Writers of the Future 32 Science Fiction & Fantasy Anthology

by L. Ron Hubbard

  —and they stumbled into the kitchen, trying to catch their balance. Heat washed over them as Nelly slumped against the stove and Anna shut the door against the bitter winter.

  “How . . . how did you do that . . . girl?”

  Anna’s mouth opened and closed, but she had no answer.

  “Doesn’t . . . matter. Find your brothers.” Nelly’s voice was settling, the shivering lessening. “Go!”

  Anna nodded and went to the kitchen door, cracking it open so she could peer through to the hallway beyond.

  Tall canvases lined one side of the hall. Dark figures looked down from centuries past, repainted as ghosts by moonlight through the full-height windows. Warm light leaked from a door at the other end of the long gallery, but the hallway itself was empty. It seemed all the guards were outside.

  Anna scurried down the hall, but as she passed through the bright shafts of moonlight, two Queen’s Guard on horseback turned the corner outside the house, clearly visible through the leaded windows.

  She ducked inside the door at the end, heart pounding, eyes closed, throat clenched. As the seconds passed with no sound of alarum, she slid to the floor and breathed again.

  The rushing in her ears subsided, and she opened her eyes.

  Sir John was in the room, crouching over something in the flickering candlelight.

  Panic and bile rose up her throat, and Anna cast about for somewhere, anywhere to hide. A plush sofa sat in the corner nearest her, and she scrambled toward it.

  As soon as she crouched behind the sofa she peered back round it. A few candles struggled against the darkness, barely illuminating the rich hangings and thick carpets. An enormous chandelier glinted in the half-light above where Sir John crouched with his back to her, busying himself with a wide metal bowl. It must have been five foot across, and made of lead alloy to judge by its dull reflection. A bundle of cables trailed off behind an ornate modesty screen.

  The door opened wide, and Anna pulled herself back into the corner.

  “Ah,” came Sir John’s voice, “Your Majesty.”

  Queen Victoria stepped into the room, yards from where Anna hid. She crossed the drawing room and sat in a large high-backed chair before the bowl, projecting authority, expectation, and not a little impatience.

  “Well then, Sir John, let us be on with it.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty, a moment’s more preparation,” said Sir John with a bow. He moved smoothly from the bowl to the modesty screen, careful not to show his back to the Queen.

  Anna moved to the other end of the sofa and tried to see where he went, but it was too dark behind the screen to see what he was up to.

  She heard a whimper from behind it, though. A whimper she knew.

  Boys!

  A deep thrumming sound swelled up from the large lead bowl, and a cold light cast new shadows across the drawing room, stealing the darkness Anna had been about to move through. If he’s hurt them behind there . . .

  The shining figure of a gentleman stood over the lead bowl, floating inches above it, as if on a step. He wavered, like a mirror underwater, and there was a leaden sheen to him. He was staring at Anna with a stern, unblinking expression.

  The Mourning Queen stood and reached out one gloved hand to him.

  Sir John stepped back into the room from behind the screen. “Prince Albert returned to you, Your Majesty. As promised.”

  He’s calling the dead back! How in the Devil’s name is he doing that? Oh, this ain’t no good thing. It can’t be. I’ve got to get the boys out of here!

  Anna watched Prince Albert, waiting for him to look away, but he remained completely still.

  Completely.

  Queen Victoria stared at Prince Albert, and Sir John at Queen Victoria.

  Cautiously, Anna slipped out from behind the sofa and along the wall. The shining image of Prince Albert pivoted to follow her, unmoving and static, but always facing her. He ain’t real!

  Sneaking with absolute care, Anna passed inches behind Sir John’s back, in full view of the Queen and saved only by Her Majesty’s fixation on the shining apparition. Anna kept her eyes on Sir John, ready to run at the first sign of him turning, until she was behind the screen and stepping over the bundled cables.

  Charlie. Daniel. Jacob.

  Her brothers were sat on plain wooden chairs, wide-eyed and terrified. All three held a pair of lead handles, like the ones on Anna’s loom, cable trailing from the bottom and into the room.

  Anna rushed to Jacob, youngest of the three and nearest her, and hugged his face to her neck. He felt cold—not winter cold, but deathly cold.

  “Oh Jacob, what’s going on?” she whispered beneath the resonant thrum of the machine.

  Jacob pulled his head away and stared over her shoulder, face taut with fear. Anna followed his gaze to a canvas of Prince Albert that hung on the screen. The image was the spit of the apparition in the bowl.

  Charlie, the eldest, sat in the center, and met Anna’s gaze as she turned back.

  “Charlie! What is this?” she hissed.

  “Anna, get out of here!” he whispered in reply. “You can’t risk getting caught!”

  “I’m not going anywhere till I know what’s going on.”

  “We have to bring Prince Albert back! Sir John told us of the Prussians and their invasion, how we need Prince Albert to stop them rampaging about with their filthy coal machines!”

  “Rampaging Prussians? What nonsense is this? Look, there ain’t no way of bringing the dead back. That ain’t Prince Albert out there, it’s only an image!”

  “Please, Anna, we have to do this!”

  Anna looked at Charlie—really looked—and across at Daniel and Jacob. They were terrified. Desperate for salvation—salvation they needed from Prince Albert. That desperation was driving their Squalor and creating the image.

  She had to get them out of here. But how could she do it without Shuttleworth knowing? If the image of Albert disappeared, he’d know something was up and catch them before they got away.

  I’d take their place if I could, but I ain’t frightened enough for Shuttleworth’s machine. Oh, if only I could be as scared as them! Think, Anna, think. You’ve got to feel their terror like you felt Nelly’s cold, like you felt Sally’s pain, like—

  —oh good Lord, that’s it. That’s how I’ve been doing it. It ain’t just what I need. It’s what anyone needs, if I feel it strong enough.

  Not just Squalor. Sympathy.

  “Give me these,” she said, taking the lead handles from Charlie’s hands. “Get your brothers and get out. Go to the kitchen. There’s a woman there called Nelly, she’ll help.”

  “What are you going to do?” whispered Charlie.

  “I’ll bring Albert back, don’t you worry. Now go!”

  As Charlie went to his brothers, Anna gripped the handles tight. They’re so young. They’re so scared. Terrified of the Prussians, and only Albert can help. Albert. Albert. Her stomach lurched with a hot fear. The lead handles were cold in her hands, a cold that spiked up her forearms like ice needles in her veins. Charlie was talking to Daniel and Jacob, and the cold surged as they released each handle. Her arms were numb now, and the ice was stabbing at her chest, roiling against the heat in her stomach. The light in the room began to dim.

  The boys had all stopped to watch her. She turned to them with gritted teeth. “Go!”

  The cold ebbed as her concentration broke. Stupid! Think of their fear, think of their fear, think of their—

  “What is going on?” hissed a new voice.

  Sir John stood on the other side of Anna, his eyes filled with anger.

  All the fear and terror and uncertainty in Anna, hers and the boys’ both, coalesced into a white-hot rage.

  “You tell me, Shuttleworth. Scaring young boys like this? Terrifying them? No. You�
��ll not do it to them. I’ll do it for ’em.”

  Shuttleworth’s face was dark and clenched, quivering with anger. “Fine. Do it, and drain yourself. Divided among three, they would have had the strength to survive, but you will lose your life in this, fool. And see if I care.”

  Another voice broke in. “One is alarmed at the mention of the loss of life.”

  Shuttleworth almost jumped out of his skin as Queen Victoria spoke from behind him. Anna’s brothers stepped back into the modesty screen, knocking it over.

  “Your Majesty,” said Shuttleworth, “my most abject apologies. Merely technical difficulties and nothing to be concerned with.” Sir John all but scraped the floor in his obsequiousness.

  “On the contrary, the welfare of my subjects is of the utmost concern to me. What precisely is the arrangement here?”

  “Ah . . . well, the lead alloy handles are a conduit for the emotions and energies of the—”

  “One presumes you are about to lecture on Squalor. I assure you, Sir, I am aware of how my country prospers. My confusion pertains to the presence of these children and the apparent threat to their lives.”

  “My apologies, Your Majesty. The apparatus concentrates a desire for the Prince Consort, in this instance produced through fear, hence the requirement for such young . . . volunteers. The girl, however, is an intrusion shortly to be removed.”

  “Fear? Why would anyone be afraid of my Albert?”

  “The children were told of a threatened Prussian invasion, Your Majesty, that only Prince Albert could stop.”

  “What utter nonsense!” Queen Victoria looked at the boys, at Anna holding the lead handles, and finally at Shuttleworth with imperious disdain. “No, this will not do. I will not stand by while one of my subjects sacrifices herself to save others. It is a Queen’s duty to protect her citizens, and it is my place to make the sacrifice. I thank you, young lady, for reminding me of it. If you would be so kind?”

  The Mourning Queen gestured. It took Anna a moment to realize she wanted the lead handles; she passed them over in a stunned silence, cables trailing.

  The Queen spoke as she took hold of them. “A desire for the Prince Consort, you say? Who could have a stronger desire for Albert than I?”

  “Your Majesty,” Shuttleworth panicked, “please, no!”

  But his voice was lost beneath a sudden swell of noise from the bowl, an enormous hum that Anna felt in her ribcage, and the image of Prince Albert bloomed anew above the bowl: a thousand times more brilliant than before, and moving now, turning to face the Queen and look upon her, and despite the piercing blue light of that figure, Anna could see, quite clearly, the smile upon his face.

  The Queen returned the smile, eyes shining with delight, and then collapsed to the floor, dead.

  Dawn’s light stained Gawthorpe Hall with shades of pink and peach, and the frosted lawn twinkled copper and silver beneath Anna’s feet.

  “You realize what you are then, girl?” asked Nelly.

  “I figured it out in there. What you said earlier about Sympathy. Squalor’s a selfish thing, but Sympathy, caring for other people . . . why me, though? Why now?”

  “You care about other folk, girl. You’re selfless in a way most have forgotten. And you’re of an age now where you’re not just thinking of yourself. Children are all wrapped up in themselves, but you’ve grown up. You think of them around you. I wondered if it was you as fixed Sally White’s fingers yesterday. Reckon it was.”

  The Queen’s Guard marched Shuttleworth out of his own front door in shackles and threw him into a coach. Queen Victoria was borne behind him on the shoulders of her guardsmen, held high on a stretcher, lead handles still gripped in her hands.

  “What’ll happen to him?” asked Anna. Daniel and Jacob hugged her from each side, and Charlie stood close by her shoulder.

  “For regicide? They’ll strip him of his title and hang him.”

  “I didn’t want him to die. In his own way he was trying to do the best for people.”

  “If he thought he was what was best for folk, we’re better off without him.”

  They fell silent as the carriages rolled past, gravel crunching in the crisp winter air.

  “Come on then, girl,” said Nelly once the carriages had passed into the freezing mist that clung to Habergham Drive. “We can use you in the movement. A Sympathy witch looks good for us.”

  “No.”

  “No? Don’t you want to help?”

  “Aye, I do. But I want to do it my way, Nelly Ludd. You ain’t what’s best for folk neither. You can follow me if you want, and Lord knows you’d make a powerful difference, but I’m changing the world my way. We can make the world a better place without having to make it worse first.”

  Anna squeezed her brothers close in the chill morning air. “Come on then, boys, best get you home. Mrs. Hobble’ll have fretted herself half to death by now, worrying about us all.”

  Daniel looked up from her side. “Haven’t you got to change the world, though?”

  She smiled. “I have, aye. But I reckon I’ve got to get you lot to bed first. Now go on with you!”

  She walked down the drive with her brothers beside her.

  A moment later, Nelly Ludd followed.

  Dinosaur Dreams in Infinite Measure

  written by

  Rachael K. Jones

  illustrated by

  Preston Stone

  * * *

  about the author

  Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, where she picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages along with and an addiction to running. Now she lives in Athens, Georgia with her husband. She is a writer, an editor, a podcaster, and a secret android.

  Rachael has been a voracious consumer of the written word since elementary school, when after she’d read all the books in the classroom library, a teacher gave her the dictionary to keep her occupied. She went on to get a degree in English, but didn’t do much with it until National Novel Writing Month got her back into creative writing years later.

  These days she is pursuing a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Georgia, which combines her love of linguistics, science, literacy, and communication. In her free time, she writes stories about her favorite things: dinosaurs, friendship, feminism, and upwardly mobile brains in jars.

  about the illustrator

  Preston Stone was born and raised in Loveland, Colorado. In preschool he began making images of superheroes and monsters with markers. From there, he expanded the subject matter to include studies of various wildlife, eventually developing a fondness for drawing insects. There was even a time when it seemed he might pursue entomology as a career. Instead, he stayed on the art path, realizing that he simply had an aesthetic appreciation for what most people viewed as ugly or creepy.

  High school brought with it the discovery of new art and entertainment. Anime and tabletop fantasy role-playing games occupied much of his time, and he began to emulate the themes and styles found in their art.

  He continued his education at Aims Community College where he earned certificates in game design and animation. In 2013, he earned a Bachelor of Art and Design, with an art emphasis and drawing concentration from the University of Northern Colorado.

  He’s currently working as a freelance artist in fantasy and science fiction, and he hopes to one day have his illustration work on the covers of books and his creature and character concept work used in video games and movies.

  He credits any success to the support he received from his parents, who provided the tools, the studio, the artistic foundation, and an attitude of complete acceptance toward his decision to choose a career as an artist.

  Dinosaur Dreams in Infinite Measure

  Mom had hands like dinosaur bones: fragile at a glance, but old and strong, hard
ened by time and pressure. Fossils endure. My mother had endured 80 years already, through disease and bereavement, through a long career ended in humiliation and disgrace, and now this final insult: her own daughter demanding she leave it all behind, the house and farm and everything in it.

  “I’ve worked hard for this house. I worked for everything I ever had.” Her voice was a tight, tense warble. Fossil-hard fingers bent around a mug painted with a cowgirl on a lavender T-rex, lasso roping round the handle.

  It wasn’t just the house, not really. Primrose Farms Poultry had forced her from her life’s work as an industrial engineer, and thanks to an intellectual property clause, Mom hadn’t even kept the rights to her own inventions.

  “No one’s trying to take away your stuff,” I told her gently. “We’re just worried about you, alone out here and with the animals, and the house like this.” The farm was expensive, too. The upkeep outstripped its worth.

  “I can take care of it myself. I’ll clean it up. I just need time.”

  The kitchen looked shabbier than usual. A stack of textbooks took up most of the table: engineering, animal anatomy, evolutionary biology, paleontology. The top one read Principles of Gene Manipulation. The house had accumulated snowdrifts of clutter over the years. A baby gate held back a tidal wave of dirty clothes from the laundry room. Usually a pink stuffed bunny sat crammed against the bars. Uncle Louis called it The Convict, but it had gone missing today. I plucked a folded sheet of heavy orange construction paper from the table, the creases grayed with age. One of my childhood paintings, a long, skinny purple splotch labeled BRONTOSAURUS in neat adult block letters.

  “See, stuff like this is the problem. You need to let go of this sentimental crap.”

  She swiped the drawing from me and tucked it into the genetics book’s cover. “That’s not yours anymore.” Her tone was bitter, like pith.