The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Peter was waiting, brushing imaginary dust off his lapel.

  He took Emily’s arm with, “Break a leg, darling,” and Roger followed them down the plank to face the Dramatons.

  The worst thing about Dramatons, Roger thought as the press closed it, was how hard it was to hate them.

  (He still managed, but it meant that he felt like a heel on top of everything else, which was a monster that fed itself neatly.)

  Their deployment in the Great War saved thousands of lives. Peter and Roger got draft papers just before the first automaton regiment shipped out, but as it happened, they were clever; the draft was postponed, and postponed, and within six months the war was over.

  (When the automatons marched down Piccadilly, victorious, the whole troupe threw confetti and cheered until their throats were hoarse. Emily cried, denied it.)

  The automatons were decommissioned (treaties demanded), but the government knew better than to dismantle such toys. Now they were riveters and train conductors and porters. They had endurance to thresh fields, and dexterity to assemble car engines. (Watchmakers were safe; they weren’t as nimble as the hand of an artist.)

  An industry for the displaced sprung up overnight: automaton maintenance and modification.

  With the proper aesthetic mods, automatons were even decent on stage. (It was only a dumb show with recordings piped through, but audiences had embraced worse performances.)

  Every city in the Empire had a set, a gift from a beneficent government.

  They put actors out of business.

  Actors had put up a fight, but against changing tastes, there was only so much a troupe could do. One by one they caved; the Understudies were now creaking along, the last troupe that had existed before Dramatons.

  (Not their fault, though, he thought; they were programmed to act and pose, and knew nothing else.)

  Roger stood beside the thinner Gentleman, whose face was now a mask of dignified age. It turned to each camera as it flashed (it always knew which one was going to go off, of course; the mechanoid hearing).

  Emily was looking at the Femme Fatale as if it was about to sprout a second head.

  The Dramatons looked into the flashbulbs without blinking, smiling at the pivot points in their mouths. The Dame was more stoic than the rest, but her handler stood by in case she got too cool and needed adjusting.

  Peter winked and waggled his brows and did all the elastic-face things Dramatons couldn’t.

  The cameras went wild for him.

  They always had; thirty years running, Peter had upstaged anything that got in his way.

  “Three weeks,” he told a reporter. “No two performances alike! It’ll be magic! Wait until you see these two on the stage! Humanity at its best.”

  Beside Roger, Emily shook hands with the Ingénue, allowed the Lothario to kiss her wrist.

  “Cheeky gentlemen in your line of work,” she told the Dame.

  After a pause, the Dame repeated, “A gentleman is merely a rascal, better-dressed.”

  It was from Vacationing in the Summer Palace, from the dullest scene in that whole dull play.

  Roger told Emily, “They’re no good for conversation, that’s their problem.”

  “Oh, my!” trilled the Ingénue, resting one hand on Peter’s chest. She went up on tiptoes to drop a kiss on his cheek, the clicks of her joints barely audible under the sound of the cameras.

  “Yes,” said Emily, “that’s their problem.”

  “Smile!” someone called, and a flashbulb went off.

  The flat was shabbier than the last one had been, which had been shabbier than the last.

  Peter said too firmly, “This is close to the theater. Perfect for rehearsals.”

  Roger knew better than to answer.

  “We should talk about the run,” said Emily, closing the door after the porter. “I saw the newsstand. They’ve set up a romance with an Ingénue and Hero. Thirteen magazine covers.”

  Roger had wondered how long it would take for them to catch on to that facet of the business. “Is the romance just in London, or everywhere?”

  “I’m scared to look.”

  “You sound like Phil and Rose,” Peter muttered. “Why don’t you retire if you’re going to jump at every shadow?”

  It wasn’t jumping at shadows, it was common sense, but Peter had never understood the difference.

  Roger wondered how Emily had stayed married to him for so long; she was usually so ruthless about facing facts.

  Emily had married in a brown velvet suit. She pulled back her hair with a silver comb from Rose, and walked the aisle with nothing but a little brass orchid.

  (The papers gasped. ‘Turn in Bridal Trends Expected!’ claimed the Tribune. Blushing Bride panicked: ‘Have We Seen the Last of White?’ Some botanical magazine ran a feature on why natural orchids were better than brass, and asked for a letter-of-complaint campaign.

  Greaselight Weekly cut to the chase: ‘WHEN STARS COLLIDE’.)

  In the receiving line, Rose shook Emily.

  “The comb was for the veil, you mad thing, I can’t believe you went bareheaded! Peter, come here, darling, kiss me.”

  “That veil was like frosting myself,” Emily said to Roger, next in line. “Horrible stuff.”

  She moved to kiss his cheek, but he froze, and they stood, her lips ghosting his skin, a moment too long.

  “Horrible stuff,” Roger agreed, moved down the line to shake Peter’s hand.

  The guests flooded the dance floor. Roger had never been much of a dancer. He considered signing the guest book. Didn’t. She’d ordered a plain cake with chocolate icing, and it sat forgotten on a side table away from the band and the lights.

  After he got home he hailed her libris.

  “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to see you. I thought I had, but turns out you dressed to match the cake. When they cut you up I was beside myself.”

  He didn’t say, I can’t believe you did it. He didn’t say, Peter wants to be famous and you want to be good and those are very different things, Emily. Emily.

  “Hope the honeymoon is lovely,” he said, hung up.

  Three days later he had a message, a screenful of tidy capitals.

  BORED TO TEARS IN PARIS. NEED TO BE ACTING. WROTE PLAY OVER WEEKEND. GOT LETTER ABOUT HOW I HATE ORCHIDS; PEOPLE ARE MAD. HUSH ABOUT DRESS—ALL WAS LOVELY—YOUR LOSS.

  They sat down at the table with a bottle of Scotch to work out the run.

  Peter pulled out his libris, scrolled furiously through their catalog. The case was a scrap of poster from back when venues begged for charity shows. (It still had a sliver of the ‘SOLD OUT’ sign.)

  Sometimes Roger caught Peter smiling at it when he thought he was alone.

  “We’ve got to start with a comedy,” Peter said.

  “Agreed,” said Roger. Dramatons had never mastered timing; automaton-comedies relied on sight gags.

  Peter frowned. “The Last March of Colonel Preson? It’s still our best.”

  He was right (he was often right). Roger slid it to the front page.

  “Then a romance,” Emily said, and Roger said, “And end on a drama.”

  They didn’t bother discussing which romance; it was time for Mira.

  “The drama’s got to be stunning,” Peter said. “None of the old stuff. They’re too good with that.”

  Emily skimmed her libris (still in the factory case); the light cast shadows along her face.

  “It seems unfair they can do Shakespeare,” she murmured.

  Peter said (because it would have to be Peter who said it), “What about a War play?”

  It was the one thing no one wanted from Dramatons; automatons had jobs to fill because English sons had died. Dramatons never touched on the War.

  “I think we’d do better with The Condemned Woman,” Roger suggested, not looking at Emily.

  Peter dropped a hand to the table. “And have another Cardiff on our hands? No.”

  “Stop acting like we killed
someone,” Emily muttered, but she didn’t look up. A moment later she said, “We could try Pale Ghost.”

  “And what am I supposed to do while you two are making cow-eyes at each other?” Peter asked, but then he stood, so it was settled.

  The room seemed dimmer with Peter gone (rooms always did), but Roger preferred it. He was getting to an age where dimming the lights a little did a world of good.

  “I miss Phil and Rose,” she said.

  He glanced down at his hands, which he’d folded over his libris (ebony inlaid with a little tin star).

  She tapped a rhythm with her fingers.

  “I’m going out,” she said at last.

  No surprise. Emily haunted theatres to watch the enemy in action.

  She’d be going to the Theatre Dramaturgica. He’d seen posters on the way to the flat; they were staging Regina Gloriana. (Emily was too old for the part, now.)

  What surprised him was the question, “Come along?”

  He looked at her for a moment.

  Then he stood. “By all means,” he said. “After two weeks on choppy seas I’ve really been glutted on rest; I’m just aching to stumble around a strange city at all hours.”

  “You could just say no, you ham,” she said, which was the first time he’d even thought about it.

  The Dramaturgica was a temple of geometry. The seats were arranged in a trapezoid; the curtain was pulled straight across like a Japanese screen; the proscenium inlay was a mass of acute angles.

  “Clever,” said Emily as they took their seats.

  As the lights went down, Roger saw why.

  The Dramatons were sculpted and padded and dressed and painted until they were almost human, but the effect was . . . not quite. The sharp points of the proscenium helped soften the rough edges of the players.

  The audience seemed unaware, but Roger could see it. It wasn’t much. Maybe one beat in twenty stuttered. They moved like player pianos: the right notes on time every time, with no grace or life.

  But they had flawless faces, sharp and perfect bodies. Even the aging King was handsome. All of them had a flashy beauty, a mask of quality. No one in the audience cared to know that anything was missing.

  It felt like the balcony was tilting, like Roger was going to crash to the ground.

  It always did, when he saw them act.

  This, Roger hated most. In every city, Dramatons were doing their job. Standardized. No mistakes. No changes. Thirty years from now, an audience not yet born would be watching this scene exactly this way.

  When the Queen embraced her consort it was a moment late, and her face was flat and unworried; but in filmy robes against a throne of eight-point stars, who else would think to see it?

  At the interval he said, “Not comforting, is it?”

  “No,” she said, sounding far away.

  “Maybe Peter’s right,” Roger went on. “The novelty is something, but after a while it will grate, won’t it, all this ratcheting about? People will want human actors back. These will be old hat in a few years.”

  “It had better be a very few years, or we won’t live to see it.”

  She was right more often than Peter was.

  He stood up. “We should go home.”

  “You go if you like,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how this one ends. I’m going to stick it out.”

  On his way out he glanced behind him; her hands were clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed on the stage.

  She came home late.

  He heard her moving through the flat, walking quietly so as not to wake Peter, and Roger wondered if she had stood at the stage door.

  (The stars went back to the dressing rooms only after stage-door photographs, to be calibrated by their handlers. Roger hadn’t waited since the first time, ages ago—once was more than enough for that.

  But Emily—well, they all had bad habits.)

  The Metropolitan was bright-scrubbed and shabby, and Mr. Christie greeted them with the same forced cheer that was Peter’s signature.

  “Mr. Elliott, Mrs. El—Ms. Howard, apologies, Mr. Cavanaugh, a pleasure. Your journey was uneventful, I trust?”

  “Do you know who set up the Dramatons at the dock?” from Emily.

  Christie coughed. “The Metropolitan and the Dramaturgica are at the start of a relationship, and thought it would—we like to draw a little attention when we can.”

  “Of course,” said Peter, hopping onstage and looking around. “Happy to be here.”

  “You’ll find the dressing rooms sufficient, I hope. And the flat’s suitable?” Mr. Christie frowned, as if just remembering his stars might not like bunking up together like bit players. “Rents, you understand—”

  “Nonsense,” Peter cut in, grinning. “We’re piled on each other backstage, seems right to bring it home. We’re just excited to get to work. The dressing rooms?”

  He and Emily walked with Mr. Christie past the curtain. Roger looked out across the audience. The seats were upholstered in dull gold, fraying at the edges. Seat 5L was missing, an empty socket stage left.

  He was too old to be here. This was a battleground for soldiers young enough to have a fight left in them.

  When he caught up, Peter was glad-handing the secondaries, and Emily was in discussion with Mr. Christie.

  “The result’s worth the extra rehearsals, you understand.”

  The last was mimicry, too subtle for Mr. Christie, who only heard someone he liked, and nodded.

  Emily was quieter than Peter, but she was a deft hand at business.

  (“It’s like an auto, isn’t it?” she’d said to Roger ages ago. “You watch the engine for a while, the rest is common sense. Pass the salt.”)

  “I hope you can get by without the stage for a while,” Christie said to Roger as if he’d asked. “The secondary players are bit out of practice, and we’ll need the space to block them all.”

  “He doesn’t need to rehearse,” Emily said. “He’s the best actor in the world.”

  Mr. Christie took a proud breath, patted his pocket square like he was wired for sound. “Yes. Of course. Only the best for the Metropolitan, we’ve always said.”

  “Except seat 5L,” she said quietly, after Mr. Christie was gone, and Roger looked over at her a moment too late to catch her eye.

  Peter was giddy; he turned up the radio and skipped Emily around the maze of the living room; then he stopped, spread his arms.

  “We’ll throw a party,” he said. “Thespians aren’t a dying breed! Alive and well in London, this autumn! I should call Christie.”

  Roger and Emily looked at each other.

  Roger said, “We might want to rehearse first, Peter.”

  He smiled and danced into the kitchen. “Nonsense! This is going to be the story of the year on the newsreels, you watch me. Most of them are hopeless, but no one’s going to notice, and there was some David and some Penelope who have a chance at it if they work. She’d be lovely in Pale Ghost as your sister, Emily.”

  “She would,” Emily agreed smoothly, the way she always did when Peter mentioned a girl he was going to sleep with.

  “Better get started,” said Roger, and stood.

  He closed his bedroom door tightly and studied his script until the words ran into each other, a maze of letters he didn’t understand.

  II. Little Tin Stars

  Emily got Peter to see reason, and they rehearsed for a month before Peter announced the party.

  Christie wasn’t happy. “Mr. Grant, of course that’s a generous idea, but the terms of your lease forbid—”

  “Oh, we’ll have it here!” Peter said, as if that had been the plan all along, and Emily looked with sympathy at poor Mr. Christie, who was out of his league with Peter when it came to finding loopholes.

  Roger was gnawing on his bottom lip to keep his countenance. (Born gentleman.)

  But as Christie moved past her, Emily winked at Roger, and of course then he smiled.

  Twenty years ago, whenever they’d gon
e on tour, Emily and Rose had four trunks, not counting Rose’s jewelry. Emily hated the stuff (once during The Duchess the fake pearls had broken and they’d spent the interval frantically sweeping so they wouldn’t break their necks), but Rose slung bangles over her wrists like armor.

  Every night the five of them had walked out together into blinding flashbulbs, a knot of long jackets and long gowns, a cluster of stars.

  Their shows were staged in opera houses, and they’d gathered in the wings at the start of each performance to listen to two thousand people applauding as the curtain rose. The whole stage trembled under their feet.

  Emily opened her suitcase and shook off her good gown. If she hung it in the bathroom while she bathed, most of the wrinkles would fall out in the steam. The rest of the wrinkles didn’t matter; they’d match her face.

  “Oh, we’ve got just LOADS of people interested,” Penelope said. “Nearly three hundred people came to our last one, it was smashing!”

  Emily looked out at the sparse collection of guests. The three photographers who’d bothered to show were drinking the good gin and not taking any pictures.

  “God,” Penelope went on, like it was a conversation, “I can’t WAIT till the run. We’ve been gnawing since we knew you were coming—I mean, THE Peter Elliott, THE Emily Howard! I’ve loved you for AGES, ever since I was little! I won’t let you down, I promise.”

  Emily glanced over at Penelope and her dress, made of beaded netting and optimism.

  “We should try the bar,” Emily said. It would give the photographers something to shoot, and she needed a drink.

  Roger was talking with two young men; they were his sons in Pale Ghost, and the suitors in Colonel Preson, and something in Mira she didn’t remember. They were hanging on his every word, nodding solemnly in tandem, and she would have laughed, except it was Roger and he generally deserved someone’s attention.

  “Darling,” said Peter from beside her, “things are picking up! What do you think?”

  He pointed to the bar, where Penelope was posing for two cameras. She moistened her lips and glanced at Peter.

  Emily had never looked at Peter that way, not once.

  (He had a soft spot for the exception to the rule.)

  “Well, go on,” Emily said at last.

  Peter kissed her cheek.