The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “You’ll have it by Thursday,” she said with a smile.

  The place was a warren, and though she could hear Roger there was no chance of finding him, so she sat in the lobby thinking up a clever Georgian history.

  When he came out he had one script in his hands.

  “Rumbly villains thin on the ground?”

  “It’s a script for an American play,” he said, not looking at her. “Traveling company.”

  “Oh,” she said, felt the floor crumbling under her feet.

  When they got back to the suite he put the script in a drawer and she worked for hours on the typewriter, keys clacking, while he read the pages she’d written.

  Finally he said, “Go to bed, Em,” and she realized it was night.

  “The radio drama wants another villain,” she said as she stood. “Can I bring you back from the dead to kidnap an ingénue? You’ll owe me a pint.”

  When she glanced up into the bedroom, he was looking at her over the top of his script. He had already been looking at her. He looked at her too much.

  “Emily,” he said quietly, “there won’t be more parts. I’m getting old. There’s nothing left.”

  “You bloody coward,” she said tartly, because the idea of him being gone left a cavern in her chest.

  He snorted. “A coward and a wise man sleep on the same pillow.”

  From The Condemned Woman.

  “Don’t you dare spit lines at me,” she snapped, and launched herself away from the desk into the bedroom room. She was furious, suddenly, had to be away from him, as far as she could get without losing sight of him.

  After a moment he appeared in the doorway, looking more composed than she felt.

  “Emily, really.” He’d put his robe on over his pajamas, and it made him look like the boudoir scene in a comedy. “You can’t be surprised I’m getting old.”

  “May I be surprised you’re giving up?”

  He folded his arms. “It’s one thing to write. It’s another to try to fool people into hiring you when we’re up to our ears in beautiful machines. You can’t keep the past going. It’s over. We’ve outlived our time.”

  She shook her head, wondered if they were still talking about acting. “I’m still here.”

  He spread his arms. “I don’t see you setting foot on stage! Even if I was the best actor who’d ever lived, I can’t fight this alone!”

  “But you ARE! You’re just a coward! I’ve been telling you for thirty bloody years and you’ve never listened, because you’re too much of a coward to hear me! Why do you think you’ve never—“

  She stopped, but they both knew what she hadn’t said. The damage was done.

  He took a slow step backward.

  (She recognized the breath he took onstage when he was about to deliver an insult that rang.)

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s one mistake I never made.”

  Thirty years, and this close they had never come.

  His voice was like a living thing.

  When she could breathe she said, “Then I won’t trouble you. Good night.”

  Her coat was where she’d thrown it, and if the concierge noticed she had pajamas underneath when she asked for a separate room, he had the good training not to say.

  “And did you leave anything in your room we could bring you, Miss?”

  There was a long pause before she said, “No.”

  V. This Bright Affair

  Roger’s room was horribly quiet, but it took him a day and a half to find a reason to leave.

  When he did, he wondered what he had been afraid of. Emily wasn’t in the lobby; she wasn’t on the street; she wasn’t at the club when he stopped in for a drink.

  He felt foolish. It wasn’t as though he was going to see her, no matter where he looked. He shouldn’t have worried.

  The American play was about a man whose business partner betrayed him to the Mob. The man’s wife was murdered. The second act had three gun standoffs.

  When Roger reached the line, “I’ll have my revenge, you rat, no matter what it takes!” he got up from the table and turned on the radio.

  He never finished the third act.

  When the company called, he said sea voyages made him ill, and agreed to do a radio commercial for men’s suits.

  Roger looked up at the marquee of the Theatre Dramaturgica with its knife-sharp silver edges, and knew he was old.

  Rose, who’d given him her left arm (Phil had her right), whistled as the flashbulbs went off.

  “Peter knows how to premiere, I’ll give him that.”

  Ahead of them, Peter was dressed to the nines and flirting with the cameras. They’d brought an Ingénue for him; she stood beside Peter, grinning vacantly and winking at intervals. Her face was pulled tight and gleaming, but when the cameras went off she looked human enough.

  “Well, at least she’s more fun than Rose,” said Phil.

  “Ta,” said Rose, and dropped his arm.

  Roger smiled and walked Rose through the photographers.

  Rose could flash a coquette’s smile as well as any Ingénue, and flashbulbs skittered around them. She’d even cut her hair for fashion, and her Marcel gleamed.

  Just before they passed under the marquee Roger looked back for Phil and saw he was escorting Emily, several crowds behind.

  Emily was wearing her good black frock and smiling at the cameras like she knew something they didn’t, and they took her picture and then shrugged to one another.

  Roger took Rose inside, didn’t look back again.

  Turned out Peter, in a blaze of consideration, had seated Emily apart; her box was stage right, as far from them as the theatre allowed. She was perched on her chair, looking down at the stage.

  Roger got interested in his playbill.

  Phil took his seat. “Apparently the other seats are taken, or I would have stayed there. Bit of a bastard, Peter, really.”

  “I’ve half a mind to go over there,” said Rose.

  “I’ve half a mind to find Peter,” said Phil.

  But the lights went down and the curtain came up, and it was time for the play.

  It was an old story, acted in an old way; the audience clapped at the end of all the right speeches. However, Roger could see Peter’s mark on the way they moved, on the differences in their pauses and their use of the stage.

  Peter had given them the illusion of trying. Peter had at last stumbled onto his genius.

  Emily would be heartbroken.

  When the screen slid shut after Act One, Roger turned to comfort her, but it was only Rose, who was quietly mutilating the playbill.

  Phil frowned. “Are you all right?”

  “A bit under the weather, is all,” Rose said, tearing another corner. “Lots of excitement these past few weeks. More than I’m used to; Abigail’s so steady, and Phil’s a bore, of course.”

  “Ta,” said Phil.

  But Roger wasn’t surprised when he looked over a few moments later and saw Phil watching Rose with an expression of fondness and chagrin.

  (He was surprised the look lingered; Phil was studying her with the fondness of a long acquaintance, the fondness that goes unspoken between people who know one another enough to keep company in the face of all good sense.)

  Phil glanced up and flushed at being caught out, but shrugged without shame, and gave Roger the same look.

  Roger had thought Phil offered them space for old times’ sake, that because he couldn’t persevere he had instead provided.

  But Phil loved them. He loved them enough to want them all to live with him, close at hand and never really changing, sparing Phil a world of strangers and doubts.

  Roger thought of Emily, who had never looked at him like that in thirty years. When Emily looked at Roger it was to size him up and see him as he was, and if she ever found him lacking she said as much, and if she ever found him excelling she told him that, too.

  And when she had looked at him with love (fleeting, joyful, terrifying momen
ts), it had never been for the sake of something that was gone.

  He stood up so quickly he had to clap a hand to his hat to keep it from falling. “Rose,” he said, “if you’re ill I’m happy to take you home.”

  “Please.”

  By the time applause started for Act Two they were in the lobby, free from the silhouette in the box across the way, the sight of the beautiful machines.

  The idea that Phil was paying for two charity suites drove Roger into the world; if he was going to stay in London he’d have to start paying his way.

  (It wasn’t quite true—he’d heard three episodes of the radio soap that could only have been hers, and the Georgian play stood a good chance—but it didn’t do to think too long about Emily.)

  He walked through Covent Garden catching signs in the windows: Shop girls Wanted; Hiring Barkeep; Automaton Handler Positions Available. A bookshop off Mercer was seeking a seller; a tailor was looking for a decent drafter. The sign said, NO ARCHITECTS.

  When he noticed he was at the door of the Olympia Theatre, he was almost surprised.

  I’ve been telling you for thirty bloody years and you never listen.

  He stepped up to the will-call window. “Excuse me. I’d like to audition for the company.”

  The ticket-taker (a boy no more than twenty) frowned and looked around for help. None came.

  “Have you brought credentials?” he asked, looking proud of himself for asking.

  Roger said, “I’m the last human actor.”

  “Right,” said the boy after a moment, “let me just, erm . . . hm.”

  “I’ve a monologue prepared,” said Roger, “if that helps you.”

  The boy smiled thinly and disappeared, and Roger was just beginning to wonder if he should give up when the theatre doors opened and a gentleman strode through.

  He was wearing a vested suit and still had gloves on. Roger recognized a director.

  “I’m Michael Brinn. I understand you’re auditioning to be a handler.”

  “An actor.”

  Mr. Brinn frowned. “Beg pardon?”

  Roger took a breath for courage. “I’m the last working actor,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I’m a commodity.”

  Brinn snorted. “You’d go up against a Dramaton?”

  Roger just looked at him.

  In less time that Roger expected, Brinn spread his arms, a picture of patience, and led the way inside.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Roger, that’s—are you sure?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Phil.”

  Phil sat back, crossed his arms. “So, what did—Well. Congratulations. Couldn’t have happened to a better man.”

  Phil called Rose; Phil called for champagne.

  Then Rose was there in a flurry of robes, kissing them and congratulating them both like Phil had done something, too. She had one forgotten bobby pin sticking out of her Marcel and a spot of masque on her temple; her accolades couldn’t wait for fashion.

  Roger had hated Dramatons, on and off, since the beginning.

  (On, whenever he thought what would happen to all the actors he’d watched in all those cities, the breathless dark of the theatre.

  Off, when Emily told him to be kinder.)

  When there were Dramatons in the papers—Ingénues in baggy dresses that hid their hip joints standing next to grinning Heroes, a smooth-skinned Femme Fatale standing alone (the only women Dramatons who stood alone in photographs)—he’d looked at their blank celluloid eyes and thought, Naught as queer as folk.

  The plays began promptly and were always perfect. It didn’t matter to the audience that Dramatons weren’t real. It was no concern of theirs that the shells were empty.

  Let them settle, he’d thought, back then.

  Now Roger was older, and had to pick his battles. Acting alongside Dramatons seemed as hopeless a battle as any. It would make a fitting end.

  He spent the first night memorizing The Condemned Woman; he was surrounded by walking libraries, and he’d have to be note-perfect.

  Four times he turned to ask Emily for help.

  At last he gave up and called Phil.

  “I have to memorize this,” he said.

  Phil hung up.

  Rose and Phil were at his door ten minutes later, bearing breakfast.

  “My lord,” said Rose around a grape, “if you ever loved me, do not force me to beg for mercy. Let me die as I have chosen to.”

  “But you are not guilty! Must you take another’s crimes on your shoulders for that long walk to the grave? Must I mourn you twice—tomorrow, and now tonight?”

  “So soon,” Phil piped up. “And now, so soon, tonight.”

  “Bugger.” Roger cleared his throat. “Must I mourn you twice—tomorrow, and now, so soon, tonight?”

  “I hoped you would not love me enough to mourn,” said Rose, and made a sympathetic face at her libris.

  “Don’t you cry,” warned Phil.

  She threw a grape.

  His co-star was a Dame; they gave her salt-and-pepper hair and a thinner build than necessary.

  “She answers to the character name,” said her handler, an obscenely young man. “And the other major titles—my wife, my love.”

  Roger felt a bit ill. “And it changes every show?”

  “Of course. How else would we call them?” The boy shoved his spectacles up and closed the panel on her forehead. “She’s set for the blocking, Mr. Brinn.”

  From the orchestra seats, Mr. Brinn’s assistant opened the script for him.

  “We’ll open with you in the wings, my lady, if you please.”

  “Yes please,” the Dramaton said, and walked behind the curtain.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh, enter stage left and embrace her.”

  “Yes please,” said Roger pleasantly, and went to mark before anyone could reprimand him.

  When he wrapped his arms around the Dame she was unyielding, her body warm from all the little motors.

  “I told you not to,” the Dame said.

  He said, “How could I help it?”

  They went scene by scene, and as they traded lines and waited for cues (“Pause before the next line.” “Yes please.”), Roger could hear her blinking just under the sound of her voice.

  If it made Roger a little sad, he was careful not to show it. He’d asked for a place in the future, and this was it; lovely automatons without one comment that wasn’t programmed in. If it was lonely work, at least it was something to do; better to be lonely here.

  Roger left Emily a note with the concierge.

  Congratulations on the Georgian—Rose told me. It’s a lovely piece. Hope they treat it as it deserves.

  Changed my mind about fighting alone—The Condemned Woman goes up at the Olympia in a month. Doing what I can.

  Take care.

  After two weeks Roger understood why Dramatons had stayed away from naturalism; the Dame overheated three times trying to accommodate both Mr. Brinn’s stage directions and Roger’s speech patterns.

  “You could be more uniform, Cavanaugh,” Mr. Brinn suggested.

  “You’re paying me to not be uniform,” Roger pointed out, and that was the last time that came up.

  After three weeks there was talk of a newer model.

  They put an ad in the paper: “SEEKING DAME-MODEL AND HANDLER FOR HIRE. HISTORICAL DRAMA A MUST. HUMAN-LEVEL CALIBRATION STANDARDS. SIX-WEEK RUN.”

  “We’ll use the old one until then,” said Brinn.

  No one answered, and Roger began to feel a flicker of hope that maybe someday human-level calibration might turn into actual humans again. Not that he’d live to see it, but still, dare to dream.

  When he took the stage, the Dame model walked out to meet him in her star-spangled cloak, her face calibrated to be noble in suffering. The expression never altered; even when she simulated weeping, serenity remained.

  Emily had made it ugly; her Condemned Woman was n
oble when she could manage it, but was angry and terrified and jealous by turns, and at the end of the play, just before she schooled her features to go out and meet the hangman with decorum, she’d gripped his hand like she wanted to drag him down with her.

  He stepped up to the Dame model, embraced her.

  “I told you not to,” she said.

  He said, “How could I help it?”

  (“Too mournful,” said Brinn.)

  If there was an ache in his chest from beginning to end of every run, he didn’t worry about it. You got all kinds of aches and pains at his age.

  “Are you excited?” Rose asked him as soon as the waltz was over. “Just think, in a week you’ll be back at the Olympia! God, it’s been ages since we were there, a life ago, it’s mad that you’re back there, Abigail thinks it’s the maddest thing when I tell her.

  “And with the old Dame’s having all the mechanical trouble! What if she breaks in the middle, you’ll really be in it then, Emily talks about it sometimes, about what would happen if they just broke and there was nothing you could do—I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.”

  “Like a foxtrot,” he said.

  She took the hint, and they finished the dance in silence.

  Roger wasn’t surprised to see Peter at their table, waiting for him like the evil Duke in a melodrama.

  Phil and Rose vanished onto the dance floor.

  But Peter had never been good at playing villain, and when Roger said, “You look well, Peter,” the worst Peter could summon was, “Better than some.”

  “How’s the play going?”

  “Well, it was going well until I found out there was a novelty act down the street.”

  “It’s only a novelty the first time. Soon it will be so commonplace you won’t even have to worry about it.”

  Peter sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that, Roger, it’s just—Christ, this is important to me! How could you do it? You couldn’t find some other way to act?”

  Roger finished his drink rather than answer.

  “Right, sorry,” said Peter. “But it’s still a bit of a blow. Not that you care, now that you’ve made your point. I’ll hand it to you, though, I didn’t think you had that kind of showmanship in you. You should have seen Emily’s face when she told me.”

  Roger’s lungs contracted for a moment. “Oh?”