more about Aetherian technology, to discover Aetherian mechanisms no one has seen before. I think we’ve succeeded here.”

  “But what are we going to do with it?”

  “For now—lock it away and carry on.”

  • • • •

  They spent the rest of the afternoon clearing the train of its extraneous additions, stashing tentacles and coils of wire—and human remains—in the coal car. Marlowe was able to bring the original Aetherian-adapted engine back to functioning order. The thing hummed normally, and its green glow was exactly the shade it should have been. They spent the night camped by the tracks and didn’t sleep very well. In the morning, they set off back to town. Without its brain, the locomotive was simply another Aetherian-adapted train, clacking mundanely as it ran back toward Alamosa.

  They arrived back at the station at eight in the morning, four hours ahead of schedule. Mr. Cooper was waiting on the platform, all astonishment.

  “We’ll be collecting your bounty, I think,” Marlowe said, cheerfully hopping onto the platform after shutting down the engine and letting the locomotive roll to a stop. Harry followed more slowly, aware of her bandaged head and arm and the stares she was attracting.

  “What? How?” Someone had sent for Finch and several other town officials as well. They lined up like a jury, staring.

  “Very carefully,” Harry said. “And you’ll need to call an undertaker.”

  • • • •

  They got the bounty, which seemed ridiculously anti-climactic to Harry, since they hadn’t done any of this for money, and what she had seen was so much larger than mere money. But they had to maintain their cover story. Harry put her foot down and insisted they use part of the bounty to take rooms in the local hotel. They ate a very nice hot meal, drank the establishment’s best bottle of wine—a mediocre burgundy—and had very hot baths. The next morning found them back at the Kestrel. They spent an hour or so packing before unmooring her lines. Harry was uneasy.

  “Was it alive? Not just alive—but had the Aetherian pilots somehow left a piece of mechanical intelligence behind? A piece of themselves?” She couldn’t stop asking the question. Her bandages itched, and resisting scratching them was making her cross.

  Marlowe sighed. “Yes, it probably was alive, at some level. It grew, it had self-motivation. But I’m not sure it was any more intelligent than an earthworm. It was a machine, Harry. Whatever else it could do, it was mechanical.”

  “I can’t help feeling that we have broken something that can never be repaired.”

  “It was trying to kill us, don’t forgot.”

  “Yes. But I wish . . . Well. If it had been truly intelligent, we could have found a way to talk to it, yes? I would have liked to talk to it.”

  They finished stowing gear in the chests and cupboards on the Kestrel. The pieces recovered from the phantom engine got their own locked chest—far away from the Kestrel’s engine. After checking the engines and gauges, examining the bladders for tears, repairing the one or two they found, they filled the bags with gas a
nd pulled up stakes and lines. Marlowe climbed the ladder as the ship rose. A crowd of locals looked on with gaping curiosity. Some of the children waved, and Harry didn’t wave back. The engine pulsed and whined, sent a fresh surge of gas into the bladder overhead, and the ship rose, up and up until the buildings below looked like toys made out of balsa.

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked.

  “West,” Marlowe said, looking in the direction to where the sun would set in another six hours. “Always west.”

  © 2014 by Carrie Vaughn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most recent of which is the twelfth installment, Kitty in the Underworld. Her superhero novel, Dreams of the Golden Age, was released in January 2014. She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the fantasy novels, Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com and George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

  To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.

  FANTASY

  HELP ME FOLLOW MY SISTER INTO THE LAND OF THE DEAD

  Carmen Maria Machado

  Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead

  by Ursula Ruiz

  19

  Backers

  $1,395

  Pledged of $5,229

  28

  days to go

  Back This Project

  $1 minimum pledge

  The project will only be funded if at least $5,229 is pledged by July 24, 2015 3:41am EDT.

  Aid & abet a heartwarming sibling reunion—albeit under grievous circumstances—in a terrifying place where no mortal has any business treading.

  Home

  This is the thing about my sister and I: we’ve never gotten along, even when we’ve gotten along. This is what happens when you have parents who fetishize family, and the viscosity of their blood relative to water: you resent the force with which they push you together with this person who is, genetics aside, a stranger. And that’s what my sister is: a stranger.

  Not to mention a strange girl. Even when we were children, she had a weird fixation on contradicting everything I said, just because. She would pick a phrase to scream at the top of her lungs and do so over and over, like a computer glitch, until I ran out of the room. Whatever. It’s not important now. But she’s always been trouble. Our moments of connection have always been purely artificial, forged by necessity, by parental birthdays and holiday travel plans.

  When I tell you that my sister has absconded to the land of the dead, do not mistake me. She hasn’t died. She just did what she always does—i.e., go to a place where she isn’t welcome and crash the party just because she feels like it. She heard that there was some “cool stuff” happening on the other side of the veil, and went. I only know where she is because I managed to sober up her blitzed-out roommate vis-à-vis a cold bucket of water to the face just long enough to get access to their wi-fi. I found her search history, her bus ticket to Bethlehem (the nearest portal), her emails to her friends about how it’s going to be “so amazing,” etc.

  (In the interest of full disclosure, I also searched her email for my name, but aside from an occasional ping regarding the aforementioned birthdays and travel, there was nothing.)

  I am sorry and embarrassed that I have to even ask you for money for this endeavor. The truth is while I’m doing pretty well, all things considered, I don’t have the liquidity necessary for this journey. Olive will be embarrassed that I put all of this online, but maybe a dose of shame will do her some goddamned good.

  If you sense a tone of resentment to this entire project, that’s because I have to go chasing after my wretchedly ungrateful wastrel of sibling into another dimension to tell her that our parents are dead.

  Stretch Goals

  Anything over $5,229 is welcome and will be donated to a TBD mental health charity.

  How Will I Spend The Money?

  Here’s how the costs will break down:

  $36.95: Bus ticket to Bethlehem.

  $176.05: Cost of ingredients (salt, sage, cypress branch, matches, mandrake, yew, chalk) to summon the necessary portal.

  $16: The cheapest bottle of whiskey that I can force myself to drink.

  $5,000: A one-time fee, for crossing.

  Risks and Challenges

  The land of the dead is the land of the dead. Sometimes people don’t come back.

  • • • •

  FAQ

  Do you remember when Olive was born?

  I remember the time my mother had Braxton-Hicks contractions—the fake kind—and I went to the hospital with her and my father, and the doctor informed her that she wasn’t really in labor. As we left the hospital, I went into hysterics, because I’d been promised a baby sister and one had not been delivered to me. We walked past a woman who was holding her own baby, and I lunged toward her howling “THAT one! I want THAT one!” My parents had to carry me out as I screamed. But of Olive’s actual birth, I remember nothing.

  How did your parents die?

  You know how there was that SUV recall recently, because the brakes in some of their cars were failing for no reason, causing a series of high-profile, deadly accidents? I wish that was how they died. No, my father shot my mother through her left eye, and then turned the gun on himself. Nobody knows why.

  Who found their bodies?

  I came over for dinner. Olive had been invited, too, but she backed out at the last minute. She said she had “stuff to do.” Which honestly is better than her arriving two hours late with a weird dude in tow. Anyway, thank God she wasn’t there.

  When was the last time you spoke to Olive?

  I don’t remember.

  When was the first time you spoke to Olive?

  I don’t remember.

  What is your biggest regret?

  In order from greatest to least: being born, having a little sister, not being adopted, caring at all.

  What is your biggest fear?

  Genetics.

  • • • •

  *

  Pledge $5 or more

  9 backers

  A thank you email from Olive, which I will make her deliver.

  *

  Pledge $20 or more

  52 backers

  A small gift from the land of the dead—a pebble or a twig or a finger something—which I will deliver in a small, sealed jar. KEEP IT IN THE JAR.

  *

  Pledge $50 or more

  1 backer

  I will send you salt from my personal tears, in crystal form (hand-evaporated). Grinder optional.

  *

  Pledge $100 or more

  1 backer

  I will drive my sister to your house, where you can ask her any question. Limited to the contiguous United States.

  *

  Pledge $500 or more

  0 backers

  You will receive an exclusive copy of my and Olive’s life story, written with my own hands, and complete with happy, narratively satisfying ending, detailing the success of our journey.

  *

  • • • •

  Update #1 • Jun 26, 2014

  Starting Out

  I know I haven’t hit my funding goal yet, but I’m just going to put it on a credit card and pray. I’m on a bus to Bethlehem, which has a pretty decent wi-fi connection but, weirdly, no toilets. At least three drug deals have happened in the seat next to me, and in between deals the guy is singing this one part of a song out loud that I recognize from somewhere. I think it might be Paula Cole?

  Update #2 • Jun 26, 2014

  Still Here

  Oh, yeah, it’s definitely Paula Cole. It’s that weird chant-y part of �
��Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” Just that part. Over and over. This is why I don’t do drugs.

  I’m assuming Olive has no idea I’m coming because there’s no reception in the land of the dead, but I have been texting her every hour on the hour anyway, just to cover my bases. I haven’t told her why I’m coming, because I can’t tell her that our parents are dead via text message. I mean, I could, but despite what she thinks about me I’m not a monster. I just keep writing “Need to talk to you, v. important.” But Olive has no sense of what’s important and what isn’t. Even if she got the messages, she’s probably all “Oh man, Ursula’s just having one of those days,” which is something I overheard her telling our mother once, just because I was upset that she didn’t want to be my maid of honor. Not that it mattered in the end, with the wedding being called off, but it was upsetting nonetheless.

  I’m so fucking tired.

  Update #3 • Jun 27, 2014

  Past Midnight

  I wake up and the bus is parked at the depot. I’ve probably been here for hours. I was dreaming about Olive. While I was sleeping my face was pressed against the window, and my mouth was open.

  I walk two miles to the elementary school playground. I get a blister and do the last half-mile limping and barefoot. Then I have to pee, and since I don’t know what the restroom situation is in the land of the dead, I squat in some bushes and pee. As I do so, I wonder if my sister is also peeing in a semi-public place. (If the land of the dead can be considered public at all, I guess.)

  There is another woman standing here, burning her sage and drawing sigils on the pavement. She doesn’t look like she’s chasing a wayward family member; she looks like she’s ready to party. She has a lot of eyeliner on. I feel angry at her, like she’s Olive. She says something and the portal slides open, like the door of a minivan but wreathed in smoke. I look away—it feels rude to stare.

  Then she is gone, and it’s dark once again. I draw the sigil and arrange the ingredients according to my notes. I say the spell, the unfamiliar syllables catching behind my teeth.