by Angels
Eight years after Anna Holtz’s disappearance, Radulf acceded to the throne. A mediocre, irascible, and ill-loved ruler, his persistent refusal to marry and perpetuate the Dynasty induced anxiety among his advisors; an anxiety that turned to panic the day he was diagnosed with an almost always fatal disease.
Despite their efforts, they could not prevent the news from spreading throughout Wessendam. Eventually it came to the Ligeiastrass and to the ears of an old inventor, who went upon the hour to the Palace of the Dynasts. On his calling card, he wrote I can show you Anna Holtz, and this magical formula gave him access to the very room where the Dynast Radulf awaited death.
His face ashen, hastily dressed, not yet shod, the Dynast sat in a large armchair. “If this is a jest, I will have you killed,” he said.
“I can show you Anna Holtz, Majesty; it is the pure and simple truth. Follow me home, but I must insist that we go alone.”
Without a word, the Dynast slipped on his shoes, shouldered a cloak whose hood he pulled down over his face, and motioned for Johann Havel to follow. They took a long narrow corridor, went down two flights of stairs, and found themselves in the Palace gardens. Johann took the lead and brought the Dynast to number thirty-seven of the Ligeiastrass.
In his private workshop stood the time machine, freshly dusted. “This is the machine that Anna Holtz used eight years ago to regress into her own past, so as to flee beyond your reach. I see that you refuse to believe me, Majesty. But I only ask for a minute of your time—afterward, you can judge me mad if you will. Sit down on the seat next to me.” Johann turned the pedals. The horizontal gear creaked and began to revolve; the metal moons, suns, and stars passed more and more swiftly against the night sky. Radulf protested: “What is this—” but cried out suddenly when Johann grasped his arm. Could it be his illness already smiting him? A terrible vertigo had gripped his senses, and it was as if the room’s walls had become insubstantial. Johann forced him to climb down from the seat and led him elsewhere—it seemed to Radulf they were passing straight through a wall. His head spun; he could understand nothing.
They stood against a high window. The lamps behind them cast squares of gold onto the street’s pavement.
“Look well, Majesty, look closely, there she is!”
And Radulf saw Anna Holtz walking, almost running, along the street, holding by the hand a young man whom he did not recognize. He cried out again, this time almost with joy.
“She is here! I have found her! I will give you whatever you ask; but we must catch up to her, now. . . .”
“No. We are twenty-five years back, Majesty. Your place is not here. You will never see her again; she will never be yours, because she never was.”
Radulf pried himself free from Johann’s grasp. “I care nothing for your desires and theories, Herr Havel. I will fetch her, and you are powerless to prevent me.”
“You will come back to your own time. You have no choice.”
“How so? Your time machine did not follow us here, did it?”
“What time machine? That assemblage of gears and pulleys, of gewgaws and canvas? That is not a time machine. It has taken me all my life to learn that time machines do not exist. There is nothing in the world save love, and will, and death. Now come.” And he took the Dynast’s arm again, and, ignoring his desperate imprecations, he took him back through the corridors of time.
THE END
Radulf called his advisors and agents to him. As he was about to order Johann Havel’s assassination, he fell silent, hung his head. “To what purpose . . . ?” he whispered. Then, in a voice barely stronger: “I wish to dictate my last will and testament.”
He died a few months later, without acknowledged descendants. The throne of Neuerland remained empty. A shiver of worry went through the houses in the rich districts of Wessendam. The poor, however, felt little sadness or fear. In fact, many of them refused to publicly mourn their last sovereign. The new authorities of Neuerland refused to let that gesture go unpunished, but their repression aroused the people’s anger, and in the subsequent riots dynastic rule was overthrown.
Johann Havel paid these events little attention. For the hand of Chronos had at last released him, and he felt only immense relief, and immense weariness. He took down the sign from his door, for in the final accounting, he had never invented anything, save for his own existence.
He saw two or three more summers, and one day he was found dead in his workshop, seated in an old armchair next to a vast and incomprehensible machine, clutching to his breast a small mechanical elephant.
The flow of time breaks on the houses of Wessendam without altering their appearance. The high brick walls, decorated with baked porcelain, cross the centuries without seeing their colours fade. The thick and rippled glass of the narrow windows, through which the world appears as if submerged in abnormally transparent water, flows only imperceptibly in its lead. When evening comes, the yellow light of lamps casts squares of gold onto the pavement of the sloping streets, as it has always been.
At the heart of the Palace of the Dynasts, which has become the House of the People—for no one can halt the course of History—in a room where relics of bygone times have been stored, stands Johann Havel’s time machine. Its gears and chains have long since been overcome by rust, and the marvellous machine is frozen into absolute immobility.
And yet the time machine is still functioning. For, from within its forgotten room where dust softly gathers, carrying along with it the House of the People, the city of Wessendam and the whole of Neuerland, it progresses slowly, at the rate of one second per second, toward a future of which no more is written.
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED
“Stolen Fires” was originally published in Edge Detector x3, 1991.
“Tobacco Words” was originally published in tomorrowsf x19, 1996.
“In Yerusalom” was originally published in Island Dreams — Montreal Writers of the Fantastic, Véhicule Press, 2003.
“Android Sex Show at 8:00 Nitely” was originally published in The Stars as Seen from this Particular Angle of Night, Red Deer Press, 2004.
“Within the Mechanism” was originally published in tomorrowsf x25, 1997.
“Ariakin” was initially published in French as “Ariakin” in Solaris x133, 2000.
“Hunter and Prey” was initially published in French as “Chasseur et proie” in imagine . . . x72, 1995.
“Black Angel” was initially published in French as “Un ange noir” in Solaris x178, 2011.
“The Song of the Mermaid” first appears in this collection.
“Child of the Sleeping Worlds” was originally published in tomorrowsf x15, 1995. Initially published in French as “L’Enfant des Mondes Assoupis” in SOL, Éditions Logiques, 1991.
“Ignis Cœlestis” was originally published in Chiaroscuro, 2003.
“Rose of the Desert” was originally published in tomorrowsf x23, 1996. Initially published in French as “La rose du désert” in Orbite d’approche, 1992.
“Nausicaä” was originally published in tomorrowsf x13, 1995. Initially published in French as “Nausicaä” in imagine . . . x52, 1990.
“Johann Havel’s Marvellous Machine” was originally published in On Spec x25, 1996. Initially published in French as “La merveilleuse machine de Johann Havel” in Solaris x107, 1993.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yves Meynard was born in 1964 in Québec City. He lived most of his life in Montreal, but recently moved to Ottawa. Active in Québec SF circles since 1986, he served as literary editor for the magazine Solaris from 1994 to 2001. He has published over fifty short stories in French and English, winning many awards for his short fiction, including ten Boréal and five Aurora Awards, along with the Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique Québécois, Québec’s highest award in the field, in 1994. His work has appeared in several magazines and various anthologies, such as Northern Stars and Tesse
racts. His story “Tobacco Words” was reprinted in Year’s Best SF 2. He has collaborated several times with Jean-Louis Trudel under the common pen name of Laurent McAllister.
In addition to his short stories, he has published twenty books, alone or in collaboration. Seventeen of them are in French, his native language, and three in English. The Book of Knights was a finalist for the 2000 Mythopoeic Award for best novel; in 2012 Tor Books published the fantasy novel Chrysanthe. Yves holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal and earns a living as a software developer.
COPYRIGHT
Angels & Exiles © 2015 by Yves Meynard
Cover artwork © 2015 by Vince Haig
Interior design © 2015 by Jared Shapiro
All rights reserved.
Published by ChiZine Publications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-309-4
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
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