In Which a Curious Creature Is Introduced
You know, I believe my sight has returned,” said Ludbridge, blinking and rubbing his eyes. Mrs. Corvey, who had just finished changing her clothing while explaining how matters presently stood, turned to raise an eyebrow at him.
“My congratulations, Mr. Ludbridge. Lovely feeling, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed, Mrs. Corvey.”
“Now, Mr. Ludbridge, I believe I’ll just go see how my ladies are getting on. Like to know why all the lights are burning at the Hall, as well. I suggest you avail yourself of the soap and the washbasin and polish yourself up a bit, eh? So you don’t look quite so much as though you’d spent the last fortnight mucking about in caves. There’s a hairbrush and a comb on the table you can use, too.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I certainly shall.”
Mrs. Corvey drew her shawl around her shoulders and stepped out into the courtyard. She walked briskly toward the Great Hall, watching the lit windows, and consequently was startled when she trod on something unexpected. She looked down. She stared for a long moment at what lay in the courtyard. Then Mrs. Corvey turned around and walked back to the room behind the stables. She opened the door and beheld Ludbridge in the act of washing his face. When, puffing and blowing like a walrus, he reached for a towel, she said:
“If you please, Mr. Ludbridge, there’s a dead Frenchman outside. I wonder if you would be so kind as to come have a look at him?”
“Happy to oblige,” said Ludbridge, and followed her out into the courtyard. When they reached the corpse he drew a small cylindrical object from his pocket and adjusted a switch on it. A thin beam of brilliant light shot from one end, occasioning a cry of admiration from Mrs. Corvey.
“Oh, I do hope Mr. Felmouth makes up a few of those for me!”
“We call them electric candles; very useful. Let’s see the beggar…” Ludbridge shone the light on the dead man’s face, and winced. Count de Mortain’s features were still recognizable, for all that they were distorted and frozen in a grimace of fear; quite literally frozen, too, blue with cold, glittering with frost. His arms were stretched above his head like a diver’s, his fingers crooked as though clawing.
“What the deuce! This is Emile Frochard!”
“Not the Count de Mortain?”
“Not half. This fellow’s a spy in the pay of the Austrians! But they’ve been blackmailing the real Count. Shouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t intercepted the invitation to this auction. Well, well. Damned odd. I wonder how he died?”
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“I believe I have an idea,” said Mrs. Corvey, glancing at the house. “I’ll know more presently.”
“Ought we to do anything with him?”
“No! Let him lie for now, Mr. Ludbridge.”
Lady Beatrice stood still a moment in the corridor outside the bedchambers, listening intently. Prince Nakhimov had apparently launched into another anecdote, something to do with hunting wolves. An icy gust of wind crossed the floor, so unexpected as to make Lady Beatrice start. Were she a less ruthlessly pragmatic woman, she had imagined some spectral origin to the chill. A moment’s keen examination of the hallway revealed that a tapestry hung at the rear of the hall, moving as though stirred by a breeze. Lady Beatrice glimpsed the bottom of a door in the wall.
She approached it warily and drew the tapestry aside. The revealed door was ajar. Lady Beatrice saw beyond a short corridor, lit by moonlight through unglazed slit-windows, with another door at its end.
Venturing into the corridor, Lady Beatrice peered through one of the windows and saw that it was high in the air, in effect an enclosed bridge connecting the rear of the house with the tower atop the motte. She hurried across bare wooden planks and tried the door at the other end. It opened easily, for the lock was broken.
Lady Beatrice stood blinking a moment in the brilliant light of the room beyond. The light came not from candles or oil lamps, but from something very like an immense battery of De la Rue’s vacuum lamps; and this astonished Lady Beatrice, for, as far as she had been aware, no one but the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society had been able to build practical vacuum lamps.
Her astonishment was as nothing, however, compared to that of the room’s occupant. He turned, saw her, and froze a moment. He might have been Lord Basmond’s ghost, so like him he was; but smaller, paler, infinitely more fragile-looking. His hands and naked feet were white as chalk, and too long to seem graceful. In the way of clothing he wore only trousers with braces and a shirt, cuffs rolled up prodigiously, and a leather band about his nearly hairless head. Clipped to the band were several pairs of spectacles of different sorts, on swiveling brackets, and a tiny vacuum lamp that presently threw a flood of ghastly light upon his terrified face.
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He screamed, shrill as a rabbit in a trap, and scuttled out of sight.
Lady Beatrice stepped forward into the circular chamber. Against the far wall was a small bed, a dresser, and a washstand. In the midst of the room was a trap door, firmly shut and locked. Beside it was a sort of workbench, on which was what appeared to be a disassembled clock, and it was plain from the tools scattered about that the creature had been working on it when Lady Beatrice entered. The most remarkable thing about the room, however, was its decoration. All around the room’s white plaster, reaching as high as ten to twelve feet, were charcoal drawings of machines: gears, pulleys, pistons, springs, wires. Here and there were what seemed to be explanatory notes in shorthand, quite illegible to Lady Beatrice. Nor was she able to discern any purpose or plan to the things depicted.
She walked around the workbench, searching for the room’s inhabitant. He was nowhere in sight now, but there beyond the trap door was a chest roughly the size and shape of a blanket-press. Lady Beatrice knelt beside the chest.
“You needn’t be afraid, Mr. Rawdon,” she said.
From within the chest came a gibbering shriek, which cut off abruptly.
“Leave him alone,” said another voice, seemingly out of midair. The illusion was so complete Lady Beatrice looked very hard at the wall, half-expecting to see a speaking tube. “Can’t you see you can’t talk to Hindley? Go talk to Arthur instead.”
“I’m afraid Arthur is dead, Hindley.”
“I’m not Hindley! I’m Jumbey. Arthur isn’t dead. How ridiculous! Now, you run along and leave poor Hindley alone. He’s far too busy to deal with distractions.”
“May I speak with you, then, Jumbey? If I promise to leave Hindley alone?”
“You must promise. And keep your promise!”
“I do. I will. Tell me, Jumbey: Hindley builds things, doesn’t he?”
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“Of course he does! He’s a genius.”
“Yes, I can see that he must be. He built the levitation device, didn’t he?”
“You saw it, did you? Yes. Arthur took it, but Hindley didn’t mind. He can always make another.”
“Did Arthur ask Hindley to make a levitation device for him?”
“Arthur? No! Arthur’s the stupid one. He’d never have come up with such an idea on his own. Hindley was being kept in the little room with the wardrobe. His toys kept rolling under the wardrobe, and poor Hindley couldn’t reach them, and nasty Pilkins wouldn’t come fetch them for him anymore. So Hindley made something to make the wardrobe float, you see, and then he could always rescue his own toys.
“And then Arthur came home and the servants told on Hindley, and he was so frightened, poor thing, because he was sure it would be the little dark room and the cold water again. But Arthur told Hindley he’d give him a nice big room and a laboratory of his own, if Hindley would make things for him. And Hindley could have all the candy floss he wanted. And Arthur would keep all the strangers away. But he didn’t!” The last words were spat out with remarkable venom.
“Didn’t he, Jumbey?”
“No! Not a scrap nor a shred of candy floss has Hindley tasted. And there was a big blundering nosey-parker spying on Hindley, down in the tunnels. Hindley had to deal with him all by himself, which was so difficult for poor Hindley, because he can’t be seen by people, you know.”
“I am so sorry to hear it, Jumbey.”
“Arthur is supposed to look after Hindley and protect him! Mummy said so. Always.”
“Well, Jumbey dear, I’m afraid Arthur can’t do that anymore. We will have to make some other arrangement for Hindley.”
“Has Arthur gone away to school again?”
Lady Beatrice thought carefully before she spoke. “Yes. He has.”
“An-an-and poor Hindley will be left with Pilkins again?” The confident voice wavered. “Hindley doesn’t want that. Hindley doesn’t like the little room and the cold water!”
“I believe we can help Hindley, Jumbey.”
“How?”
SEVENTEEN:
In Which the Ladies Triumph
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Bloody hell!” exclaimed Mrs. Corvey. Dora, who had just concluded explaining the events of the last two hours, reeled at her language. She glanced around, grateful that Mrs. Duncan had drunk herself into insensibility and the maids had all gone back to their beds, and said: “I’m sure we did our best, ma’am.”
“I’m sure you did; but this is a complication, as now there’ll be an inquiry. We ain’t getting the levitating thing either; I rather suspect it’s well on its way to the moon by this time. At least none of that lot upstairs will get it either. Dear, dear, what a puzzle. Where’s Lady Beatrice?”
“Here,” said she, hurrying down the back stairs quick as a cat. “I am so glad to see you well, ma’am. Did you discover anything?”
“I did, as it happens.”
“So did I.” Lady Beatrice drew up a kitchen chair and, leaning forward, told her a great deal in an admirably brief time. Mrs. Corvey then returned the favor. Jane, Dora, and Maude listened intently, now and then exclaiming in amazement or dismay.
“Well!” said Mrs. Corvey at last. “I think I see a way through our difficulties. Jane, my dear, just go out to the room behind the stable and knock. Ask Mr. Ludbridge if he would be so kind as to step across, and bring the dead Frenchman with him.”
Pilkins looked up with a scowl as Lady Beatrice entered the Great Hall.
“Didn’t I tell you hussies to keep to your places belowstairs?” he cried. “The constable will be here any minute!”
“If you please, sir, there’s a gentleman arrived in the courtyard, but it’s not the constable,” said Lady Beatrice. “And I was wondering, sir, if we mightn’t just take ourselves off to London tonight, so as to avoid scandal?”
“For all I care you can go to—” said Pilkins, before a solemn knock sounded at the door. He rose to open it. Mr. Ludbridge stood there with a grave expression on his face.
“Good evening; Sir Charles Haversham, Special Investigator for Her Majesty’s Office of Frauds and Impostures. I have a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Rawdon, Lord Basmond.”
Pilkins gaped. “He — he’s dead,” he said.
“A likely story! I demand you produce him at once.”
“No, he really is dead,” said Prince Nakhimov, standing and lifting a corner of the blanket that had been thrown over Lord Basmond’s corpse. Ludbridge, who had walked boldly into the Great Hall, peered down at the dead man.
“Dear, dear. How inconvenient. Oh, well; I do hope none of you gentlemen had paid him any considerable sums of money?”
“What d’you mean?” said Sir George Spiggott.
“I mean, sir, that my department has spent the last six months carefully building a case against his late lordship. We have the sworn testimony of no fewer than three conjurors, most notably one Dr. Marvello of the Theater Royal, Drury Lane, that his lordship paid them to teach him common tricks to produce the illusion of levitation. We also intercepted correspondence that led us to believe his lordship intended to use this knowledge to defraud a person or persons unknown.”
“But— but—” said Pilkins.
“Good God!” cried Sir George. “A confidence trickster! I knew it! I told him to his face he was a damned un-English bounder—”
“Do you mean to say you quarreled with his lordship, sir?” inquired Lady Beatrice quietly.
“Er,” said Sir George. “No! Not exactly. I implied it. I mean to say, I was going to tell him that. In the morning. Because I was, er, suspicious, yes, damned suspicious of his proposal. Yes. I know a liar when I see one!”
“So do I,” said Ludbridge, giving him a stern look, at which he wilted somewhat. “And I take it his lordship has died as the result of misadventure?”
“We are waiting for your constabulary to arrive, but it would appear Lord Basmond fell down the stairs and broke his neck,” said Ali Pasha, with a glance at Sir George.
“Shame,” said Ludbridge. “Still, Providence has a way of administering its own justice. None of you were defrauded, I hope?”
“We had as yet not even bid,” said Prince Nakhimov.
“Capital! You’ve had a narrow escape, then. I suspect that my work is done,” said Ludbridge. “Much as I would have liked to bring the miscreant into a court of law, he is presently facing a far sterner tribunal.”
“If you please, sir,” said Pilkins, in a trembling voice. “My lordship wasn’t no fraud—”
Ludbridge held up his hand in an imperious gesture. “To be sure; your loyalty to an old family fallen on evil times is commendable, but it won’t do, my good man. We have proof that his lordship was heavily in debt. Do you deny it?”
“No, sir.” Pilkins’ shoulders sagged. The sound of wheels and hoofbeats came from the courtyard. “Oh; that’ll be our Ralph bringing the constable, I reckon.”
“Very good.” Ludbridge surveyed them all. “Gentlemen, in view of the tragic circumstances of this evening, and considering the Rawdons’ noble history — to say nothing of your own reputations as shrewd men of the world — I do think nothing is to be gained by bruiting this scandal abroad. Perhaps I ought to quietly withdraw.”
“If you only would, sir—” said Pilkins, weeping afresh.
“The kitchens are down here, sir,” said Lady Beatrice, leading the way. As they descended, they heard the constable’s knock and Ali Pasha saying, “Should someone not go waken the count?”
“A splendid farrago of lies, sir,” said Lady Beatrice, as they descended.
“Thank you. Perhaps we ought to quicken our pace,” said Ludbridge. “I should like to be well clear of the house before anyone goes in search of the Frenchman.”
“Where did you put him, sir, if I may ask?”
“In his bed, where else? And a nice job someone did on his partner, I must say. Let the Austrians clean that up!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Did anyone hear us?” asked Dora, as they entered the kitchen. “I had to get Jane to help me lift it — not heavy, you know, but awkward.”
“They didn’t hear a thing,” said Lady Beatrice, kneeling beside the chest. “Jumbey? Jumbey, dear, is poor Hindley all right?”
“He’s frightened,” said the eerie voice. “He can tell there are strangers about.”
“Tell him he needn’t worry. No one will disturb him, and soon he’ll have a bigger and better laboratory to play in.”
“Maude, just you go catch your Ralph before he puts the horses away,” said Mrs. Corvey, and Maude went running out crying:
“Ralph, my love, would you oblige us ever so much? We just need a ride to the village.”
The tragedy of Lord Basmond’s death set tongues wagging in Little Basmond, but what really scandalized the village was the death of the French count at the hands of his Austrian valet; a crime of passion, apparently, though no one could quite determine how the valet had managed to break all the count’s bones. The local magistrate was secretly grateful when an emissary of the Austrian government showed up with a writ of extradition and took the valet away in chains. More: in a handsome gesture, the Austrians paid to have the count’s corpse shipped back to France.
Ali Pasha and Prince Nakhimov returned alive to their respective nations, wiser men. Sir George Spiggott returned to his vast estate in Northumberland, where he took to drink and made, in time, a bad end.
When Lord Basmond’s solicitors looked through his papers and discovered the extent of his debts, they shook their heads sadly. The staff was paid off and dismissed; every stick of furniture was auctioned in an attempt to satisfy the creditors, and when even this proved inadequate, Basmond Park itself was forfeit. Here complications ensued, with the two most importunate creditors wrangling over whose claim took precedence. In the end the case was tied up in chancery for thirty years.
EIGHTEEN:
In Which It Is Summed Up
I say, ladies!” Herbertina tilted her chair back and rested her feet on the fender. “Here’s a bit of news; Basmond Hall has collapsed.”
“How awfully sad,” said Jane, looking up from the pianoforte.
“Indeed,” said Miss Otley. “It was an historic site of great interest.”
“It says here it fell in owing to the collapse of several hitherto unsuspected mine shafts beneath the property,” said Herbertina.
“I don’t doubt it,” remarked Mrs. Corvey, with a shudder. “I’m surprised the place didn’t fall down with us in it.”
“And soon, no doubt, shall be a moldering and moss-grown mound haunted by the spectres of unquiet Rawdons,” said Lady Beatrice, snipping a thread of scarlet embroidery floss. “Speaking of whom, has there been any word of poor dear Jumbey?”
“Not officially,” said Mrs. Corvey. “There wouldn’t be, would there? But Mr. Felmouth has intimated that the present Lord Basmond is developing a number of useful items for Fabrication.”
“Happily, I trust?”
“As long as he gets his candy floss regular, yes.”
“Jolly good!” Maude played a few experimental notes on her concertina. “Who’s for a song? Shall we have ‘Begone, Dull Care,’ ladies?”
A note about the story: Kage Baker wrote science fiction and fantasy, but what she loved to read was history . The Women of Nell Gwynne’s (Subterranean Press, 2009) was born from a vignette in Kage Baker’s steampunk novel Not Less Than Gods (Tor, 2010). Kage had built the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, a Victorian predecessor to Dr. Zeus, Inc. in the Company stories. She wanted a player she could send into that Great Game of top hats and aetheric energies and geared death ray machines; the eponymous ladies of Nell Gwynne’s were intended to provide a saucy little interlude for her novice spies. But then they got away from her. She said their voices would not fall silent .
Kage had an enormous background in stage management and improvisation. That contributed a lot to the genteelly perverse theater of Nell Gwynne’s. The demimondaines of Nell’s were inspired by backstage lunacy at the Dickens Fair where Kage spent every December; it all drew on every desperately underprovisioned show she ever wrote, directed, or performed in. And because Kage was Kage, there was a wide streak of rather black humor in all this. There’s an undeniable element of farce in the business of a brothel anyway: so much strained fantasy and desperate make-believe! A Victorian whore house, she said, was a perfect place wherein to poke fun at authority with its breeches round its knees .
Kage Baker (1952 to 2010) was a daughter of Hollywood. She grew up in the Hollywood Hills, as close as the modern world can come to the Border of Faerieland — the Wild Hunt came to cocktail parties in her mother’s rose garden, and Kage got to eat the fruit spears out of their drinks.
All this gave her a unique vision of what was real and what was not, and how the many realities of the world blend together. She was fascinated with the layers of reality, and how strangeness peeks out between those layers to confound everyday life. Often, in fact, strangeness stands up and shouts and waves its arms to get our attention — then life gets very odd indeed. Those were the moments she liked the best: the collision between mundane and fantastic. How every elfin prince has to worry about how to pay the rent; how even a Dark Lord’s fortress needs functional plumbing; how immortality can only be endured by clinging to mortal appetites. How you make a living home on Mars.
Kage started writing about all this when she was nine years old, and she wrote until the week before her death from cancer in January 2010. What Kage mostly did was write. Everything else she did — acting, painting, one-thousand-mile-a-weekend commutes up and down California — poured straight into her stories. Once the stories and novels began to sell, she rebuilt her life around writing — ecstatic to be making her living doing what she loved best. By the last year of her life, she couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with the demands; many notes and story lines are still waiting in her files. She ran out of time before she ran out of ideas.
Kage was lucky, and she knew it. She said that writing never failed, that there was nothing as satisfying as sitting down and falling into the world behind the keyboard. She had a clear picture of her muse — her very male muse — and she said she could always feel his hand on the nape of her neck, urging her on as she wrote. That may have been why she wrote so constantly, at such a breakneck speed — like a runner chasing the rising sun, like a woman running toward her lover. And in the end, I think she caught him.
—Kathleen Bartholomew
RHYSLING AWARDS
Since 1978, when Suzette Haden Elgin founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, its members have recognized achievement in the field of speculative poetry by presenting the Rhysling Awards, named after the blind bard protagonist of Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth.”
Every year, each SFPA member is allowed to nominate two poems from the previous year for the Rhysling Awards: one in the “long” category (50+ lines) and one in the “short” category (1–49 lines). Because it’s practically impossible for each member to have read every nominated poem in the various publications where they originally appeared, the nominees are all collected into one volume, called The Rhysling Anthology . Copies of this anthology are mailed to all the members, who read it and vote for their favorites. The top vote-getters in each of the two categories become the Rhysling winners. Past winners have included Michael Bishop, Bruce Boston, Tom Disch, Joe Haldeman, Alan P. Lightman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Palwick, Lucius Shepard, Jeff VanderMeer, Gene Wolfe, and Jane Yolen. In 2006, the SFPA created a new award, the Dwarf Stars Award, to honor poems of 10 lines or less.
SONG FOR AN ANCIENT CITY
Amal El-Mohtar
Merchant, keep your attar of roses,
your ambers, your oud,
your myrrh and sandalwood. I need
nothing but this dust
palmed in my hand’s cup
like a coin, like a mustard seed,
like a rusted key.
I need
no more than this, this earth
that isn’t earth, but breath,
the exhalation of a living city, the song
of a flute-boned woman,
air and marrow on her lips. This dust,
shaken from a drum, a door opening, a girl’s heel
on stone steps, this dust
like powdered cinnamon, I would wear
as other girls wear jasmine and lilies,
that a child with seafoam eyes
and dusky skin might cry, There
goes a girl with seven thousand years
at the hollow of her throat, there
goes a girl who opens her mouth to pour
caravans, mamelukes, a Mongolian horde
from lips that know less of roses
than of temples in the rising sun!
Damascus, Dimashq
is a song I sing to myself. I would find
where she keeps her mouth, meet it with mine,
press my hand against her palm
and see if our fingers match. She
is the sound, the feel
of coins shaken in a cup, of dice,
the alabaster clap of knight claiming rook,
of kings castling — she is the clamour
of tambourines and dirbakki,
nays sighing, qanouns musing, the complaint
of you merchants with spice-lined hands,
and there is dust in her laughter.
I would drink it, dry my tongue
with this noise, these narrow streets,
until she is a parched pain in my throat, a thorned rose
growing outward from my belly’s pit, aching fragrance
into my lungs. I need no other. I
would spill attar from my eyes,
mix her dust with my salt,
steep my fingers in her stone
and raise them to my lips.
SEARCH
Geoffrey A. Landis
Jeremiah sits in a room at Cornell
Lit by fluorescent lights
His ears are covered by headphones, and he’s bopping along as he searches
(He doesn’t look anything like Jodie Foster)
He’s not listening to the telescope — his headphones are blasting Queen
The telescope sends to him nothing but a string of numbers
His fingertips are doing the search
Writing a new algorithm to implement frequency-domain filtering
Sorting out a tiny signal of intelligence
(hypothetical intelligence)
from the thousand thousand thousand sources of noise from the sky
It’s four a.m., his favorite time of night
No distractions
Outside, the stars are bright
Inside, the stars sing to him alone.
Nine hundred light years away
In the direction of Perseus
Intelligent creatures are wondering why they hear nothing from the skies
They are sending out messages,
Have been sending out messages for hundreds of years
One of their number, renowned for his clear thinking,
Has an electromagnetic pickup on his head
(or, what would pass for a head)
He is thinking clear, simple thoughts
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
1 + 3 = 4
And the electromagnetic signals of his brain
(or, what would pass for a brain)
Are being amplified and beamed into the sky
In the direction of Earth
It is the simplest signal they know
A brain thinking
1 + 1 = 2
2 + 2 = 4
Jeremiah has been searching for years
He has a beard like Moses
Glasses like Jerry Garcia
A bald head like Jesse Ventura
Patience like Job
They are out there
If only the telescope arrays were larger…
if only they could search deeper…
If only his filtering algorithms were more incisive.
Nine hundred light years away
In the direction of Perseus
The aliens are patient
They are sending their thoughts to the stars
Clear, simple thoughts
We are here
We are here
We are here
Where are you?
FIREFLIES
Geoffrey A. Landis
flashing in a summer field against twilight sky-dark. Drifting shifting sparkle flashes, ever-changing patterns of writing in some unknowable language of streaks and flashes, constellations blinking on and off. Fireflies dance below us, fireflies behind us, fireflies above us; their silent mating calls a symphony of light. A million flashes a minute, we are immersed in a sea of flickering light.
Just so, the immortals look out across the universe, as stars and galaxies flick into life fade into dark.
OTHER AWARDS
NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
THE WINDUP GIRL
PAOLO BACIGALUPI
FROM THE AUTHOR: The Windup Girl was an experiment in risk for me. I bit off more than I could chew, with its many characters and cultures, its distorted world, and a plot structure that always felt one notch too complicated for me to keep in my head. That it’s on the Nebula ballot with so much other very fine work, by writers who I respect so much… It’s a gift. I’d like to thank my editor Juliet Ulman for guiding me across thin ice, the crew at Charles Coleman Finlay’s Blue Heaven for their help, and Jeremy Lassen, my publisher at Night Shade, who was willing to take a risk on a book that had such uncertain potential. I’d also like to thank Maureen McHugh for giving me the shove I needed to start on something that scared me. I doubt she remembers the conversation, but it made all the difference.
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