The Shadow Conspiracy

Tales from the Age of Steam

Edited by

Phyllis Irene Radford

and

Laura Anne Gilman

Copyrights

“The Accumulating Man” Copyright © 2009 by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

“The Persistence of Souls” Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Zettel

“The Soul Jar” Copyright © 2009 by Steven Piziks

“Zombi” Copyright © 2009 by Pati Nagle

“A Princess of Wittgenstein” Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Stevenson

“The Savage and the Monster” Copyright © 2009 by Nancy Jane Moore

“The Water Weapon” Copyright © 2009 by Brenda W. Clough

“The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration” Copyright © 2009 by Judith Tarr

“Shadow Dancer” Copyright © 2009 by Irene Radford

“The Mind of Ada Lovelace” -- Cover Art Copyright © 2009 by Brenda W. Clough

Cover Design by Pati Nagle

Editors’ Introduction

Steampunk defies a single definition.

The Victorian era is a time when forward thinkers test the boundaries of science and go looking for explanations of why the oceans have currents or volcanoes erupt or possibly how the Earth was made. The edges of the continents have been explored and largely settled. This is the time to delve deeper in search of answers to scientific questions and possibly lost empires and amazing treasures. There is a Romance (in the classical literary sense) of adventure and exploration.

We at the Book View Press and its parent Book View Café started with a love for Victorian fashion and a fascination with fabulous machines that have an abundance of gears and levers, beautiful brass work, and steam power; when machines designed to aid humanity needed to be beautiful as well as practical.

The appeal of Steampunk begins where it deviates from history, allowing improbable-if-possible events to occur, encouraging female characters to tromp beside their male counterparts (they probably did in reality but no one admitted it) and sometimes surpass them, all the while wearing the properly embellished fashions.

But steampunk must, at its core, have that plausible history to ground it. So where do we begin this alternate history? Here at Book View Press we thought, why not with the best known piece of fantasy/horror literature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?

What really happened in the villa on Lake Geneva that long ago year without a summer, 1816? We went looking and found a conspiracy hiding in the shadows.

The stories which grew in the aftermath were each more terrible than the last, until a rational man might be tempted to reduce them all to nonsense and fantasy. And yet, in each sighting, each event, there is such truth, the grain of veracity that cannot be denied, that we must see them all, if not as true, in the very least as Real...

Phyllis Irene Radford

Laura Anne Gilman

The Accumulating Man

… by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

A Missing Journal of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Still, thou canst listen to me and grant me thy compassion. I demand this from you. Hear my tale. It is long and strange...”

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Geneva, Switzerland—1816

My Friend, Immanuel

The Villa Diodata was just as I remembered it—square and upright and sun-washed...at least on those days when the Sun could be encouraged to shine on us. God knew that I needed sunshine and, as we pulled through the front gate in the barouche George had put at our disposal, Sol came out in full glory, bathing the façade of the house in warm light. My heart swelled and my arms tightened reflexively around my child. We will be happy here, I promised him.

We were five travelling from France—myself, Percy (whom I call my husband), my step-sister Jane, my infant son William and his nanny, Elise. I hate to say that we are fleeing, but of course, we are. Fleeing ill-health, certainly, but also conventionality, and approbation. For Percy is still wed to another in the eyes of Church and State, and Jane conceals a pregnancy that only I know of.

We established ourselves quickly in the house, Elise and I setting up the nursery for my little “Willmouse” in the cosy dressing room of my own suite. (Do I reveal here how many times in a single night I rise to be certain he still breathes? Too many.) By the time we had done with that, and the servants had dealt with our baggage, it was time for Tea. Strange, how even when one eschews the conventions of “normal” English life—the devouring of meat, say, or Anglican piety—one must have one’s tea. It is as if the beverage is a spiritual touchstone. Let the world fling itself into seizures of war and poverty and outrage against humanity—as long as there is tea, we shall manage.

I saw my little William off to sleep in the early afternoon and sat a long while at his cradle, watching. Too long for Elise. She came to me with that straightforward Teutonic cheek that I so admire and said, “Mam, the child is fine. See how he breathes good and deep? Go have some tea now. If he needs watching, I can do it as well as you. Indeed, I think my eye clearer, as I’ve had more sleep.”

Elise, at fifteen, is an imposing woman—tall, blonde, statuesque, and with an aura of such steel about her that I find it hard to believe she was ever a child or that she moves and bends like a normal human being.

When Tea had been observed and with my son still napping under Elise’s clearer eye, I determined to walk to Petit-Lancy to a bookshop I knew there. To be sure, there were bookshops in Geneva proper—some quite close by—but this bookshop reminded me of my father’s establishment in Somers Town. It was a lovely hodgepodge of books and games and stationery and smelt of paper and binding glue. It was well worth the walk of a mile or so to the Chemin de Vendee, and the Sun was with me.

In the bookshop, I gravitated toward poetry and philosophy. One does, I suppose, when one loves a poet and has been raised by philosophers. I experienced a strange little thrill when I saw that my mother’s book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women sat upon the philosophy shelf. I could not help but take it down and caress it, opening the pages and touching them gently, as if Mother—wherever she might abide—could feel my touch. I had barely known my mother in the flesh, but I knew her in spirit intimately.

“Young lady,” said the shopkeeper, peering at me from behind his counter, “I think perhaps you would be more interested in the novels.” He indicated a shelf near the window where resided works he apparently felt more appropriate for one of my gender and age.

I smiled. “Novels bore me, for I’ve nothing in common with the heroines. But this is about me, after all.” I held up the book and quoted: “‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.’”

“Alexander Pope,” said a deep, warm voice from just to my left. I looked up and beheld a young man perhaps in his mid-twenties, looking down at me from a considerable height. He leant against the corner of the bookshelf, a small stack of volumes cradled in his arms.

“And what tome is it, Miss, that our good Bardeau does not think appropriate study for you?”

I showed him the volume. Sleek sable brows ascended into his hairline and his eyes—large and coffee-dark—widened in surprise. I awaited the inevitable gasp of scandalized sensibilities.

“Tsk. Shame on you, Miss, for daring to presume that you had any rights to vindicate. You’d best put that volume down before it stains your gloves with infamy.”

I caught the twinkle in his eye and laughed. “Oh, certainly, sir. How well you put it.” I returned the book to its place (for I had my own copy) and moved to find something else to purchase. I located a volume of poetry and essays by Mr. Pope and, having had such recent occasion to quote him, I smilingly purchased that.

Monsieur Bardeau warmly agreed that this was a far better reference for a young woman than “Mrs. Godwin’s polemic.” I considered letting him know that I was the author’s daughter, but instead merely observed, “Monsieur, if you don’t like the book, why do you have a copy of it on your shelf?”

“Who said I didn’t like it?” he asked with a Gallic shrug. “I merely think it is perhaps too adult an argument for a young English lady to be exposed to.”

“Why, Monsieur!” I remonstrated, feigning indignation. “If a female in this society is to be aware of her rights as an adult, should she not be exposed to them as a young lady—nay, even as a child?” God knew I had been.

Monsieur Bardeau had no response to that, but I heard a deep chuckle from the opposite side of the philosophy shelf. I suspected my anonymous gentleman friend. Smiling, I took my book and crossed the street to the little park where I found a sun-dappled bench to read upon.

I had been there for perhaps twenty minutes with Mr. Pope, and was contemplating the walk back to the Villa Diodata, when a very long shadow fell over me. I looked up into the handsome face of the man from the bookshop.

“Pardon,” he said, bowing slightly. “But I do hope M. Bardeau did not frighten you into purchasing something you didn’t want.”

“Oh, no!” I protested. “I had already read the ‘polemic’ in question. But I left my volume of Pope in England.”

“Ah. Good. I thought your answer to him just now was quite apropos. When, indeed, should a woman become apprised of her rights if not at your age?”

“You grant that I should have rights then, Monsieur?”

“Dessins,” he said bowing. “Immanuel Dessins. And yes, you are a child of God, and therefore your rights are inalienable.”

“That is not a sentiment shared by many of your gender.”

“I apologize for them...and their sentiments.”

I glanced at the paper-wrapped package he held, tied up and suspended from a bit of twine. There must surely have been four volumes in it, at least. “You’re an avid reader, then?”

“Yes, though these aren’t all for me. I, too, purchased a volume of Pope for my fiancée, Lucille, who loves poetry above most things. I don’t say ‘all’ for I flatter myself she loves me best. The rest are medical journals.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I will be...soon, I hope. Currently, I am a student at the Academy of Geneva. I hope to finish my degree within the year.”

“I’m impressed,” I said, and quite meant it. My new acquaintance was not only a man of great physical beauty, but his manner was cordial, sunny, and gentle. I applauded the inestimable Lucille. “I know what strivings are required for such a calling. I have known a great many doctors.”

As if he saw the shadow that passed through me at that absurdly mundane remark, Immanuel frowned. “Have you been unwell, Mademoiselle...?”

“Mary,” I said, offering my hand. “Mary Godwin...Shelley.” I smiled, hoping he would not note the slight hesitation.

He did not. “Godwin! You are the daughter...?”

“Yes. Quite.”

He glanced back over his shoulder at the bookstore and then laughed. He had a lovely laugh—a laugh that put me in mind of well-lit hearths and snug reading nooks, and cups brimming with hot, creamed and sugared tea. He took my hand and bent over it.

“Bonjour, Mary Godwin Shelley. I am pleased to have met such a paragon of restraint. If I were you, I fear I would have embarrassed M. Bardeau horribly by revealing myself.”

“No, you would not.”

He shook his head ruefully. “You’re right. I am bound to my Hippocratic oath to do no harm and my Christian duty to repay impertinence with civility.”

He bid me good-day then, wished that we might meet again at the little bookshop, and hoped Lucille would enjoy Pope as much as I did. Then he swung away across the park, whistling, his strides long, graceful, and confident.

Immanuel, I thought. Meaning God is with us. I hoped it was a further portent of good fortune.

Byron

In the following days, I walked to the bookshop in Petit-Lancy whenever weather permitted—which was not as often as I’d hoped. It was a churlish spring, stingy with sunshine and sparing with warmth. Yet there were fine days and, while my little Willmouse slept under Elise’s watchful eye, I took advantage of them.

I met Immanuel in the bookshop nearly every day I walked into town and we would browse and buy and sit on the park bench talking of philosophy and politics and medicine and art. Immanuel’s heart returned ever to his beloved Lucille. His face lit from within when he spoke of her, this paragon of womanhood. And I admit, I was impressed with her, even second-hand. She had loved the Pope and wanted more poetry, so I contrived to send her a copy of one of Percy’s most recent works, which our friend Tom had suggested he entitle “Alastor.” Lucille was even, Immanuel divulged, interested in reading my mother’s work and wanted to know if she had written any novels.

I started to say that my mother’s novels were possibly not appropriate reading for a young woman like Lucille, but caught myself at a wry glance from Immanuel. We laughed at my silliness; I recommended that she read Vindication instead, as it was easier to find. Why even M. Bardeau had a copy!

“Are you a writer too?” my new friend asked me, and I hesitated before saying, “I pen this and that. A story here and there. Nothing worth publishing. Who would wish to read my thoughts?”

“I would,” Immanuel protested loyally. “You have good thoughts, Mary.”

As did he. He spoke much of his passion for medicine and his desire to study malaria and other parasitic diseases. He spoke with conviction and yet, an extreme gentleness of spirit. And as he spoke, he gestured with his elegant, long-fingered hands. His gestures said that, if he could, he would cradle the entire world in them.

And so, when I returned from Petit-Lancy one evening in the gathering twilight, to find that George Gordon, Lord Byron had arrived at last, I was struck by the contrast between Percy’s old friend and my new one.

George’s carriage arrived as I stepped in through the garden gate. A soft misty rain had begun to fall and we entered the house together with him complaining that, “The Damned rain followed me like a stray cat, all the way from Lyon.”

His first words to my poor pregnant step-sister when she hurried into the hall to meet her lover were, “You look like hell, Jane.”

Her first words to him were, “I am to be called Clara.”

”Very well,” he replied. “You look like hell, Clara.”

She went up to her room to pine and George rang for the butler and bid him hasten supper.

It was only when I entered the drawing room that I realized that George had brought someone home with him. It was a young man of surpassing beauty, by which I mean that he surpassed George’s own vaunted good looks. You will understand, therefore, my surprise that George should tolerate him. Only over dinner—for which Jane-Clara had been coaxed from her room by her love’s flashing eyes and dashing smile, and Percy had come out of his study, his fingers stained with ink—did I discover why he did so.

Dr. John William Polidori, George informed us, was a brilliant physician whom he had retained as his personal medic. The doctor had “ideas,” George said, that would revolutionize the practice of medicine and that would save George himself from the predations of his own many complaints.

Do I sound cynical? I was not then—or not entirely. I didn’t dislike George, but I did find his self-obsession tiresome. I bore with him for Jane’s (or rather Clara’s) sake and for Percy’s, for he and Byron were like flint and steel—they sparked each other’s muses. Alas, I sometimes believed they fed each other’s demons as well.

I cannot be so ungrateful. Were it not for our friend’s graciousness and largesse, what we told ourselves was a lover’s holiday would have been revealed as an exile. Truthfully, I was glad of Dr. Polidori’s presence on several counts. First of all, with his willing medical ear available, George would be less inclined to sigh into ours. Second, my baby boy now had a live-in physician; my fearful heart could rest somewhat easier.

Directly after supper, I went up to the nursery to hold my Willmouse and fill Elise’s head with praises of the good doctor. She was impressed enough to peek at him over the banister as he and George left the house to take an evening stroll.

“He’s very pretty,” she told me after. She opened her mouth to say more, then shook her head and put a finger to her lips.

“What?” I asked.

“He looks at the lord strangely,” she said, blunt as always.

“As if he loves him?” I suggested.

“As if he studies him,” she replied.

Polidori

George set Dr. Polidori up in the coach house with a laboratory in which he might experiment with his “brilliant ideas”—ideas George assured us would set him completely to rights. No amount of cajoling on my part or Clara’s or Percy’s could get him to divulge what those ideas were. I soon came to the conviction that he didn’t know what they were because the doctor was every bit as secretive with George as he was with the rest of us. The half of the coach house in which Polidori worked was shuttered and locked. Our host even had the door to the adjoining stables bolted.

Of his experiments, the dear doctor would only say (with a sweet, boyish smile) that he was building a machine.

A machine. I tried very hard to imagine what sort of machine would heal Lord Byron’s deformed foot and straighten out the labyrinthine passages of his mind, but I was at a loss.

One afternoon on my way into Petit-Lancy, I passed rather close to the coach house and heard the strangest sounds coming from it. There was a humming like the chorus of a million angry bees, then a pop, as if someone had opened a bottle of champagne. Then came a rhythmic swishing sound and a second, softer hum. After a moment, this died away and I distinctly heard a man’s voice raised in anger. There was no reply, so I assumed the anger was directed at something other than another human being.

Only when the sound of the swarm started up again did I realize that I had drifted over to the rear door of the coach house and stood with my ear practically pressed against it. Embarrassed, I cast a furtive glance around and hurried to the bookshop.

Immanuel was there, and he had no more than said “good-day” to me when I launched into an excited narrative about the strange sounds coming from our coach house. I explained about Dr. Polidori and that he had some idea of aiding Lord Byron through some of his maladies. It would be tragic, after all, I opined, if one of the greatest poets of our time was hostage to the frailties of mind and body. In truth, I was ravenously curious about what Dr. Polidori could be doing that required such industry.

It was not until we were walking side-by-side to our park bench that I realized how quiet was my partner. I laughed. “I must strike you as a feather-brain, indeed, to go on so about what is probably nothing at all.”

“No, not at all,” said Immanuel.

I glanced up at him sharply, for the tone of his voice was uncharacteristically solemn and heavy, his words slow and measured. His expression, likewise, seemed to have lost some of its vivacity and his eyes...

“Immanuel, what is wrong? Please tell me that nothing has happened to Lucille.”

“No. Lucille is well.”

“And everything is all right between you?”

His mouth gave a wry little twist that nearly broke my heart.

“Have you fallen out with each other, then?”

He shook his head—a strange, awkward movement—and it struck me suddenly and forcefully that his gait, his posture, even his face were subtly less graceful than usual.

“I seem to have fallen out with myself.”

I stopped him at the bench. “You are ill? Well, come with me, then, and see Dr. Polidori. Perhaps he can offer some medicine.”

He smiled at me, then, and some animation returned to his face. “Something that Dr. Dessins cannot offer?”

I laughed at myself again for having forgotten what studies my friend pursued. “Now you must really think me silly.”

“Never,” he said, and together we sat and chatted.

But though he conversed with me and smiled again, and his eyes occasionally sparkled, still there was something indefinably wrong about him. His speech was not as quick, his facial expressions less refined, his movements almost graceless at times. I went away from our encounter with a creeping dread that he was ill and knew he was ill and simply did not wish me to know it.

Arriving at the villa, I took my time passing by the coach house and heard, coming from it, the same sounds as before, except that this time, the strange buzzing was sustained and I distinctly heard John Polidori cry out, “That’s it! By God, that’s it!”

Another voice said something in response that I could not make out, though the lilt of the voice was distinctly Italian and had the inflection of a query. One of the servants, then. Perhaps even Polidori’s man, Paolo Foggi. Polidori’s reaction to whatever the other man had said was swift and emphatic: “No! Nothing! You will say nothing until we have made it work on...!” He paused and pitched his voice lower so that I could not hear.

I found myself edging closer and closer to the rear door of the building, wondering if I might peek through the door frame. I had reached out my hand to the latch when I heard Polidori’s voice again just on the other side of the barrier.

“Yes, yes!” he said impatiently. “The rabbit. We want the rabbit.”

I retreated swiftly to the house, where I found Percy and George in the drawing room conversing idly over snifters of brandy.

“George, what is Dr. Polidori building in the coach house?” I asked.

Lord Byron stared at me over his brandy as if I’d spoken to him in Hindustani. “I have no idea what John is building. Indeed, I thought his talk of a machine was sheer fabrication—a dodge. What makes you ask?”

I sat upon a low ottoman and described what I had heard, including the shouting just now. “Clearly, he’s done something he considers exciting. You have no idea what he’s working on?”

George shook his head. “None. Except, of course, that it’s supposed to cure me or save me from my various curses. God, was ever a man so vexed?”

I stared at him. Perhaps no man, but many a woman was, including myself. I could have reminded him what I had suffered in the past two years: losing a daughter born too early, waking numerous times each night and running to William’s crib to make sure he still breathed, flying to the Continent like a frightened bird to flee entanglements in England. I think, for a moment, I almost hated my beloved’s narcissistic friend.

“Surely, Dr. Polidori will soon have some great medicine to offer you,” said Percy. “He works in his lab day and night and what might he be working at but your salvation?”

“Will you ask him, George?” I inquired. “Will you ask him what he’s doing?”

“If it pleases you,” said George indolently, but I could see that I had lit the fire of curiosity in him and it wasn’t long before he rose and excused himself to go outside. “For a walk,” he said, but I watched him from the front window and I saw that he went toward the coach house.

I was upstairs with William and Elise some half-an-hour later when Percy came into the nursery with a bemused expression on his face.

“What is it, love?” I asked.

“He won’t let George in.”

“He...you mean Polidori? Dr. Polidori won’t let Lord Byron into his own coach house? Extraordinary.” I laughed at the thought of the good doctor holding the lord at bay. George was nothing if not assured of his rights in the world and I could only imagine what response Polidori’s refusal evoked.

Percy nodded, a curl falling across his brow. “George was beside himself, at first—you should have heard him. It took John fifteen minutes to calm him down.”

“What reason did he give for his secrecy?”

“He doesn’t want to disappoint his patron—to raise his hopes only to dash them. He wants to be sure that he can offer the best possible solution to his problems.”

Well, he had certainly disappointed me. “He would divulge nothing?”

“Only that it was the complete solution he was working on. Not a palliative. Not a brace for the club foot or a medicine for the black moods, but rather a complete cure for ills both physical and spiritual.” He smiled and Helios rose from the horizon. “If he can do that for George, Mary, might he not also expel my demon moods?”

Might he? “Is such a thing possible?”

“John Polidori thinks so, and therefore, George thinks so.”

When Percy had left the room I turned to Elise and found her looking at me shrewdly.

“Here, you wily miss,” I said, “what are you thinking?”

“That you want to know what goes on in that coach house, Mam.”

I smiled at her, and suddenly we were two young girls, plotting together. I leaned forward, prompting my darling Willmouse to peep in surprise, then cradling him more comfortably, I said, “An Italian servant works with Dr. Polidori.”

She nodded slowly. “His valet, Paolo Foggi. I sometimes take him his tea when the downstairs maid is not available.”

“Do you now? And does he sometimes want a bit of conversation with his tea?”

“Scopriamo,” she said, her eyes wide and uncharacteristically innocent.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Let’s find out.”

Foggi was not immediately forthcoming, but Elise was nothing if not persistent. She began to take him his tea every day—for which the downstairs maid was grateful, given Clara’s many demands—and, over a period of several weeks, M. Foggi conceived the notion that Mlle. Elise was enamoured of him. As I had hoped, the desire to impress her began to loosen his tongue.

The doctor was keeping small animals in his lab and had charged his man with their care and feeding. This was the first intelligence that Elise brought me. I had suspected the presence of animals in the lab, of course—or at least of rabbits—but Elise had discovered that there were squirrels, cats, dogs and even a capuchin monkey.

Elise laughed in the telling of all this. Paolo had divulged it in high disgust.

“I am valet, not a veterinary or a zoo-keeper,” she mimicked in a thick Italian accent. “Whatever are Lord Byron and Dr. Polidori thinking to impose so upon a man’s station?”

I was quite enjoying the thrill of all these de cape et d’épée goings-on. Every day, while Willmouse slept, I would slip into Petit-Lancy to regale Immanuel with my tales of subterfuge. I told him about the animals, the fact that the machine the doctor had built was full of gears and wheels and connecting rods and that it “made lightning.”

Or so Paolo Foggi said. The lightning, he confided in Elise, was molto bello, indeed, molto romantico with its blaze of blue-white light. “Come scrittura con il fuoco,” Paolo said. “Like writing with fire.”

Immanuel, who had shown very little interest in my revelations this day, at last showed a spark of curiosity. “Electricity?” he murmured. “He works with electricity?”

I was thrilled at his interest, for his new moodiness troubled me greatly, as had the fact that he had taken to wearing a broad-brimmed hat that left the upper part of his face in shadow.

“Yes. What can it mean? The animals, the machine, the electricity?”

He shrugged, then grimaced as if the action was uncomfortable. “I can’t imagine. Although, I have read...no, it’s too absurd.”

“What?” I begged. “What’s too absurd?”

“In my reading of the London Medical Journal,” he said, and I realized with dismay how laboured his words had become, “I’ve come across mention of an alchemist named Johann Dippel who proposed that convulsive disorders might be ameliorated through the induction of a seizure. He claimed to have somehow harnessed electricity to cause this. Over one-hundred years ago.”

“One hundred years! How extraordinary! I had no idea serious men of medicine concerned themselves with such things.”

“Well, as I said, he was an al-alchemist and a theologian.” He shrugged stiffly. “Born to wealth, though, I gather—outside of Darmstadt, Germany at Castle Frankenstein.” He chuckled, a low, grinding sound that raised hairs on the back of my neck despite the warmth of the day. I recalled how lovely his laugh had sounded when we met. “The rumours say that he dug up fresh bodies to experiment on.”

I shivered. “How horrible. Why would he do such a thing? What could grave robbing possibly have to do with treating convulsive disorders?”

“T’wasn’t his only interest. Dippel was looking for the elixir of life. For immortality. Men are fools—and worse—who wish to be immortal,” he added, and I could not mistake the bitterness in his voice.

I put a hand on his sleeve and he winced, but did not pull away. “What’s wrong, Immanuel? You...you seem...unwell.”

“Unwell...I am unwell.” He turned to face me, though the brim of his hat kept me from seeing his eyes.

What I could see of his face looked...different somehow. His jaw heavier, his skin roughened. “Mary, I cannot come to town for a time. My studies, you understand. I’m not sick, precisely, but I’ve slept poorly of late and have gotten behind.”

I was crushed, in part, because I enjoyed our dialogues so much and could not disown my anxiety for him, and in part because I knew he was lying. Something was wrong and he was simply refusing to tell me what it was. I wished with all my heart that he had introduced me to Lucille so that perhaps she might confide in me, but in all our conversation, he had never even given me her surname.

“I shall miss our discussions,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.

“No more than I, Mary. You have been a d’light.” The last word came out slurred and, with a queer little jerk of his head, he rose, turned and moved quickly away.

I watched him go with mounting concern, for he shambled along, rolling a bit from side to side as if his legs were stiff or painful. I almost rose up and went after him, but I lacked the courage.

This bothered me, and when I reached home to a new report from Elise regarding Polidori’s doings, it bothered me yet more.

You’re a cowardly thing, I told myself harshly as I listened to Elise’s newest intelligence. Sitting like a lump on a park bench when a friend requires aid, sending a servant as a snoop to satisfy your curiosity. Whatever are you about, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley? And what will you do next—hire someone to read Percy’s poetry and offer their critique as your own?

I had worked up a most righteous dudgeon against myself by the time the gentlemen retired to the drawing room—all of the gentlemen, including Dr. Polidori. Clara (I had finally gotten used to calling her that) went to bed early with a headache, leaving me rather at loose ends. I could have just gone to the drawing room with the others—we didn’t stand on that silly ceremony of separating the men from the women—but I’d found that their conversation could be somewhat tedious in the first throes of postprandial satisfaction. At least until coffee stimulated or brandy relaxed.

I could have gone in...but my curious and self-deprecating mind seized on another plan of action. I would go to that damned coach house and find some way to peer within. Paolo Foggi was at his own dinner in the staff dining room, the evening was fine (for once) and I was now all but suffocating with curiosity about Dr. Polidori’s Machine.

I left the dining room and moved lightly up the stairs. I had a black velvet riding habit with a split skirt. It would be ideal for an evening’s sleuthing.

Polidori’s Machine

I had donned my riding habit and pulled a soft black toque Percy had given me over my coiled braid when Elise came into the bedroom.

“Why, Mam,” she said curiously, “where are you going at this hour?”

“To the coach house,” I said, tucking a few wisps of hair under the cap. “I intend to find out what sort of machine our dear doctor is building that requires the use of a small zoo.”

Elise’s eyes glinted in the lamplight. “I’ll come with you...that is, if you like, Mam.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been altogether too passive, Elise. Sending you to do my snooping for me. I’m ashamed of myself. You don’t have to carry on like a spy any longer.”

Elise took a step toward me. “Oh, but I want to, Mam. Please, won’t you let me come with you?”

I stared at her a moment, then smiled. Elise was more than my son’s nanny. She was a co-conspirator. “Have you anything black to wear?”

She had—an old black dress of thin wool that she’d made for a funeral. She didn’t say whose, but she didn’t seem to mind wearing it for such nefarious activities as I had planned.

We slipped out by a garden door that gave onto the grounds from the conservatory on the south side of the house. The moon gave sufficient light by which to find our way across the fifty or so yards to the coach house. I became concerned, as we approached, that perhaps we would have to light one of the candles I had stuffed into the pockets of my riding costume, but as we reached the rear of the building, I saw that we were in luck—a lamp had been left burning within. Its dim light seeped from the crack between the upper and lower portions of the dutch door.

We pried at the door to no avail. Nor could we peep through the meager slit between its halves. We moved to the windows next, but those on the ground floor were shuttered and locked. Finally, I decided we must hope that the entrance from the stable had not been so carefully done up.

Alas, it had been, and at length, we stood in the center aisle of the stable in silent frustration, ready to give up. I glanced around, hoping for an epiphany or a miracle. I got neither, but I did catch a flash of light shining on a tumble of hay high up in the loft. This, despite the fact that the stable itself was in complete darkness.

I touched Elise’s shoulder and pointed upward. “The hayloft,” I murmured.

Up we went. My split skirt made the climb easy, but after two attempts, Elise was compelled to roll her skirt up around her waist, and climbed the ladder displaying her shockingly white knickers.

At last, we were rewarded, for the neat bales of hay hid a large, square door in the shared wall. This provided access to the stable loft from the adjoining coach house. I had hoped for a crack large enough to see through. I got something much better—the door was poorly fastened and stood slightly ajar. The latch was on this side of the door as, of course, it had to be, for on the opposite side was a two-story drop to the coach house floor.

I opened the door and gasped aloud. There was nothing between us and the cobbles far below but the broad, heavy beam from which hung the pulley and rope necessary to hoist hay up to the loft. But that was not what made me gasp. My surprise and awe was for the collection of items that inhabited the shadowy interior of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory.

There two tables or beds—both really, and yet neither. Both were fitted with odd leather harnesses. And there were cages, just as Elise had reported, each with an occupant or two. I saw dogs, cats, rabbits, and yes, the capuchin monkey. He must have had them all brought in under cover of night, while we were asleep or otherwise engaged in the main house. I promised myself I would try to be more wakeful from now on.

The thing that captured my attention most awfully was the Machine. It sat between the tables and was half-again as long—perhaps nine feet. It was, as Elise had said, an amalgamation of wheels and gears and rods and strange little cylinders, and at its apex, which was perhaps four feet from the low trestle it sat upon, were two thin rods that curved toward each other like lovers frozen just short of embrace.

The hay rustled and Elise whispered, “Is there a way down, Mam?”

I peered at the beam. “Just that. We could possibly lower ourselves to the floor using the ropes and pulleys.”

Elise looked at the apparatus sceptically. “I don’t know, Mam. It’s a fair piece down.”

It was indeed a fair piece down, but I had the sudden urge to attempt it. “I’m going to try,” I said, pleased that my voice did not quiver in the least. “You can help me balance.” So saying, I slid my legs out of the little door and straddled the beam.

Elise gasped. “Maybe I should go first, Mam.”

It was too late. I was already a foot away from her and then two and then I was right over the pulley assembly. I stopped to consider the best course of action.

“Throw one leg over the beam,” advised Elise as if she had done this sort of thing before, “and lie across it on your stomach. Then you can wrap your legs about the ropes and let yourself down until you can get a foot on the pulley.”

She was right, of course. “Smart girl,” I applauded her, then set out to do as she’d suggested. I had just gotten sideways on the beam on my stomach, when I heard the sound of a door being unlatched. The rear door of the coach house, I realized. I froze.

“Miss!” hissed Elise and held her hand out to me.

I wriggled around trying to throw my leg back over the beam so I could scoot to safety.

The rear door creaked open.

All that separated it from this room was the narrow expanse of the tack room, which was little more than a broad hallway. I got my leg over the beam, but overbalanced and almost went down head-first.

Light spilled into the laboratory from the tack room.

I wobbled for a moment, then felt Elise’s hand grasp my habit at the shoulder. She had come half out onto the beam, herself, to get me. I righted myself and frog-hopped in ungainly fashion the two feet to the loft. Elise, exhibiting surprising strength, hauled me in and shut the door.

“Who’s that?” said a man’s voice. There was silence, then: “Paolo? Is that you?”

Directly below us on the ground floor, the door between the stable and coach house rattled and opened with a sigh. We held our collective breath.

“Sì, medico. È me.”

“Ah,” said Polidori. Then, “Lights, Paolo. Luminosi, per favore.”

We waited—we fine, brave spies—until they had gone off to work at the far end of the lab before we made our escape from the hayloft, through the stable and back to the house.

Only when I reached the safety of my bedroom and stood before my mirror did I realize that in my haste to escape the laboratory, I had dropped my toque.

John Polidori did not accost me the next morning, though I went to breakfast in full expectation that he would do so at any moment. I tried to tell myself that that was silly. It was a man’s cap, for one thing, and certainly not traceable to me. After a quiet breakfast, during which the doctor seemed distracted and agitated, but said nothing, I relaxed. Still, I spent the rest of the day torturing myself with indecision: should I tell Percy what I saw? Or George, perhaps? Should I reveal my espionage to all, then laugh it off? If I told George, might he confront our good doctor and make him reveal the meaning of that gleaming and inexplicable machine and the two tables? I had never seen anything like them nor, I wagered had my companions.

My curiosity was like one of those caged animals; it prowled the inside of my head hungrily, desperate to be let out.

Finally, in the late afternoon, I walked to Petit-Lancy though it was raining sporadically, and went to the bookstore, hoping against hope that Immanuel might be there. He was not, and at last, as the Sun settled toward the horizon, I left and walked home.

I entered the house just before supper and quickly divested myself of my wet coat, boots and stockings. Changed and dry, I went down to supper. Dr. Polidori was still not in company as the cheese course was served. I relaxed a second time and began to anticipate the hour when I might repair back upstairs and have a quiet conference with Elise. I’d had no opportunity to speak to her during the day with servants (and Clara) constantly within earshot, and I was eager to exchange notes with her and get her impressions of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory.

“Join us this evening, Mary?” Percy asked as we got up from the table. “You were sorely missed last night. George was in one of his moods and could not be persuaded to do more than snipe at John and try to extract information from him.”

I blushed, for I had been trying to extract information from his untenanted lab. “Perhaps after I’ve checked on William,” I said. “Elise said he had a fitful nap.”

“Don’t be too long, my love,” Percy begged me, and bent to give me a kiss.

“I shan’t,” I promised, and watched him cross the entrance hall to the drawing room, before I scurried upstairs to the nursery.

William was asleep and Elise had apparently gone downstairs for her supper. I determined to wait for her. I watched the baby sleep for a time, then retired to my sitting room. I was still there reading, when the door behind me opened. I smelt cigar smoke and started guiltily, reminded of my broken promise to Percy.

I dropped my book into my lap with a sigh. “I’m sorry, my love,” I started to say when something soft and slightly damp landed atop my book. A few stems of gleaming golden straw fluttered down atop it. I touched it gingerly—my black toque. I looked up to see John Polidori gazing down at me with huge, solemn eyes.

I pretended innocence. “What’s this, sir?”

“I believe it is your bonnet, madam. Along with some of the wheat straw you tumbled from the hayloft into my lab during your...excursion.”

His voice was soft, almost gentle, with no hint of anger. I immediately distrusted him.

“Surely that’s a man’s cap,” I objected. “Why would you think it’s mine?”

“Your husband, madam, recognized it as having once belonged to him. He gave it to you early in your courtship, he said, when you admired how ‘jaunty’ it was.”

“Well, perhaps someone else—” Had I actually been going to suggest that Elise had stolen my cap and invaded the doctor’s sanctum on her own? I blanched at my own wretched instinct for self-preservation. “It seems you have me, Doctor. Yes. I sneaked into your lab. My curiosity was unquenchable when you refused to let anyone know what you were doing.”

He moved to stand before me at the hearth where a little fire burned against the cool and wet of the spring evening. Amusement and surprise were written on every feature. “And you sought to lower yourself from the hayloft? You are a singular young woman, Mrs. Shelley. What is it you imagine I’m doing?”

I looked up at him, my head suddenly full of mysterious sixteenth century alchemists and distant castles and machines that channelled electricity to shock the sensibilities—and perhaps more. “You have built a machine after the fashion of Herr Dippel and you intend to use it to shock Lord Byron in the hope that it might set his mind to rights.”

Silken brows rose in a surprised arc and I knew a moment of absurd smugness. “Do I, indeed?”

“Yes, you do. The only thing I can’t fathom is how that will have any effect on his club foot.”

Dr. Polidori smiled at me. “I hate to disappoint you, my dear Mrs. Shelley—may I call you Mary?” At my hesitant nod, he continued, “I hate to disappoint you, Mary, but you are mistaken. I have no intention of shocking Lord Byron out of his dark moods. I intend to do far more than that.”

“What?” I asked, mesmerized by the glow of zeal in that dark gaze.

“Ah, no, I cannot tell even you. Not yet. But soon, I think. Very soon.”

He left me then, sitting before the fire with my spy’s cap and a tiny pile of straw.

Puzzles

I fully expected the doctor to tell the others what I had done, that they might all have a good laugh at my expense. He did not. He even came to breakfast the next morning and, though he sent me several enigmatic and wry looks during the meal, he said nothing of my intrusion into his laboratory.

For the next fortnight it rained on and off and kept all of us indoors. I was even loath to take my usual forays into Petit-Lancy and instead worked on my journal, toyed with writing a couple of short stories that I was unable (or unwilling) to finish, and played with my baby. Elise begged continually to be allowed to try again to breach the doctor’s defences and ferret out what was happening in the lab. I was just as curious as she—even more so—but I was chastened by my exploits...at least enough that I preferred to wait, pretending that I believed Dr. Polidori meant to confide in me.

He did seem to spend more time with us in the evenings, which I thought meant he was having some success in his pursuits. One singular evening we were all together in the drawing room of the villa. Yes, even Clara and Dr. Polidori were among us as the fire warmed the cool, damp room and the rain tapped at the window like a thousand desperate finches seeking asylum from the storm.

I stared out the window, thinking of Immanuel, while in the room behind me, the already desultory conversation fell away to nothing.

At length, Clara sighed hugely and said, “I am bored to tears. We cannot even go into town to the Tea Room with it raining so. Invent something for us to do, George.”

“Cards?” he suggested. “We have enough of a party for Whist. Or even Hearts.”

“I am sick to death of cards. If I never behold another playing card, I’m sure it will be to my benefit.”

“Shall I read to you then, my love?” asked George. “I have a new poem I’ve not quite finished.”

“And it is a wonderful poem, I’m sure, but I am too restless to be read to. Think of something else.”

She did not look in the least restless, draped as she was across a chaise near the hearth. Lord Byron rose from his own chair and moved to sit at her feet.

“Well, my darling, if you are too distracted to read a work, perhaps you would be better disposed to write one.” He looked around at us brightly. “Yes, that’s what we should do. We are all writers of one sort or another, let us put that talent to use. Let’s have a competition. Let us each write a tale of these haunted days in an effort to terrify and amaze.”

Clara’s laughter came out in a musical trill. “Haunted? What about these days seems haunted to you? Drowned days, rather.”

“Nonsense! What is this weather suited to if not the creation of haunted tales?”

He had a point, and I had to admit that I might easily describe my life of late as being haunted. Haunted by my dead daughter, by my beloved’s living wife, Harriet, by constant fear for William. I counted off my personal ghosts and added Immanuel to their number. I needed no haunted tales. George was nothing if not avid once he’d conceived an idea; it would do me little good to demur, so I agreed, if reluctantly.

George leapt up and ran into the hall to zealously command the butler to bring papers and pens to the drawing room. He passed them out among us and we each commenced to pondering our tales.

John Polidori announced that he intended to write about vampires—and waxed poetic about their wraithlike qualities: “Flitting down from above, dark and gossamer.” He gave me a sly look as he said it, and I feared he would reveal my espionage then, but he did not.

Still, I couldn’t meet his gaze, for my scattered thoughts focused on secret laboratories in which dark things were done. My pen was idle.

When at last the weather was fine enough for me to return to my walks, I all but ran from the villa. I was no more informed of what was happening in the laboratory; Polidori had said nothing more to me of his work and when he did speak to me, it seemed to be in riddles as if we shared a fine secret—which I suppose, in a way, we did.

I went to the bookshop and lingered there the afternoon, even missing Tea. Immanuel did not come and M. Bardeau had not seen him. Still, I crossed the street and went into the little park to our bench and there I sat until sunset. I rose, then, dejected, and started for home. I had gone perhaps ten feet, when I saw a silhouetted figure move between two trees. Surely that was the very hat Immanuel had worn at our last meeting. I turned and pursued the figure, circling an elm to cut him off.

He stepped out from behind the tree and into a shaft of ruddy, dying sunlight just as I came around to confront him. His face was lit in lurid hues, which, to my mind, took on the aspect of the fires of hell. How can I describe that horrific visage? Twisted. Yes, that is the single word that best conveys it. The heavy brow that cowled the eyes, the wrenched mouth, the ape-like jaw. Oh, it was not Immanuel...but it was.

I cringed back, terrified, my hand to my throat. “What have you done?” I cried.

“I?” His expression was unreadable, inhuman. “Ask God, rather, what He has done to saddle me with this affliction.” His words were slurred—barely decipherable.

“What is it? What has happened to you?”

The grotesque mouth twisted further. “I don’t know. I’ve no name for’t. Nor has any doctor that’ll see me. Ought to turn myself over to the college for classes. What a fine cadaver I’d make, eh, Mary?”

I realized as he spoke, his voice strangled and garbled, that his face was very near the level of my own. His body was also bent and awry, his shoulders sloping.

“Don’t think it, Immanuel. Don’t ever say such things. Surely some doctor might help you.” I thought of Polidori. “I may even know one who—”

“No, you mustn’t try to help, Mary. Surely I’ve done something to deserve this. I must have done. I would die if my disease cast shadows on another life.” He ground his teeth and I knew he thought of Lucille.

“Does Lucille—?” I started to ask, but he shook his head spasmodically.

“Lucille and I are done. She cannot know of this.”

It took every ounce of courage I owned to put my hand on his sleeve, but I did it. And I leaned close to him and murmured, “I will help you. I must help you. Let me speak to my doctor friend. Meet me here tomorrow at this same hour. Please, Immanuel,” I begged when he shook his head again. “Please.”

He relented, nodded, his head low. Then, pulling his hat down over his face, he shambled away into the twilight.

The doctor was at dinner that evening and I chafed all through the meal awaiting an opportunity to speak to him. I rose from table swiftly at the end of the meal and stopped him as he opened the front door of the house, intent on returning to his work. The others had gone through into the drawing room.

“Doctor, may I have word?”

“Now, Mary, I told you, I will confide in you only when I am ready.”

“It’s not about your work, doctor,” I assured him.

“The evening is fine—for once,” he observed. “Shall we walk?”

We took a turn around the front garden and I described to him all of Immanuel’s symptoms as nearly as I could catalogue them: the thickness of feature, the increasingly guttural quality of his voice, the twisting of his body. I had not quite reached the end of my recital when I knew that John Polidori was fascinated. He asked me a series of questions, his eyes intense and glittering in the light of the gas lamps.

“I know I’ve read of these symptoms, if I could but remember where,” he said when at last I had answered all to his satisfaction. He shook his head and smiled at me. “Mary, you are a demon in disguise. I have hours of work to do tonight and now I want only to consult my medical books.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, uncertain how to take the comment.

He laughed and raked his fingers through his hair, his eyes alight with strange zeal. “Don’t apologize, Mary, for bringing me a puzzle to solve. I thrive on puzzles.”

The next morning, Dr. Polidori came late to breakfast, dark circles beneath red eyes that took on an exultant gleam when he saw me. He sat down across from me, and snapped open his napkin. “I have found it, Mary,” he said, smiling at me.

Conversation around the table ceased as the others turned to stare at us. John Polidori and I rarely spoke two words to each other in company.

“Found what?” asked Percy, his gaze darting between me and the doctor.

“I had asked about a peculiar set of symptoms I had—” I started to say that I had observed, but the logical question would have been “where” and I did not wish to reveal poor Immanuel’s condition to all and sundry. “—come across in my research,” I concluded.

“Ah,” said George. “For your story. What symptoms are these?”

“Now, George,” said the doctor. “Would you have her reveal her plot aforetime? You might resolve to steal it for your own story.”

“Oh, very well. Be secretive.”

They returned to their breakfast conversation, though Percy gave us a final bemused look.

“Come to the lab later,” Dr. Polidori told me, sotto voce.

To the lab! Was this what it took to win his confidence—presenting him with a puzzle to solve? I nodded and finished my meal in child-like anticipation of that “later.”

“It’s called Noel’s Disease at present,” John Polidori told me as he let me into his lab. “For the French physician who first described it in Le Journal de Médcin almost eighty years ago. I knew I’d read of it.”

“It’s been known for sometime then,” I said, trying not to stare past him at the contents of the room. I needn’t have bothered. He’d covered everything of interest with drop cloths. “Then there’s a cure, surely.”

“None, I’m afraid. It’s extremely rare and not many cases have been studied.”

My heart fell. “Then nothing can be done for him?”

“Not by conventional medicine. His body, you see, is accumulating bone mass, and it will continue to do so until he can no longer function. Or so Dr. Noel writes. For your friend Immanuel, there is no going back.”

The tears stung my eyes as they fell. “Hopeless, then.”

“This means much to you.”

I nodded. “He is such a sweet soul. So gentle and kind. He had been destined for such happiness, I thought. He was to be married, and studies to be a doctor.”

“I said that conventional medicine could not help him. But I do not practice conventional medicine.”

Dr. Polidori moved further into the lab, beckoning me to follow. He led me past the shrouded Machine and over to a row of animal cages in which were several cats, a ferret and a rabbit. The rabbit slept, but the cats looked up at us expectantly, the ferret with some distrust.

“Do you notice anything peculiar about these animals?”

I looked at them. They seemed perfectly normal. One of the cats rose and came to rub itself against the wire of the cage. Polidori opened the cage door and lifted the animal out, putting it into my arms. It began, at once, to purr.

“They seem perfectly normal. Is there something peculiar about them?”

He smiled. “This cat, that seems so content to snuggle in your arms, was dead less than twelve hours ago.”

I stopped petting the cat. “What?”

“It was dead. I resurrected it.”

“What can you mean?”

“It drowned. I gave it a new spirit and now it lives. Well, rather, to be more accurate, the cat spirit that inhabited this body was in another. I transferred it from that body to this one.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Oh, but it is.” He lifted the cat from my arms and returned it to its cage, then moved to the Machine and uncovered it with a flourish. “With this.”

The Machine was twice as impressive at close quarters as it had been from the loft. It gleamed in the light of the lamps—all gears and oddly shaped bells and metal wire brushes and cables. I could only stare at it until its bright contours blurred, unable to quite grasp what he was telling me.

“Mary, this is how I will cure our mutual friend. This machine will enable me to place George’s spirit—his soul—in a new, healthy body.”

I was stunned beyond description. I felt as if my own body had rooted itself to the cobbled floor of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory, as if my soul was reaching down into the earth to maintain its hold on solid reality. “That isn’t possible,” I murmured. “It can’t be.”

“But it is. That cat—these animals—prove that it is possible.”

He told me the same tale Immanuel had told of an alchemist named Dippel who thought seizures were caused by a misalignment of a person’s soul and body, and that an electrical shock might possibly realign them.

“I have taken the idea further,” he explained. “I have theorized that it might also be used to drive a soul from one body to another. That it might cause a soul to align itself to a new vessel.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, trying to read his face. “That’s...it’s—”

“What—blasphemy? Don’t tell me you believe that superstitious nonsense, Mary Shelley.”

My face suffused with sudden heat. “Yet, are you not playing at being a god?”

“What of it? If we can perform the acts of gods, then are we not gods? What is a body, after all, but a vehicle for the soul? If your carriage springs its frame, you simply acquire a new carriage, do you not?”

“But bodies are not built by men as carriages are. They are born. They have lives of their own.”

“But if that life flees, Mary, if the vessel is empty, what wrong is there in refilling it—reanimating it?”

“What harm? What harm came to the cat whose spirit has now been dispossessed?”

He blinked at me. “It...it is gone. Dead.”

“And would this not be true of a man whose body you sought to use?”

He paled. “What are you suggesting? That I might commit murder to acquire a new body for our friend? I would do no such thing!”

“What then? Rob graves like your alchemist?”

He was suddenly suspicious. “I said nothing about him robbing graves.”

“I’d heard of him before.” I turned away from him. “What you are suggesting is—is—”

“What I am suggesting, Mary, is the only way that my friend and yours can live unfettered by a malformed body and a diseased mind.”

He came around to stand before me. “Yes, diseased, Mary. Lord Byron is a great poet. Potentially the greatest who ever lived. You say your friend Immanuel was destined for happiness. Well, now both of them—the great poet and the great doctor—are destined for nothing but decay and death. Indeed, they are already dead...without this—this miracle.”

I met his zealot gaze. “Are you proposing to give Immanuel a new body? Why?”

“I have experimented on animals successfully. I have yet to do it with a human being. I would that George perhaps not be the first.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “You mean to experiment on Immanuel. No. It is too cruel!”

“Too cruel? To offer him a future he does not now have? A future that holds more than a slow, agonizing death, or a swifter self-administered one?”

I recalled what my friend had said about serving as a cadaver for the medical college and I knew that Dr. Polidori was right.

He saw the realization in my face. “Bring him to me. Tomorrow. Let me see him—speak to him.”

“But where would you acquire a—a suitable host for his soul?”

“People die every day, Mary. True, they do not every day die relatively young and of causes that leave the body unscathed. We must have a drowning victim, or someone who has been struck by lightning or suffocated or had an allergic reaction to something perhaps. And we must have it as soon after death as possible. In fact, I have already put the word out among my colleagues to be on the alert for such circumstances.” He smiled a strange, fierce smile. “I am ready.”

I left for Petit-Lancy that afternoon, knowing that I was not.

I brought Immanuel to the doctor as he proposed, the next morning around eleven o’clock. George, Claire (for so she now styled herself, both Jane and Clara forgotten) and Percy had gone down to a favourite tea room in Geneva. I had begged off with a headache and had taken a tilbury into town to collect Immanuel. It had not been easy to convince him to come—he was so torn between wretchedness, hope, and absurd guilt.

Whatever could he imagine he’d done to deserve such a fate, I asked him, and when he named some ridiculous oversight, I asked him what he thought I might have done to deserve to lose my little daughter—or what she might have done to deserve to die before she had yet lived.

That quieted him, and he came.

I do not recall all that was said during that interview. Indeed, while John examined Immanuel in his office, I wandered the laboratory, peering at the animals, looking for signs of deterioration, running my hands over the gleaming metal of the Machine and wondering...

I was still standing by the machine when John and Immanuel returned to the room. I realized, only when they’d jarred me back to reality, that I had spent the time deep in my own imagination. A second realization struck me as I stood blinking at them—the Zealot and the Wretch. I had been more than hoping Polidori might save Immanuel—I had been praying.

“I believe,” John said, smiling, “that M. Dessins is a perfect candidate for my procedure.”

“And does he understand what your procedure entails?”

The doctor looked at Immanuel, who nodded.

“You are willing to accept this?” I asked him.

“Yes,” Immanuel said. “God help me, yes.”

“God will not help you,” John said, laying a hand on my friend’s shoulder, “but I shall.”

A strange, fleeting haunted look inhabited Immanuel’s eyes for a moment, then he bowed his head in acquiescence.

John had his man Paolo escort Immanuel to his residence for he had other plans for me.

“I’ve said before that you are a singular woman, Mary Shelley,” he told me. “Because of this I have a proposition to make you. I need someone to assist me during the procedures. Someone who possesses your qualities of courage and intelligence.”

I was chilled. “You have Paolo.”

“Paolo is a servant—a valet and drudge. He is neither brave nor remarkably intelligent. He follows instructions, but he has no capacity to understand the principles behind what I am doing. You, on the other hand, will assuredly understand them, which means you will understand why you must obey my orders to the letter.”

I started to object. I was not as brave as he thought, nor as intelligent. I knew little of science or medicine.

“Mary,” he told me, fixing me with that sharp, dark gaze, “your friend Immanuel must abide the procedure. Can you not find it in your heart to stand by him?”

In my heart, yes, but in my soul something clamoured that this was not right. Still, I nodded and accepted his proposition. He taught me that very morning how the Machine worked.

Poet King

We were still in the coach house when the others returned to the villa from the Tea Room. Hearing their coach, the doctor cursed and brought our lesson to a close. I slipped out through the stable and pretended to have been out taking the air for my headache. At first I thought my simple story was believed, but that afternoon at Tea, I looked up to find Percy watching me closely with the most extraordinary mixture of expressions on his face: doubt, curiosity, bemusement...and something altogether darker.

Finally, when Claire had gone over to the spinet to play and sing one of her amour’s poems to the tune of a lullaby, he leaned forward in his chair and said, “I thought you had a headache this morning, Mary.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Yet when we arrived home, you were in the coach house.”

He did not say, “with Polidori,” but I was certain he thought it.

“Yes. I was.”

“Was the doctor there, as well?”

“Well, of course he was. Did you think I sneaked in secretly?” I must have blushed as I spoke the words, for he pounced upon them.

“You might have done whether he was there or not.” He was frowning now, clearly dismayed at my coyness.

I was puzzled by his attitude. Before we’d left England he’d actively encouraged me to take our mutual friend, Thomas Hogg, as a lover and yet now...

“He invited me,” I told him.

“Indeed? And so you forgot your headache?”

I set down my tea cup. “Is this jealousy? What of your pressing me about Thomas?”

“That was different,” said Percy, pouting a bit. “I approved of Thomas. I’m not at all sure I approve of John Polidori.”

“I am not making love to John Polidori.”

“Then for what purpose did you accept his invitation?”

“For the purpose of receiving a palliative for her megrim.”

I looked up over my shoulder to see Dr. Polidori himself standing just behind our chairs. He was solemn and looked every inch a doctor. I was suddenly struck with the urge to giggle. Instead I picked up my tea cup and hid my inappropriate mirth in the Earl Grey.

But now, we had been overheard. George was there in a moment, hovering. “So, Mary, you’ve seen the inside of my good friend’s secret laboratory? Tell all, dear girl. What does the doctor do in his dark and murky offices?”

I exchanged a glance with the doctor, who smiled and put a hand on George’s shoulder.

“I have been cruel, haven’t I, denying you knowledge of the work I’m doing on your behalf. Hardly fair, is it? Very well. I relent. I will tell, if not all, certainly the heart of my plans.”

And, as we sat like children at story time, Dr. John Polidori told our gathering most of what he had told me that morning. The effect was, I am sure, very gratifying to him. There was, at first, mirth over a suspected prank. Then resentful scepticism and finally, with my added testimony, which the good doctor pried from my lips, awed acceptance that he really meant to do this thing.

“You will be whole, George,” he told our friend. “You will own a new, well body. No club foot. No black moods. No need for the palliative crutches of opiates or drink to hold your shadows at bay. You will be the Poet King you were meant to be.”

“When?” George insisted on knowing. “How soon?”

“I have but one more experiment,” his would-be saviour told him. “I must prove that it can be done as simply for a human spirit as for an animal one. With that accomplished, you will be reborn.”

“Who will you use for your primary experiment?” asked Percy.

I stiffened.

John met my gaze and said, “A village lad with a degenerative disease. Someone I discovered quite by accident.”

I smiled my thanks at this discretion, and he took the others to his lab to show them his work. I stayed behind, telling myself it was only because I wanted to hold my baby.

It was more than anticipation I felt. It was hope and worry and dread. It was purgatory.

I wanted Immanuel to be...cured? Healed? Reborn? That was the word our doctor had used—but was it really rebirth? How could it be when I knew deep in my heart of hearts that as much as I was waiting for Immanuel to be reborn, I was waiting for someone else to die.

I attended Dr. Polidori in the lab and even assisted in the reanimation of the capuchin monkey. He chilled me that day by casually wondering what might happen if he were to try to put the spirit of a monkey into the body of a cat.

He looked up to see me staring at him, open-mouthed, and smiled. “I was jesting, Mary. What do you take me for?”

I didn’t know what I took him for and said nothing.

He came to dinner one evening about a week after his unveiling of his great plan in a high humour, virtually glowing. He was lightning in human form. White-hot and pulsing, his face almost too bright to look upon. Something had happened and I was certain we would hear about it when he felt the moment most dramatic.

George was in a rare mood, as well, and had clearly been thinking a great deal of what the doctor proposed to do.

“John,” he said as coffee was served, “how many times might you perform this feat—this soul transfer—on a single person? That is, how many times might you transfer a single soul?”

The doctor shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine any reason it could not be done repeatedly, if necessary. I suppose there is a chance the procedure might not take—”

“No, that’s not what I was thinking,” said George, leaning forward avidly, his slender fingers tight around the bowl of his coffee cup. “Look, John, if you can transfer me to a new body because this one is flawed, could you not just as easily do it if my new body became diseased, or aged?”

John fixed him with the most extraordinary look, as if he had just seen through a doorway into heaven. He breathed out a solitary word: “Immortality.”

“Yes. And if you can do it for me, why not for Percy, for Claire, for Mary, for yourself?” He leaned even farther forward. “We could be immortal, John. A race of immortal Poet Kings.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Immortality? For all of us? Suddenly, I was looking down a corridor in time, back to Johann Dippel, digging up his graves, then ahead to us, waiting like vultures for someone somewhere to die. Or far, far worse. I recalled what Immanuel had said one afternoon: “Men are fools—and worse—who wish to be immortal.”

I didn’t realize I was on my feet until Percy touched my elbow.

“Mary, whatever is wrong? Isn’t this the most exciting thing? The most glorious thing?”

I opened my mouth to spill out my fear and loathing at the idea, but a glance at my husband’s face checked me. “Glorious,” I said and hurriedly left the room.

Death & Rebirth

The young man drowned late on a Saturday. I was the first one Dr. Polidori told of it. The body had been brought to a clinic in which he had colleagues, and when the young man—who had been flung from his horse into the channel—was pronounced dead, Polidori’s colleagues drained the lungs and packed the body in ice from a neighbourhood glacière. It was on its way.

I was in an extreme state of agitation as he gathered the rest of our group in the drawing room and made his momentous announcement: “We have a body. A drowning victim. I am informed that it is quite perfect. A young man of twenty-four, the son of a merchant of Geneva, strong and healthy.”

“But for want of the ability to swim,” George added in an unseemly jest.

“Oh, what does he look like?” asked Claire.

“I’m told he’s quite handsome. Blond and grey-eyed.”

Claire smiled and glanced mischievously at her beau. “Indeed.”

The corner of George’s mouth twitched, whether in humour or irritation I couldn’t say.

“The body will arrive late this evening. I’ll perform the procedure at first light with Mary assisting.”

All eyes turned to me and I realized that I had become associated with Polidori’s enterprise. The thought chilled me to the marrow.

“I’ll send Paolo to tell...to tell the—the patient,” I said, though “victim” was the word that had come to my mind. Nonsense, Mary, I told myself. The doctor is saving Immanuel, not harming him. He will be reborn. Renewed.

“There’s no need for that, Mary,” said John quietly.

“Oh, have you already dispatched your man, then?”

“M. Dessins will not be my first subject after all.”

“What?” I had turned to leave the room and now stopped and swung back.

John’s voice was gentleness itself. “Understand, Mary, that bodies of young men of this age and in this condition—bodies of a quality to be a fit receptacle for Lord Byron—are exceptionally rare and difficult to acquire.”

The look he sent George Gordon was one that made my flesh creep, and I knew that they had likely cooked this up between them days ago and were only now telling me. I looked at Percy, but he was nodding as well.

I wanted to scream at them that it wasn’t fair, that Immanuel had been given hope and now they were to dash it. I wanted to put myself away from them quickly and emphatically. Instead, I nodded, too. “Of course,” I said. “It sounds a perfect match for Lord Byron.”

I turned and continued from the room, making my way upstairs to the nursery. I could feel John Polidori’s eyes on me until I was out of sight of the drawing room.

Elise was with William. She stood when I entered the room, her gaze bright and wary. “What is it, Mam? What’s happened?”

“The doctor has his body,” I told her, for she knew virtually all of what had transpired between me and Polidori over the past weeks.

“Well, then...?”

“He doesn’t mean to use it for Immanuel.” Yes, I had told her that too. “He means to make Lord Byron immortal. Lord Byron and the rest of us, if we’re so lucky.” I laid harsh emphasis on the last word.

“That ain’t natural, Mam.”

“No, it isn’t. Nor is it fair. He promised Immanuel...I promised Immanuel.”

“Well, then,” said Elise, giving me a strange look from beneath her lashes, “what will we do?”

I sent Elise to Immanuel with a note. I gave her further instructions as to what she was to do when she returned to the villa, then I fed my baby and rocked him to sleep in my arms.

The body arrived at half-past eleven under cover of darkness. There was a moon, but it frequently hid its face behind wisps of cloud. There was much activity around the coach house then. I pretended to be asleep in my room, but watched instead from the darkened window as Polidori and his Poet King returned to the house. They seemed in rather high spirits, but as they traversed the hall to their rooms the tenor of their voices changed.

I moved closer to the door to listen.

“What will it be like, John? How shall I feel when I awake?”

“Free, my friend. Free of the limp. Free of the blackness. Free of all disease.”

“But what of him? Will he leave nothing of himself in the shell?”

“He is gone. A ghost. Less than a ghost—a vapor. Look, when I began these experiments I carefully charted the habits of the animals I used. Their preferred foods, their responses to certain stimuli. I chose as subjects those with the most clearly defined personality traits, for want of a better word. In all cases, the personality of the transferred spirit was preserved. You will be you—George Gordon, Lord Byron—and no one else.”

“I am afraid...” George began, then stopped.

“Afraid of what?”

“My poetry. How much of it is influenced by my sickness and informed by my trials? What if...what if I am so whole I no longer hunger. I no longer have reason to write?”

There was a long silence, then John murmured, “That shan’t happen. You are brilliant. And your brilliance transcends all physical factors. In this new body, your powers will be amplified, my friend, not diminished. Besides,” he added, his voice taking on a teasing tone, “if being young, healthy and beautiful does not suit the Poet King, we will find you an old cadaver that looks like Punch. Cease worrying, George. You can be anything you desire.”

“Yes. I can, can’t I?”

Dear God, they spoke of it as if they might shop for bodies as they shopped for a new chapeau. You don’t like this one or it goes out of fashion, simply select another. I returned to my watch and waited, as the windows of their respective rooms lit, then darkened.

Immanuel met me behind the coach house at a quarter past one in the morning. I had a key to the lab now, for I had asked to be entrusted with the care of the animals. I wore it around my neck on a satin ribbon.

Once in the lab, it took both of us to get the frozen body of the young drowning victim onto the host’s table. I had gotten towels, a fur throw and blankets. Immanuel had brought a change of clothing—clothing that had once fit him and which should fit him again, for the dead young man was very like him in stature.

I bid Immanuel lie on the other table. I strapped him down carefully. I had witnessed several animal transfers now and knew that the reaction from the donor could be violent. To the heads of both Immanuel and the other young man, I affixed the strange little caps the doctor had fashioned. They were of silver mesh which he insisted would best allow the electrical current generated by the machine to flow, pushing the spirit along on its fiery tide.

Forgive my want of scientific precision. I am a writer, not a scientist, and have lived for some time with a poet—this is the best description I have.

The hardest part, I knew, would be to generate that flood of electricity. I had seen John Polidori do it several times but I had not his physical strength. Yet, for Immanuel’s sake, I must find strength. I went to one end of the Machine.

“Are you ready?” I asked and Immanuel grunted in the affirmative.

I took a deep breath, wrapped both hands around the crank that would turn the gears against the metal brushes, and threw my entire being into the task. The Machine hummed, the “bees” buzzed, then a blue arc of electrical current raced up the dancing rods and flashed between them, completing the “touch.” The blue flame danced down wires attached to those rods and out to the silver cap on Immanuel’s head. He was suddenly cocooned in pale azure radiance. He roared aloud and I knew a horrible fear that we would be heard. I turned the crank faster...but not as fast as I had seen Polidori turn it.

It was taking too long. Much too long. The spirit of the capuchin monkey had been transferred by now—the donor body dead and cooling, the host body twitching to life. My arms were aching, but I had no more to give, I was slowing when I needed more speed.

I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Paolo Foggi standing in the doorway to the tack room. I almost cried out in defeat. We had been discovered, but the sight of Polidori’s man galvanized me. I cranked harder, fear pumping through my every vein. I would do this thing. I would.

Paolo paused only long enough to take in the situation, then rushed toward me, his hands outstretched.

No! No! I would not be deterred. I must not.

He reached my side and put his hands over mine on the crank shaft. I tightened my grip. But instead of trying to rip my hands from the handle, he began to turn the crank with me—faster and faster still. Immanuel roared again. The light exploded from his cap, raced back up the silver wire, leapt the gap between the rods and flashed through the second wire. There was a bright burst of radiance from the cap on the drowning victim’s head. Then the aura subsided as if the body had absorbed it.

“Stop!” I cried to my unexpected helper. “Arresto!”

We stopped turning the crank and I hastened to the table, grabbing a blanket as I went. I threw the blanket over the naked man and put my cheek near his nose. Did the flesh beneath my fingers feel warm or was that imagination? Was the pallor of the skin lessening?

I felt a thin breath of air on my cheek. He gasped suddenly, convulsing, quite as a drowning victim might if he regained his breath. His eyes opened—fine grey eyes. They met mine.

“Mary,” he said and I all but collapsed.

But there was no time for weakness. Paolo was chattering at me in Italian, telling me that we must flee. There was a carriage awaiting us at the top of the lane with Elise and little Willmouse in it. It was Elise who had sent him, of course, and he had come because he loved her and would do for her anything she asked.

He helped Immanuel—Immanuel reborn—into his clothing, while I agonized over whether I should leave a note for Percy. Something begging his forgiveness even as it condemned what he and his friends meant to do. But a note seemed too poor a vehicle for all that I felt: horror and fear at what I had done and what they had meant to do, grief for Percy whom I shall always love, and hope that Immanuel might take from science a future nature had denied him.

I turned to Paolo. “Prendalo al carrello. Take him to the carriage.” I gestured toward the back door and added that I would meet them up at the road; I merely wanted to make sure we left nothing behind. (Nothing but Immanuel’s empty shell.)

The door closed behind the two men. I turned to the Machine and set about making sure that it would grant rebirth to no immortal poet kings.

Only later, as the carriage bore us into the night, did I resolve that I would do something more. I would complete the tale George had challenged me to write. And, by God, it would be more than a mere ghost story meant to dull the boredom of a rainy night.

I looked up at Immanuel as he sat across from me in the chaise. And, miraculously, it was really Immanuel I saw behind those grey eyes. He smiled at me, though weakly.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse from drowning. “Thank you, Mary.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said, “until we have crossed this unknown land. I fear we may have far to travel.”

He met my gaze levelly and I knew he understood; I was not speaking of the darkened landscape outside the rocking chaise.

Maya is addicted to speculative fiction. For this, she blames her dad and Ray Bradbury. She’s authored six fantasy novels and short fiction that’s appeared in Analog, Amazing Stories, Interzone, and others, and been short-listed for the Nebula and British SF awards. Her current project with writing partner Michael Reaves (co-author of Mr. Twilight) is a new addition to the Star Wars universe.

Maya is half of Maya & Jeff, a Pegasus Award-winning musical duo. They’ve collaborated on three amazing children and live in San Jose. Read/listen to Maya’s work at http://www.bookviewcafe.com or http://www.jeffandmaya.com Her website can be found at http://www.mysticfig.com

The Persistence of Souls

… by Sarah Zettel

“‘ For God’s sake, my dear Byron,’ said Webster at last. ‘What are you thinking of? Are you about to commit murder? Or what other dreadful thing are you meditating?’”

The Works of Lord Byron:

Letters and Journals

ed. Thomas Moore

I

London, England, 1840

Mr. Josiah Abrahams

Quality Gemstones &Jewellery

to

Select Clientèle

Fletcher tucked the card into the pocket of his coat and nodded to the automatic footman. The automaton did not move. Fletcher grimaced. The creation of bronze and clockwork could not interpret the gesture. It needed a verbal command.

“Bring me the gentleman who gave you the card,” said Fletcher clearly. The clockwork mechanism bowed from its waist with only the slightest chime of metal against metal, and set off down the hallway with a heavy tread.

That we should be reduced to this... Fletcher shook his head at the hotel’s public sitting room. Whereas once he would have sat in his master’s private salon, here he shared a threadbare space with a clerk, a clergyman, and a tradesman with his gaudy waistcoat.

I’m sorry, Master. Fletcher stifled a cough, and the clergyman rattled his paper irritably in response. The automaton returned in short order with Mr. Abrahams, as well-turned-out and respectable as ever, walking calmly behind. Shame burned through Fletcher as he stood. His own blue coat was dusty past all his arts with brush and damp cloth, and his breeches shone at the knees. Upon beholding him, Mr. Abrahams grew distinctly wary.

Fletcher called upon his long years of training and kept his own expression impassive as he made his bow. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mr. Abrahams.”

“Not at all.” Mr. Abrahams paused. “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

“You were acquainted with my master,” Fletcher replied. “Many years ago.” He did not give Abrahams the chance to ask any further questions. “I have engaged a private sitting room. If you would step this way, sir?”

The sitting room was small, without a fireplace. It possessed one window, which was in need of cleaning. Mr. Abrahams betrayed no discomfort, but removed his tall hat and sat down at the chipped and badly painted table.

“Now, Mr. Fletcher, how may I be of service to you?”

“I am under commission to sell some precious gemstones.” Fletcher brought a small green bag out from his coat pocket. “I believe, and my master believes, that you are the man best able to transact such business.”

“I thank you for your confidence.” Abrahams bowed his head. “I am of course most interested in anything you might have to show me.” He produced a piece of black velvet from his own pocket and laid it on the table.

Fletcher opened his bag and tipped the contents onto Mr. Abrahams’ velvet. Three pearls, each as big as a marble, rolled onto the velvet: one pure white, one a delicate pink, the third a deep, lustrous silver-grey.

Abrahams stared at the gems. He pulled a loupe from his inner pocket and screwed it into his eye. One by one he lifted the pearls, scrutinising them in the dim light. Fletcher watched the play of emotions on his face. This was a man who loved beauty and understood the worth of beautiful things. But he was also fundamentally honest.

“You said you were under commission?” enquired Abrahams softly.

“My master acquired these in Greece,” said Fletcher, which was true as far as it went. “I am engaged to sell them on his behalf and have a letter to that effect.” He brought out the carefully folded document.

The jeweler removed his glass and unfolded the paper. He saw the crest and the date and his keen eyes bulged, first with disbelief, then with anger. “This is ridiculous. His lordship has been dead these twenty years.”

“So he wished the world, which hounded him, to believe. But I assure you, the letter is genuine.” I copied his hand often enough when he still had hands of his own, and his wishes have been my life’s mission since.

Abrahams studied the letter stating that the bearer, Armitage Fletcher, had permission to undertake the proffered commission. He stroked the signature once before closing the paper and staring again at the pearls shining pure and beautiful in the ashy London daylight.

Fletcher’s heart throbbed painfully in his chest and a new cough threatened as he waited to see which would win: the lover of beauty or the honest man.

“I believe,” Abrahams said quietly, “we can come to an arrangement on your master’s behalf.”

Fletcher’s chest squeezed so tightly that he coughed twice, requiring he bring his handkerchief to his lips. He hastily tucked it back into his pocket, before the man in front of him could see the blood staining the white linen.

“Excellent.”

II

“Vigilance. Vigilance.”

Gregory Beale stumbled through the French doors of the Lovelace House conservatory, clutching his blackened right arm to the ruin of his chest. Around him, brass and enamel trees glimmered in the moonlight. The scent of smoke and charred flesh he carried with him mingled with the scents of oranges and roses created for this place by a leading Parisian parfumeur. A silver cat stalked past him without pausing as he staggered forward, and a golden stag paced unconcerned behind the lemon trees. Only the jeweled serpents twining through the branches paused to notice the monster he had become, shambling through their jeweled Eden.

Pain lanced through the bones of his face and straight into his brain. The singing of the host of mechanical birds was torture to his remaining ear, and a constant steady ticking as of a thousand pocket watches set his injuries throbbing to its rhythm. He knew if that ticking ever faded, one of the three keymen standing silently against the wall would move to locate the faltering creation and wind it up again, using the proper key from the great ring on its belt.

But not one of them would move to help him. Not without its mistress’ orders.

“Vigilance,” he rasped again as he shambled forward. Please, please, let them recognise me. “Vigilance!”

A bronze mastiff appeared from around the edge of the fountain. Around its feet clustered three black lacquered spiders, each the size of a pigeon.

Beale’s legs would carry him no farther. The impact as he tumbled to the floor felt as if it must shatter his charred bones. A spider scuttled closer. From his one good eye, Beale could see the orange hourglass emblazoned on the mechanism’s belly. It would finish him off in a moment if he didn’t make himself known. For a heartbeat he was of a mind to let it.

“Vigilance,” Beale croaked toward the dog. “I am Gregory Poke Beale. Fetch your mistress.”

The dog’s tail waved twice, steady as a metronome. Then, it turned and padded away, its paws clicking lightly against the mosaic floor.

With the dog’s departure, the spiders folded their legs, becoming little more than black stones. Some odd detached part of his mind was aware that it was a great privilege to be observing these delicate creations so closely, even if it was only through one eye. Even if it was only through a haze of burning pain.

“Mr. Beale.”

Beale tried to lift his head and failed. The Countess Lovelace crouched down beside him. “What has happened?”

“So sorry, my lady.” He turned his face toward her and she gasped as she saw the ravages of the burn, how the brass rim of his flying goggles had been embedded into his flesh.

“Are they here now? The ones who did this to you?”

He shook his head slowly. “Can’t know I survived the crash,” he grated. “Would’ve caught me...so sorry, my lady.”

“Who did this to you? Who is responsible?”

The pain was drifting away. It was all but gone. He tried to think, but he was too filled with wonder. The relief was indescribable. He would be able to sleep now. He could sleep, and all would be better.

“Mr. Beale!”

She was speaking to him, Countess Lovelace. So beautiful. Never had thought she would be so. He wanted to answer her, but he could not. Sleep was so close. Sleep, and the pain would never return.

“Answer me, Mr. Beale! Who did this to you?”

With a supreme effort, Beale made his ruined mouth move. “Your father,” he whispered at last. “Your father.”

But it was too much, the return to the pain and the fear. I’m sorry. Truly, my lady, I am.

Gregory Beale let beautiful oblivion claim him.

Trembling, Ada Lovelace stood. She put her hands to her face. When she lowered them again, she was pale but calm.

“Bastion,” she said.

One of the keymen moved forward smoothly.

“Remove Mr. Beale.” She bit her lip. “Take Carriage Number One to the Camden facility.” It would be bad enough to have him found there, but better there than in the house. “Leave him in Alley Number Three. Do you understand?”

The keyman bowed again.

“Gently,” said Ada.

Bastion bent and tenderly scooped up the blackened corpse. Cradling Mr. Beale’s remains, Bastion moved to the open door and walked out into the garden. Ada, with the mastiff pacing beside her, closed the door behind it, turning the three locks.

For a moment she stood there, her palm pressed flat against the cold glass. Ada King, Countess Lovelace was a fashionably slim woman, but unfashionably tall. Her wide-set brown eyes were called intelligent by her friends and cold by her detractors. Her features were regular, even pretty, but her coarse and ink-stained hands were the despair of her family and her lady’s maid.

Ada wanted to pray, to grieve. She wanted to feel anything except the horrible wish that Mr. Beale had waited one more day to die.

Gradually, the familiar steady ticking that filled the garden slipped inside her, calming the riot of thought and emotion. She was able to lift her head, more than a little relieved to find her cheeks were wet.

I remain human after all.

“Come, Vigilance,” she ordered softly.

With the mastiff beside her, Ada left the garden by the interior door. She did not have to look back to know the spiders returned to their hiding places.

Lovelace House was a stately edifice of the newest construction. Its beautiful proportions spoke to the care lavished on its design. The airy inside reflected clean lines, furnished in the comfortable, modern style. Ada moved quietly through the harmonious blend of creams and golds, dusky rose, and mint green. Stained glass trimmed the many windows so that rainbows tinted the thick Turkey carpets.

Not really a home, Ada thought. It had the feeling of some grand hotel. A stopping place, a showpiece, empty of meaningful life. Tonight, Ada was grateful for this. It kept the household from being alerted to Mr. Beale’s entrance, and his death. The last thing she needed was for William or Mother to know what had happened in the garden.

Moving carefully so as not to trigger any alarms built into the nightingale floors, Ada climbed to her studio on the third floor. This was the one place in the great house in which Mother had no influence. Ada thrived in the clutter; blueprints and mechanical drawings covered the walls. The makings of artificial skeletons glimmered in the flame of gaslight turned low; bronze and copper struts forming hands and legs; staring glass eyes; assemblages of gears that were hearts and bellows that were lungs. Jars for Leyden batteries, sheets of metal, and copper piping of various thicknesses occupied the far corner. Cabinets of gleaming tools stood between chests of drawers holding finished drawings or blank paper. Ink permanently stained the wooden floor and the scarred tabletops. She appreciated even a black thundercloud stain sprawling beneath the drawings on the eastern wall. She’d thrown an entire bottle of India ink in a moment of fury. The drawings on the northern wall more perfectly concealed the bullet hole from an invader who forced entry before she created the mastiff and the spiders. Against another wall, two keymen stood waiting in case they were ever needed.

Ada inhaled the calming scents of dust and oil, metal and electricity, as she climbed the short flight of stairs to the library alcove filled with volumes both ancient and modern, covering every possible aspect of the mechanical sciences. Here there were leather chairs made soft and comfortable by much use. On the seat of one lay a loose bundle of ragged, water-stained pages. It was here she had been reading when Vigilance came to tell her of Mr. Beale’s...arrival.

“...stioned P again this morning. Phoebus is a sterner judge than Diana, and what a man says beneath her light he may contradict once morning comes. But P remained steadfast. It can be done, he said, over and over. It can be done.”

Ada’s hands, capable of bringing an assemblage of gears to miraculous life, trembled as she picked up the papers.

“...Bysshe is all for it. Talks of incalculable benefits to mankind, &tc and he may be right, although I suspect he thinks mostly of putting an end to so much of his own fear...”

The edges of the pages were uneven where they had been torn from their book. The handwriting on them alternated between dramatic waves of looped and curled letters and clusters of minuscule, crabbed words where the author was clearly in a hurry. Ada curled up in the chair, tucking her feet under the hem of her skirts, reading the dramatic words and trying to understand.

When the morning came, she was still reading.

“...Little Mary looked out of sorts though as Bysshe paced the room declaiming all the greatness to come. Curious, as P insists the initial idea was hers...”

Floorboards creaked outside the workroom. Ada’s head snapped up and she automatically folded her papers away.

But it was only the footman, Hollings, who entered. “Excuse me, m’lady. Mr. Babbage has arrived.”

Yes, of course. It will be time to leave. “Please tell Mr. Babbage I will be with him shortly, and ask him to wait in the blue room.”

When her servant departed, Ada strode across the workroom to a wide writing desk. She laid out the papers and then deftly manipulated the elaborate marquetry pattern on the desk’s right side, causing a drawer to slide smoothly open. She reached inside and pulled out a slim notebook. In her hand, it fell open to a particular page, covered in crabbed, blotted and scratched-out lines.

“Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!

ADA! Sole daughter of my house and heart?”

She laid the open notebook beside the loose sheets. Her eyes flickered from one to the other as her long fingers ran down the paper.

Outside the door, the floorboards sighed.

Ada pulled a sheaf of mechanical drawings across the notebook and the loose sheets. With them out of sight, she turned smoothly, her face a complaisant mask. But when the door opened and Charles Babbage marched across the threshold, the mask fell away.

“Mr. Babbage. You gave me a turn.” Ada pressed her palm to her forehead. “I’m sure I told Hollings to ask you to wait.”

“You did, Lady Lovelace.” Babbage laid his hat and walking stick on the nearest table. “I ignored him, and you. Have you forgotten what day it is?”

“Of course not. As you see.” Ada indicated the spread of her fawn skirts trimmed elegantly with green lace and ribbons. She had taken time to dress, and to eat, although she had ignored her mother’s impatient messages about joining the rest of the household at table. “I am quite ready.”

“Then why, may I ask, was I required to wait?”

The vision of Mr. Beale’s ravaged body rose up in Ada’s mind, but she repressed it. “Something came up at the last moment.”

“A matter of business?”

Ada flicked the folds of her overskirt. “I would prefer not to discuss it at this time, Mr. Babbage.”

Babbage’s craggy brow settled into a deep glower as he frowned at her. “You understand that we are at an exremely delicate stage. If today’s test fails with the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister watching...”

“You and I will still be the richest industrialists in the Empire,” replied Ada wearily.

But she might have saved her breath for all the notice Mr. Babbage took. “...Our patrons will begin looking to our competitors. The patents of Babbage & Lovelace will no longer be unrivalled. We will be marooned where we are, making toys for the nobility...”

“Such as myself.”

“ ...instead of creating the machines that will become the backbone of the British Empire for the next hundred years!”

Ada sighed. “Mr. Babbage, you really must learn to do something about your overwhelming modesty.”

“Countess Lovelace, it is that overwhelming modesty which has brought us both to this point.”

“Pardon me,” she snapped back. “I thought it had something to do with your mechanical skills and my mathematical aptitude.”

It was a small outburst, but it was enough. Mr. Babbage’s stance softened. “Tell me what has happened, my lady.”

Ada sighed again. It really was none of his business. But who else do I confide in? My husband? Impossible.

“Someone sent me these today.” She lifted the pages out from beneath impromptu coverings. “They are in my father’s handwriting...and they are not the first.”

Babbage scanned the pages, his dark, clever eyes quickly deciphering the difficult hand. “When did this start?”

“The day we announced we would be developing the automatic steamship.”

“Have you made any attempt to trace...?”

“I have employed several discreet agents. The first two failed absolutely. The third...” She hesitated. If Mr. Babbage knew Mr. Beale had died on the floor of the conservatory and accused her father of the murder, he’d be apoplectic. He’d raise a storm and bring the rest of the house up here. William would find out everything. Worse. Mother would. “My agent is dead. His personal flier crashed just after he took off from Dover.”

Mr. Babbage read the curt telegram and laid it down on the desk beside the other papers. “You should have told me of this before.”

“I suppose I should.” Ada began gathering the papers into a heap. “I had hoped...”

“What?”

“Nothing.” But her gaze drifted to a green baize curtain hanging in the library alcove.

She felt Mr. Babbage watching her as she laid her papers in the secret drawer and closed it sharply. “It is the Luddites,” he announced firmly. “It stinks of their methods. Intimidation, and murder. The cowards have never shown any hesitation about attacking a woman.” He nodded pointedly toward the concealed bullet hole. “I’ll speak with the police and our men so they know to be especially vigilant.”

“The Luddite threats always come with demands. This...” Ada’s hand trembled dangerously and she closed it in a fist. “This is something else.”

“You have no way to know that. The timing of the announcement, the fact that more papers came today. What else could it be but the Luddites seeking to interrupt our demonstration for the Home Secretary?”

Ada met Mr. Babbage’s gaze. You want to care, she thought. But you have too much on your mind now.

But before she could speak, the floorboards sighed again, and the door opened.

“Excuse me, my lady,” Hollings bowed. “Lady Byron bids me to say if you are quite ready, the carriages are waiting and so is...” Hollings hesitated.

“The Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and half the world await my childish delays?” Ada finished for him.

Hollings said nothing. Ada looked to Mr. Babbage and he nodded, dismissing Hollings.

“We will talk more...at a later time,” Mr. Babbage said to her, reclaiming hat and stick. “You have the codex?”

“Yes.” She indicated a locked iron box beside one of the still and silent keymen. “It arrived last night.”

“And you have examined the cards?”

“Yes, Mr. Babbage. They are perfect and complete.” She hesitated for a moment, and then risked a rare, truthful admission. “I wish I did not have to do this.”

“I know.” Mr. Babbage covered her hand with his. “But you must understand, Ada, the public likes to see you with the machines. Such a young woman handling the language that commands them...it makes it seem less threatening. You don’t look as if you could do anything harmful.”

“So you’ve told me.” If only they knew what I have built in this house... “Fear not, Mr. Babbage. I will do my part.” She arranged her face into a sunny smile for him. “After all, the play’s the thing.”

“To open the pockets of a king. Just so, my lady.”

III

“Really, Ada, you should have informed me Mr. Babbage had arrived. I thought it was only the family you kept waiting.”

Lady Byron, widow of the infamous Lord Byron, waited in the grand foyer as Ada and Mr. Babbage descended the stairs followed by one of the workroom keymen. Lady Byron was still a handsome woman, despite the thick black crepe she donned whenever she went forth in public. As if she mourned the man she helped drive from the country.

Around Lady Byron stood her three confidantes, also dressed in fashionable but soberly coloured costumes. Mrs. Carr was fussing with the flower arrangement on the central table. Little Miss Doyle stood at Mother’s side, dabbing at her thin mouth with a handkerchief, while with needle-sharp awareness, Miss Frend simpered up at Ada’s husband, William, Earl of Lovelace, who towered over them all, thin and pale in his neat blue suit.

Whenever her mother could not hear, Ada called the women The Furies.

“It is entirely my fault that we are late, Lady Byron.” Mr. Babbage made his bow and then stepped up to shake hands with William. “I insisted on viewing the codex for the New Britannia once more before we left.”

“A wise decision,” said Lady Byron. Her cool eyes never left Ada’s face as the maid helped Ada on with her coat. “One cannot be too careful on such a day.”

“Of course Mr. Babbage will see to it that everything goes smoothly,” purred the plump and diminutive Mrs. Carr, first among the Furies. “He always organises events so splendidly.”

Babbage bowed, acknowledging the compliment.

“Shall we go?” William smoothed his coat sleeves and held out his arm to Ada.

“If we are all quite ready, that is?” added Lady Byron.

“Quite ready, Ma’am,” Ada replied. She turned to the automaton holding the codex chest. “Bastion. Take the box to Carriage Number One and load it securely onto the rack, then take your station.”

Lady Byron’s lips thinned with disapproval. “Really, Ada, I should think one of the footmen...”

“Forgive me, Lady Byron,” interrupted Mr. Babbage. “But I thought it advisable that Countess Lovelace be seen more frequently with her own automata.” He smiled conspiratorially at William. “There are still those who think they are somehow vulgar.”

Which costs us business and consequently money. Ada watched the calculation flicker behind her mother’s hard eyes, as Mr. Babbage had known it would.

“An excellent thought, Mr. Babbage,” said Mother promptly.

Ada mentally set aside the sting from her mother’s disdain as she took her husband’s arm to walk out to the carriage. Lady Byron was a spectator today, nothing more. This day would prove to the world that Ada Lovelace, who could make bronze men walk and fight and sing, could make the greatest of machines dance to her command.

This is my day. Mine.

By the time their party reached the London Docks, Ada almost believed it.

IV

The launch of the New Britannia was a grand celebration, and the whole of the city turned out for it. The great blue dirigibles, the Flying Bobbies, floated in neat formation overhead while the personal fliers darted between them, their wings flapping like great copper albatrosses, plumes of steam trailing behind them. A full half of the Metropolitan Police had been brought out to attempt to hold back the crush of observers that strained and surged against their linked arms, struggling to keep a lane free for the carriages from Lovelace House.

Ada twitched the carriage curtains closed, ignoring both William’s and Mr. Babbage’s frowns. She had to endure the mob, but she did not have to let them gawk.

She wished there were a way to shut out the noise. There were cheers enough to satisfy Mr. Babbage—thankfully—but there were the other voices as well.

“Jobs for men, not machines!”

“Down with the Mathematical Witch!”

“Trust God’s Creation, not Man’s!”

Then there were the final set of voices, the ones that would never forget her paternal heritage.

“Ada! I love you, Ada!”

“Ada! I’ve a message from your father! He says not to believe her, Ada!”

“Ada!” They called as the carriage halted and William helped her out. “Darling Ada!”

It only got worse when Mother emerged from her carriage, the Furies in tight formation to create a wall of black crepe and silk at her back.

“Witch!”

“Liar!”

“You drove him to his death!”

Mr. Babbage doffed his hat to the friendly portion of the crowd, and they cheered in response. Ada wondered if he even heard the shouts of the Luddites and the Byron acolytes.

Ada called on her well-honed powers of concentration to shut out the noise and fix her face into the serene and smiling mask that was expected in public situations. Ahead waited the new viewing platform built on the bank of the Thames. Flags and bunting draped the stage. Men in high hats and perfectly cut coats crowded together at the banister. Their wives stood with them, adorned in the latest fashions, parasols held high in case the sun should chance to peek through the grey clouds.

But none of them really mattered, either. What mattered was the smooth, black sides of the New Britannia towering over them all.

“Lady Lovelace!” Lord Normanby, the Home Secretary, stepped forward eagerly. “So elegant, as ever. We are greatly looking forward to your amazing us afresh with your new accomplishment.”

“Thank you, Lord Normanby.” Ada took his hand briefly. Then, she turned to greet the Prime Minister, and her jaw nearly dropped.

Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister, was a tall, serious, conservative man. But beside him—wearing a dress of a cut that would have been difficult for a woman twenty years her junior to carry off—stood his wife, Lady Melbourne, Caroline Lamb, who also had been Lord Byron’s second most infamous lover.

“Good Morning, Prime Minister,” Ada made herself say. “Thank you so much for coming to our demonstration.”

“Good morning, Lady Lovelace,” Lord Melbourne replied. “Lord Lovelace. Mr. Babbage.” And with only the barest hint of a pause he added “Lady Byron.”

“Lord Melbourne,” said her mother. There followed a heartbeat of hesitation, the barest flicker of an eye. “Lady Melbourne.”

Of all her father’s affairs, the longest lasting and most public had been Caroline Lamb. She was the one who declared Byron “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” She had tried to prevent Lord Byron’s marriage to Lady Byron, but once that marriage was accomplished, she had thrown other women into Byron’s path in an attempt to break it.

Caroline Lamb hardly ever appeared in public any more, let alone in situations where a stray word might embarrass her husband, the Queen’s Prime Minister. Why on earth has he brought her here? It was beyond comprehension. But then, it was beyond Ada’s comprehension why Lord Melbourne remained married to the woman who had so publicly cuckolded him when he was merely William Lamb.

Ada glanced toward Mr. Babbage, trying to catch his eye, but he, of course, was already deep in conversation with the Home Secretary.

“....But do you really believe you will be able to create sympathetic action without a sympathetic form?” the Home Secretary asked.

“The automatic sciences are not black magic, Home Secretary,” Ada said, boldly stepping into one of the few areas of conversation where her mother and the Furies could not follow. “Mr. Babbage’s analytic engine will respond to pre-designed commands given in the correct order, no matter what shape houses them.”

“Just so.” Babbage puffed out his chest ever so slightly. Indeed, it had been easier to create a working codex for the ship than for a human shaped automaton, but since they first entered into partnership, Charles had insisted they begin with what he called ‘the golems.’ “They are so like the toys people are used to, no one will object to them,” he had said. “Once they have been accepted, we can move on to the truly useful engines.”

“And what of the question of the soul, Lady Byron?” asked a man she didn’t recognise. He wore a bowler hat and a badly-tailored brown suit.

“I beg your pardon?” She looked down her nose at him, an expression she had learned from her mother.

But the man did not flinch, nor did he offer to introduce himself. “The soul. You’ve heard the reports, I’m sure—automata falling in love with their owners, or the mechanical valet running off into the woods in Scotland. People are saying your thinking machines are growing souls of their own. What sort of soul could a steamship house?”

“People say all manner of ridiculous things,” snapped Ada. “But no transference of soul from natural to mechanical form has ever been reliably recorded.”

“Then you don’t believe it?”

“I believe people mistake form for function.” Her voice was growing warmer than she intended. “They see a face and believe they see a human being, and ignorantly attribute a broken codex to voluntary control.”

“Well, I know I very much look forward to the demonstration,” interrupted the Home Secretary, drawing Ada’s attention from the bowler-hatted stranger.

“As do I,” said Lady Melbourne. Her voice was low and husky, with a velvet quality to it. “It is so wonderful to see what form your father’s gifts have taken in you, Lady Lovelace.”

“Are we ready to begin?” inquired Lord Melbourne, a little too hastily.

Mr. Babbage took Ada’s arm and positively hustled her down the quay with its red carpet and row of solemn, blue-coated sailors, away from Mother and her rival, toward the waiting ship.

Tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of steel, brass and teakwood had gone into the New Britannia’s construction. Her high-efficiency boilers could stand pressures higher than any ship on the Thames. Her steel prow was sharp, and her stern broad enough to hold the three enormous paddles, freshly improved on the basic design of America’s Mr. Fulton. The deck was wide and flat as a barge, but where an ordinary barge would have had a pilot house, there waited an enormous metal and glass enclosure for the analytic engine and its command console. There was a wheel and speaking tubes, in case of emergency, and hand-brakes for the paddles. Captain Wedderburn had insisted on them.

“It is not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Babbage,” he’d said brusquely. “But you’ll not find a sailor willing to take command of a ship he can’t turn should he have a need.”

Which was the truth. Babbage had looked for such a man and come up empty-handed.

On a working ship, the analytic engine would be housed more practically below decks. But New Britannia was the showpiece, and Mr. Babbage insisted it be grand and beautiful. So the columns and gears and bearings that were the brain of the ship gleamed beneath crystal windows for the world to see.

“All correct, George?” Mr. Babbage asked the engine foreman as they and the keyman entered the pilot house.

“As you left it last night, sir.” George nodded to the line of men and boys with their bare feet and stained clothing. “I’ve had them up with the sun, running the checks. She’s sound and she’s ready.”

The New Britannia was not the largest of what people were coming to call ‘Babbage engines’—not like the great Westminster Engine or the Defence Engine in Dover—but it was the most complex and delicate. As Mr. Babbage gazed upon the gleaming construct, Ada watched the rest of the world fall away from him. Here was the work of his hands, here was his heart, his fortune, his future.

At last, Mr. Babbage blinked and moved to the codex console, a brass and teakwood cabinet beside the ship’s wheel and, like the rest of the ship, larger and gaudier than it needed to be. “Lady Lovelace, if you please?”

Ada drew a small key from her reticule and handed it to Mr. Babbage, who opened the chest Bastion held. He folded back the white linen to reveal the first of the golden command cards. Ada lifted out the card. It was more like a piece of gilded lace than an important piece of a steam engine. She inspected the carefully aligned holes in their complex patterns, so familiar to her eye.

Ada slotted the first card into its rack in the console, then the second and the third, through to number ten. She closed the housing and stepped back. The crowd on the dock saw her motion and set up a cheer that reverberated through the windowpanes.

Captain Wedderburn drew a deep breath. “Are you certain you will not return to the dock, Lady Lovelace?”

Ada faced the weathered man and mustered her best smile. “Captain, this is a test of confidence as much as of the mechanism. If the engines fail, at worst we will have to be towed back to shore.” She raised her brows. “Or are you expecting a more dramatic situation?”

“Not at all, Madame. I have every confidence in your success here today.” But his eyes would not leave off searching hers.

“Then I suggest we proceed.”

“Very good, Lady Lovelace. Mr. Babbage, if you are ready?”

Mr. Babbage raised his hands with the air of a church organist taking his place in front of his instrument. “With your permission, Captain?”

“Granted, sir.”

Mr. Babbage waved to George. George herded the under-engineers and the steam monkeys to the starboard side of the pilot house. He turned one wheel, then another, opening the valves. The steam hissed out into the already moist air. Mr. Babbage cranked the key over, once, twice, three times.

The decking creaked. The analytic engine ticked and clacked and clanked. The hull shuddered as if the ship were waking from its sleep. Charles tweaked the valves once more.

The deck dipped slightly as the windlass turned, drawing in the great anchor chain. The cheering on the dock redoubled, and the crowd became a sea of waving flags and hats tossed into the air. The clang reverberated through the hull as the anchor slotted into place.

Slowly, ponderously, New Britannia slid from the dock, her paddles engaging smoothly. The steam hissed, and the analytic engine gears clacked in staccato rhythm. Underneath their chatter, Ada heard the delicate bell-like ring as the codex rack rotated, bringing the second card into place. Needles ticked and pricked as they read the patterns. Smaller gears chinged as they communicated motion to larger gears and larger yet. In the belly of the ship, chains strained to raise the hoppers of clattering coal to feed the furnaces that heated the boilers which drew their water directly from the Thames. Behind her, George watched the gauges like a hawk. He ordered the steam monkeys up among the gears and the bearings. They tended the mechanism, but they did not command it.

New Britannia, without a human hand to guide it, sailed upriver through the heart of London Town.

Overhead, the dirigibles unfurled swaths of red, white and blue bunting, and the fliers released tinted streamers of smoke. Ada saw the waving crowds on the shore, but she could hear nothing except the ticking, the chiming and the long dragon hisses that were the voice of the machine answering her commands.

The captain, foreman and engineers crowded around Mr. Babbage, shaking hands and offering their congratulations. But Ada stayed where she was at the gaudy codex console, communing with the sounds of the analytic engine, for one moment alone and content.

“We’ve done it, Ada,” said Mr. Babbage, laying a hand briefly on her shoulder. “Whatever happens after today, we’ve done it.”

The chime of the card changes rang again, and Ada tilted her head. Too soon? She checked the watch at her waist.

A moment later, a wave slapped the bow, and the deck pitched, just enough to make Ada stagger.

“Ahoy! Ahoy the tug!” cried the lookout overhead.

Ada whirled around to face the bows, but she could see nothing past the expanse of the New Britannia’s deck. Fear constricted her chest. She gathered her skirts and ran up the spiral ladder to the lookout’s post above.

“...Where did it come from?” a lieutenant demanded as she entered the house. “This section of river was supposed to have been cleared!”

Ada snatched the spyglass from his hand and put it to her eye.

A battered wooden tug boat looked like a blocky minnow beneath the shadow of New Britannia. But it chugged steadily onward, oblivious, or at least unconcerned about the larger, faster ship.

What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they get out of the way?

“With respect, Lady Lovelace,” the lieutenant said from behind her. “Is it part of the test?”

Footsteps rumbled up the ladder behind them and the hatch slapped open again. “Mr. Babbage! I should have been informed...”

Something’s wrong.

“This has nothing to do with the test!” cried Mr. Babbage. “This was a preliminary trial only...”

The shape’s not right. The pilot house is wrong...

“Where’s the damn captain!” cried the sailor beside her.

Where’re the crew? Where’re the crew?

“It’s unmanned!” she cried. “It’s an automatic ship!”

“We’re going to ram it!” cried the sailor.

“Turn off the engine!” commanded Captain Wedderburn. “I must have the wheel!”

Ada flung herself down the ladder to the pilot house right behind Mr. Babbage and Captain Wedderburn. She jammed the key into the codex console lock and cranked it around hard to stop the rack and freeze the cards in place, unlocking the gears and returning command of the rudder to the wheel on the bridge.

Captain Wedderburn grabbed the wheel, wrenching it around, bellowing at the mate to reverse the paddles. What few sailors there were rushed to the rail.

Then came the sickening crunch of wood, and the deck bobbled and shuddered. They all stared at each other, white in the face. New Britannia had plowed the smaller ship under.

“The paddles!” shouted Mr. Babbage. “If any of that flotsam gets jammed in them...” He dashed out the cabin door, running for the stern with George hard on his heels.

All around her men and boys shouted questions to which there was no answer. Ada looked over to Captain Wedderburn, but the captain’s eyes fixed straight ahead as he bellowed into the speaking tube to the lookout.

What was it? A competitor? A Luddite trick? What is going on? Why would anyone build an automatic boat, then deliberately send it out to be destroyed?

The answer came immediately: No one would. This was something else. A distraction? To slow the ship and get us all looking ahead...

Then what’s behind?

“Mr. Babbage!” Ada whirled and ran out onto the deck. The wind slapped against her face. Her thin-soled shoes skidded on the slick planks and she had to grab the rail.

“Mr. Babbage!”

The howl split the air a second before she rounded the corner of the cabin. She looked upon a nightmare.

A black and dripping tentacle towered over the ship’s railing. Before Ada had time to blink, it wrapped around Mr. Babbage’s waist and yanked him from the deck. George cried out in horror. The lieutenant fired his side arm wildly, uselessly.

For one instant, Ada saw Mr. Babbage held up in the air. She saw his mouth shape her name.

“Canto Thirteen!” she screamed. “Canto Thirteen!”

And then the tentacle hauled him down, below the rail, out of sight. Then a loud splash.

The world narrowed to a single point of light. The decking hit her knees, her shoulder, her head.

Darkness.

V

Hands supported her. Voices babbled, blending into a single incomprehensible stream of sound. She was passed from the deck of New Britannia, to the quay, to the carriage, to her own room. Something was put to her lips. She drank it because she could not stop it.

After that, she did not so much sleep as wait, suspended in darkness as Mr. Babbage was suspended in mid-air in front of her. She screamed command after command, all of them useless.

William came in with the morning and her maid. Very gently, for him, her husband told her she was needed in the salon and insisted she rise. But she could not. It was as if her inability to command the release of Mr. Babbage had cost her the ability to command her own limbs.

After a few moments, William gave up and left.

Eventually, her mother came in.

“Ada, I will not have you disgracing me in this manner,” Lady Byron announced. “There are decisions which require your consent. You will compose yourself and do your duty.”

To Ada’s shame, her mother’s orders did what her husband’s chiding could not. She rose. Mother stayed, her face stony, while Ada’s maid dressed her in solemn grey. Then, Mother walked three paces behind her down the corridor, as if afraid Ada might bolt.

The grand salon was filled with a crowd of sober men interspersed with all of Mother’s Furies. She recognised the head of the police force and Home Secretary Lord Normanby among them. The men parted and bowed as she entered the room and sat down.

“Lady Lovelace, I know you are as shocked as we are at this terrible tragedy,” Lord Normanby said. “But our first thought must be that this was only an initial attack and we need to secure the facilities at Camden.”

She could not, however, fix her thoughts on this point. “There was a stranger,” she told Lord Normanby. “A man on the quay I did not know. He spoke to me...”

“All appropriate inquiries are being made,” said William. “Ada, the Home Secretary requires your attention.”

Ada stopped, and tried again. “The boat that cut across our path was an automatic...”

“They are aware of that, Ada,” said William. “Please, try to concentrate.”

The Home Secretary nodded his thanks to William. “No one wishes to appear indelicate, Lady Lovelace, but we cannot give whoever committed this heinous act any opportunity...”

Ada knew she was supposed to listen, but she could not. She knew these men wanted her consent to take over the Camden factory. They’d require a written direction to the manager, Mr. Eldrige. That was simple enough.

A deeper part of her mind would not be shifted from the deck of New Britannia.

I thought they wanted us looking forward, I thought it was a distraction, but it was a trap...

“...Therefore must ask you to surrender the...”

The tentacle was dripping. So black. Wrapped tight around his waist...

“...pro forma of course, but a written direction from you...”

“Vulcanised rubber,” said Ada abruptly.

Lord Normanby blinked. “I beg your pardon, my lady?”

“Vulcanised rubber. That’s how the tentacle was made so flexible, and waterproof. We use it for gaskets on the engines, but our people have been experimenting with other applications.”

“Of course. Now, if I might...”

Ada got to her feet. “You were mistaken, Madame,” she said to her mother. “The decisions have already been made. Lord Normanby, my man will deliver the written direction you require within the hour. Excuse me.”

She left the saloon without looking back. It was imperative she think. She could not think down there, not with Mother looking on and all those politicians gabbling.

Ada reached the workroom door and undid the lock. She walked inside, and stopped dead.

A man in a rumpled brown suit stood at her marquetry writing desk. His collar was askew and a dented bowler lay on the table.

Her hidden drawer gaped open, all its contents laid out neatly on the desktop.

The man turned to see who had interrupted him.

“Lady Lovelace.” He bowed.

Outrage blossomed inside Ada, burning away the grey fog that had divided whole portions of her mind since the incident. “Who are you? What gives you the right to paw through my personal things?”

“Damon Worth, m’lady,” the man in the brown suit replied calmly. “Special adviser to Her Majesty the Queen. And the kidnapping of Mr. Charles Babbage gives me the right, m’lady, as I’m sure you’ll realise once you’ve given it a moment’s thought.”

Memory snapped into place, of a brown suit and ridiculous questions about machines and souls. “You were on the quay. Before.”

“I was, m’lady.”

Ada pressed her hand against the nearest tabletop, oddly dizzy. “Special adviser to the queen?”

Mr. Worth bowed again. “Her Majesty is aware that the automatic sciences are reshaping the world. She desires that a close eye be kept on new developments.”

Blocks of thought tumbled into place slowly, clicking one against the other. “Is my loyalty under question?”

“Not at all, not at all. But, as one of the geniuses behind the Empire’s new industry, it was necessary that you be kept under surveillance, for your own safety.”

“Were you also keeping Mr. Babbage under surveillance for his safety?”

“Of course.” Mr. Worth held up his hand, forestalling her next words. “You cannot reproach me worse than I have reproached myself, Lady Lovelace. I already attempted to hand in my resignation, but have been refused.” He spoke calmly, but his words grew clipped, hardened, as if he were struggling to hold back his emotions.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” Ada forced herself to ask the question calmly.

“I do. The question is, what do his abductors want of him?” Mr. Worth met her gaze. His eyes were a bright pale blue, like glass. “If it is him they wanted.”

Ada’s throat seized tight. She had not stopped to consider she might have been the actual target of this bizarre kidnapping.

No, I did not permit myself to consider it.

“Was it the Luddites?”

“We don’t think so. The Luddites would have been more likely to destroy the New Britannia or murder Mr. Babbage outright. And they do not have the funding to build a mechanism like the one employed in this case.” He laid the paper down. Her father’s memoirs. He was reading her father’s memoirs and discussing so calmly the abduction of Mr. Babbage.

“Do you know who might have been able to build a mechanism like the one we saw, Lady Lovelace?”

Be calm, be calm and answer. “I can only guess, as I saw only part of it.” Black, dripping wet, sweeping him off the deck, into the air, down, calling my name... “However, we may venture to say it needed to go under the water, control the...tentacles...and be able to see or otherwise identify the...individual required. Taken with the automatic tug that crossed the path, I would estimate there are only half a dozen individuals who could create such devices.”

“One of whom would be Mr. Babbage?”

“Yes.”

“And you would be another?”

Ada hesitated for a single heartbeat. “Yes.”

“You also shouted something at the end, as Mr. Babbage disappeared. What was that?”

Ada felt immensely weary, as if she’d been standing for hours on a high mountaintop, exposed to the elements.

He knows everything else, he may as well know this.

“Canto Thirteen.”

He cocked his head. “Why would you shout such a thing?”

Ada felt her knees begin to tremble. She wanted to sit. She wanted to call the servants for food and drink.

She wanted to order Bastion to throw this man with his glass-blue eyes out the window, gather up the memoir pages and hide them away again.

“What do you know of automata codices?” she asked.

Mr. Worth shrugged minutely. “They carry the encoded language that determines how an automaton will behave, which commands it will follow and so forth.”

“And on the cards that I have designed personally...there is an extra set of codes. Those codes identify a command that will stop the mechanism if spoken.”

“I see.” But he didn’t. Neither did he believe her.

His open doubt bit hard. “No machine is infallible, Mr. Worth, and a number of the automata in this house are highly dangerous. It is necessary that there be a safe word of some sort.”

“A very sensible precaution,” he agreed smoothly. “But I ask again, why would you call out your private safe word to a machine you did not build?”

“I thought perhaps someone had counterfeited some of the codex cards I created. It has happened before. If so, they might have unknowingly copied the safe word codes.” More thoughts clicked into place. “Perhaps they had access to the Dover Patrol, or the Panzance Guard.”

“Perhaps.” He ran his fingers over the scarred table edge. “The only remaining question to ask is what can you tell me about the charred body we found in the alley behind your Camden factory?”

Ada briefly considered lying. A day ago, she would have.

“His name was Gordon Beale. He was a private agent and I was employing him to discover who was sending me these papers.” She gestured toward the pages on the table without looking at them. “His flier crashed, but he made his way back to me. I did not wish his body found in the house, so I had it removed.”

Mr. Worth blinked once. “Very cold of you, if I may say so, my lady.”

“Yes.”

“And quite illegal.”

“Yes.”

They stood, gazes locked, neither giving ground before the other.

“And did he tell you anything before he died?” Mr. Worth asked at last.

“I asked who had...harmed him. And he said...” She swallowed. “He said, ‘Your father.’”

Mr. Worth rubbed the side of his jaw but to her surprise did not continue the questions. “Thank you, Lady Lovelace.” He bowed to her. “I have left my card with your butler. You will be so good as to contact me if you think of anything new, or if you decide to leave London for any reason. Now, with your permission, I will show myself out.”

He bowed and left, closing the door behind himself.

The floor outside made no sound.

Ada realised she was shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. Down in the street, carts and horses jostled with the steam wagons. A tinker family carried clockwork birds in cages and cried out their wares, but made room for the pair of whistling automatic horses that pulled a carriage the size of a rolling house.

The gossips and the tittle-tattles liked to speculate that she was hopelessly in love with Charles Babbage. How could a woman and man create so much together without love between them? But Charles loved the work, the machines, the acclaim. Oh, he cared for her, more than her husband, certainly more than her children. But love? That raw storm of endless, unstoppable emotion her father had written of? No. No one felt such a thing for her.

But she liked Mr. Babbage. She respected him, and he had seen at once what she meant when she showed him the notebooks filled with switching diagrams that could be used to directly command automata and engines. No one else had ever believed her when she spoke of her mechanical dreams.

Ada looked at the secret papers laid out so neatly on her desk. It was impossible to leave them there, naked to the world. She gathered them gently up to return them to their safe hiding place.

It was only then she realised one was missing. Gone. Into the hands of Mr. Worth of the glass-blue eyes, who did not believe her explanation as to why she had called out the safe word command.

Slowly, awkwardly, Ada Byron, Ada King, Countess Lovelace began to cry.

VI

“You have been keeping silent about a great deal, Lady Lovelace,” Mr. Worth said.

It had been fully four days since Mr. Worth had interviewed her and removed the page from her father’s memoirs. Since then, Ada had felt herself caught up in some strange country dance in which she was required to move through an infinite formal succession of figures without being able to control them. If she was not talking with the head of police or the Home Secretary, she was at the Camden factory. If not there, she was in the salon with Mother and the Furies, receiving visitors and saying again what a shock, what a dreadful shock it was.

It was a strange relief to have Mr. Worth stride into her workroom again, barely waiting for the footman to step aside. She had always felt a kinship with his kind of man, to her mother’s dismay. Mr. Worth was, in his own way, a creator. He dealt in the real and was not too proud to use his hands. That he did not trust her was almost beside the point.

But not entirely. “You stole my property, Mr. Worth,” said Ada, even as she gestured him toward a chair in the library alcove.

Mr. Worth ignored her words, and her invitation to sit. “You have been receiving mysterious packages, my lady. Your investigative consultant died recently in a highly preventable accident.”

Ada drew herself up straight. She’d had her reply prepared from the first. “My inquiries had nothing to do with my work or with Mr. Babbage, Mr. Worth. It was a purely personal matter.”

Mr. Worth sighed. “Lady Lovelace, before last Tuesday, Mr. Babbage’s life was proceeding normally. But you...your father’s memoirs are resurrected, your man died, and your partner was kidnapped. Whether you wish it or not, your personal affairs must be at the centre of my inquiries.” He drew out the ragged, water-stained page he had taken from her and unfolded it carefully. “Now, I was under the impression your father’s memoirs had been destroyed?”

“By his publisher, John Murray.” Ada drew in a deep breath and forced her thoughts to hold their places. Mr. Worth had the paper in his hand. She could not prevaricate. Neither could she—no matter how much she wanted to—snatch it from his fingers. “Mr. Murray said they were...unsuitable for a general readership.”

“Mmm.” Damon Worth pursed his lips. “But this page at least does not include the usual unsuitable reasons. For example, ‘Why do I find myself thinking of baby Ada now? What place will that child—or any child—ever again hold in my thoughts after the morrow? Perhaps that is what disturbs Mother Mary...?’” Mr. Worth raised an eyebrow at her. Ada opened her mouth, but no words emerged. “I will have to have a word with Mr. Murray.”

He sat regarding her for a long moment. He was waiting for her to grow uncomfortable and fill the silence, he hoped, with revealing or poorly considered words. But Ada had suffer this tactic from her mother and had years of practise keeping silent.

At last, Mr. Worth inclined his head as if to acknowledge her victory, and changed the subject. “What’s behind that curtain there?” He asked, turning toward the green baize draperies that hung between two of the bookcases, where a fireplace might be in a more usual sort of sitting room.

I would not be at all surprised if you already knew. “A portrait of my father. My mother presented it to me on my wedding night.” A test, you see, to determine that I was beyond being affected by the sight of him.

“May I see it?”

“If you wish.” She stood up and pulled the cord.

The curtains opened to reveal a space of blank wall with a faint square of dust marking the place where the portrait had been.

Ada stared. She saw the empty spot, but it made no sense whatsoever. The portrait had to be there—a young man in Albanian dress with dark hair and narrow moustache and a strong smooth profile. He looked confidently into the distance. It was a handsome face, a face that had once driven young women to swoon and much more.

The wall was blank.

Ada rounded on Mr. Worth.

“Where is it?” she cried.

He neither moved nor flinched. “I don’t know. When was the last time you looked behind that curtain?”

“I...I cannot remember.” Ada pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead. A tremor shook her. What is happening?

“A month? A year?”

“I...I don’t know.” She’d hidden it because it was hidden while she was growing up. But she’d known it was there, an embodiment of her father’s ghost in oil and canvas.

Do not let him distract you. Do not let him command this. “Did you know about this?” she demanded.

“I did,” said Mr. Worth, quite unperturbed. “But I needed to find out if you did. Do you need to sit down, my lady?”

She did, but she did so quickly, so that he would not have time to step forward to help her. Now he could look down on her from his great height.

“Your mother, Lady Lovelace. Her feelings toward your father seem to have been...somewhat complex.”

Ada’s hands twisted together. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The corner of Mr. Worth’s mouth curled up. Again, he did not believe her. “She was instrumental in spreading the rumours of an affair with his half-sister that caused him to enter his self-imposed exile,” he said. “She accused him of sodomy. And yet she keeps his name, his ring, his portrait and his child.”

He waited. He would wait for an hour, or longer. She could tell. He was that sort. Not too proud to use his hands, or anything that came into them.

“My mother, Mr. Worth, is acutely aware of the realities of power.” She had never spoken aloud of these things. Not even to Mr. Babbage. “If she is Lady Byron, she has power. If she is the keeper of Lord Byron’s daughter, she has a kind of legitimacy that just being...another castoff woman cannot confer.” Her thoughts flashed to Lady Melbourne in her unsuitable dress, smiling beside her husband on the quay.

“Could Lady Byron have removed his portrait?”

“She would have no reason to do so.”

“I did not ask if she would,” said Mr. Worth patiently. “I asked if she could.”

Ada swallowed and shuffled through her thoughts. “If she acquired the key to the lock, it is physically possible. She knew where it was, and it was not secured to the wall.” She paused. “You are aware that Lady Melbourne was on the quay as well, that day?”

Mr. Worth nodded. “And I am of course aware of her...connection with Lord Byron. It is a difficult matter to discover information about the wife of the Prime Minister, but inquiries are being made.” His eyes went distant. She could practically hear the turning of the gears in his mind as he totted up a list of all that needed to be done. “Now, Lady Lovelace, I must ask you for the remainder of your father’s memoirs.”

Ada lifted her eyes and frowned deeply. “You have no right.”

“My lady,” he sighed, and Ada saw the dark rings under his eyes. She also noted for the first time that his collar was dirty, and crooked. “You know that is not a true statement. Do you want me to get them or will you?”

Ada rose and walked to her desk. She worked the marquetry switch she had thought so clever. She glanced at her keyman, Bastion. Mr. Worth had no idea what commands Bastion answered to. With a word to her automatic servant, Mr. Worth could find himself restrained, or worse. With a word, he could be made to regret he had come to turn her world over.

She lifted her father’s papers from the drawer, placed them in a portfolio and handed them across.

Mr. Worth received them with a bow. “Thank you for your time, Lady Lovelace.”‘

“Mr. Worth,” she said as he turned away. “If I might ask you a question.”

“Of course, my lady.” He faced her fully, patiently.

“On the quay, you asked me several questions about souls and machines. Why?”

His smile was small, almost bashful. “Because I very rarely have the chance to indulge my personal curiosity.”

“But why that particular subject?”

“Because, Lady Lovelace, the person from whom that automatic valet fled in Scotland was my brother.”

He bowed once more, his glass-blue eyes shimmering bright. She closed the door behind him and listened while his feet passed over her nightingale floor without triggering one of the loose boards.

VII

Three more days passed before Ada could contrive sufficient excuse to allow her to visit Lady Melbourne. Three days of signing papers, writing letters, and issuing orders. Three days of listening to her men of business explain that they did not wish to be indelicate, but this was a marvellous opportunity. The abduction of Mr. Babbage had shown that the government and the police needed to increase the investment in the automatic sciences, and the firm of Babbage & Lovelace was uniquely qualified to answer the national need, provided she would appoint a temporary director, in Mr. Babbage’s...absence.

Ada knew what she was supposed to do. Mother and the Furies, with William’s support, had made it all plain. She was to keep on. The proper men would find Mr. Babbage, if he was to be found at all. If not, another partner would be taken on, or the business would be sold. That would be even better. That would leave a fortune for William to be in charge of, and she could retire to her parlour and do charitable works, possibly even found a school. Activities proper to a titled lady.

Ada demurred and delayed and finally locked herself in the workroom, where she did nothing but look up at the green curtain covering the wall where her father’s portrait had been. It was too much. She needed to act, and to understand. She needed to know why her father was being resurrected at the same time Mr. Babbage had been taken.

As Ada expected, she was admitted to the Prime Minister’s private residence as soon as she presented her card. Lady Melbourne sat alone in a well-appointed blue and green parlour. When Ada entered the room, that lady stretched out both hands.

“Ada, my dear! This is most unexpected! How are you, poor, dear child?” She gripped Ada’s hands as if her strength could convey sincerity.

“I am perfectly well, thank you, Lady Melbourne.”

“Of course, of course.” She laid one dry hand on Ada’s cheek. Ada had to work not to shake her off. “Anyone can tell by looking at you how well you will bear up under your trials. Such strength. So very like your father.”

Which was not an assessment of Lord Byron that Ada had ever heard before.

“I have often longed to be able to speak with you about your dear father, you know,” Lady Melbourne went on as she settled back in her plush chair and motioned Ada to the green sofa. “I even wrote you once or twice. I do not expect you ever received my letters?”

“I did not.”

“As I thought. She sought to separate you from all knowledge, all memory...” Lady Melbourne’s face spasmed in anger.

“It is about my father I’ve come, Lady Melbourne,” said Ada quickly.

Lady Melbourne’s smile was all sunshine, but the gleam in her eye was cold triumph. “I knew it! Oh, Ada!” Again Lady Melbourne seized her hand. “You want to bring him back, don’t you?”

“I am not precisely sure what you mean,” said Ada, extricating herself gently but firmly.

“You want to fully acknowledge that you are his heir, his living legacy.” The triumph was gone from Lady Melbourne, replaced by something almost ethereal. “You wish to be reunited with him, as a portion of his greatness.”

Lord help us, she’s been listening to the ghost-gossipers. Not a week went by without someone attempting to proclaim that her father’s shade still lingered on Earth, and that he had a message for Ada. “I wish to know, Lady Melbourne, if you are the one who has been sending me pages from my father’s memoirs.” Ada found no polite way to introduce the subject gradually, and so determined to be direct.

Lady Melbourne blanched. “You’ve been receiving...?”

“Journal pages, Lady Melbourne. Indisputably in my father’s hand. Most of them concern his summer in Switzerland in 1816. The first after he...left...England.”

Lady Melbourne stood abruptly and moved to the fireplace. She leaned there, staring at her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. Ada watched her mouth move. She watched the aging beauty say over and over, They survive. They survive!

“Do they...is it suspected this paper of your father’s has something to do with Mr. Babbage’s disappearance?” enquired Lady Melbourne aloud.

“Everything is suspected at this time. But, I confess, I do not see how the two could be related.” Ada tilted her head a little. “Do you, Lady Melbourne?”

“I? Not I,” She waved her hand toward the door. “I am locked in my rooms, not to be let out if it can be avoided. I’m sure I am permitted to know nothing.”

Which is an interesting turn of phrase.

Lady Melbourne turned toward Ada again. Her colour was very high and her breath came short. Ada drew back a little, expecting that lady to reach for her salts or to swoon, and she found she had no wish to witness such a scene.

“It was not I, Ada, who sent these papers. Although, had your father left any instruction for me to entrust his journal to you, I would have carried it out faithfully.”

Ada mustered a smile and got to her feet. “I am sorry I cannot stay, Lady Melbourne. I have another engagement.”

She took Lady Melbourne’s hand in farewell. That lady’s eyes glowed as radiant as a new bride’s, as she rang the bell for the servant to show Ada out. Ada left the parlour too unnerved to look back.

“Ada.” Mother set down her teacup. “I’m so glad that you place such confidence in the officers of the law that you feel perfectly free to go on as if nothing had happened to Mr. Babbage.”

Mother’s parlour had been very carefully arranged. She always sat in the exact centre of her gold-upholstered sofa so that she was the first thing one saw upon entry. The Furies sat on either side of her in smaller chairs, never altering their accustomed positions.

The overall effect was of walking into a queen’s formal court.

Ada had not wanted to come here. She had wanted to go to her studio and think, but Mrs. Carr had been waiting in the foyer with a summons when she returned, and Ada knew from long experience if she put the encounter off it would only grow worse.

Ada folded her hands and reminded herself that she was no longer a child. “I was confident I could not be harmed on the short drive to the Prime Minister’s residence.”

For one of the few times in her life, Ada saw her mother startled. “You called on the Prime Minister?”

“Lord Melbourne was not at home. I spoke with Lady Melbourne.”

With a startling amount of inner satisfaction, Ada watched her mother flush from paper white to beet red.

Ada felt her mouth settle into a hard line, and she once again heard Mr. Worth say, Your mother’s feelings for your father were...complex.

And Mother could have commanded a servant to take the portrait at any time. Or she could have done it herself. She could have an entire store of her husband’s papers, unknown to any. Lady Byron had long ago perfected the art of keeping her own counsel.

“Years ago, I forbade you to speak to that woman.”

“I have not forgotten.”

“But you disobeyed me?”

“It would seem so.” The Furies murmured their distress, but Ada remained utterly still. Her mother had insisted she learn to be so; had, in fact, made her lie on a board in absolute stillness a half-hour at a time every day as a child. “I wished to ask her about some papers I have received.”

“What papers?” demanded Lady Byron.

“Papers that appear to belong to my father.”

For a moment Ada thought her mother might actually faint.

So, apparently, did Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Doyle, both of whom started to their feet before Lady Byron shot them a quelling glance.

“You will bring these papers to me at once.”

“I cannot. Mr. Worth has removed them all.”

Lady Byron’s hands trembled. Perfect stillness, Mother. It is not so simple, is it?

“And did...that woman send these papers?”

“She said she did not. Did you?”

“Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. Where my father is concerned you have done many unusual things. The portrait, for instance.”

But mention of the painting elicited no further reaction. Lady Byron stared at her, gimlet-eyed, searching for the object or subject where her next words could do their worst. This time, though, Ada found she was able to stand that fierce, righteous gaze. Her mother’s disapproval was nothing compared to the reality of Mr. Babbage’s disappearance, of the threat that her world, her work, might be stripped away.

“I had credited you with a more logical mind, Ada,” said Lady Byron at last. “But I see that sentiment has blinded you to duty. All I have done, I have done to preserve my freedom, and yours.”

Mine? Ada’s brows shot up. You would have controlled the beating of my heart if you could.

“Perhaps you wish you were like his bastard, Allegra, abandoned to die in a convent. Or perhaps you wish you were like his half-sister’s child, the product of so much fierce and unnatural love.”

Shock sent an involuntary tremor through her. Mother had never once spoken of those other children to Ada’s face. “You have no idea, foolish girl, how you must fight, how I must fight, against the curse of him. He returns again and again, seeking to strip all away and leave behind nothing but what gratifies his selfish, mindless need for continuance. From this I have done my best to shield you. Perhaps this was my mistake. Perhaps I should have made you face it, fight it for yourself.” She frowned, but Ada knew she did not see the room before her, not any more. “Perhaps then you would have understood the nature of the war.” She closed her eyes. “You may leave, Ada. I must think.”

Ada chose to ignore the nature of the dismissal. She curtsied and withdrew. Safe in her workroom, she sat down to pen a letter to Mr. Worth.

But it was Lord Melbourne who arrived first.

VIII

The Prime Minister was pacing up and down in the grand salon when Ada entered. They made the proper greetings and Ada sent for refreshments. Mother and William arrived, only to be summarily dismissed by Lord Melbourne. Ada thought her mother would spit nails right there.

“Is there any news of Mr. Babbage?” asked Ada as soon as the salon door closed.

“None that I am aware of,” said Lord Melbourne, sitting on the edge of a wing-backed chair. “What I want to discuss, Lady Lovelace, is your visit to my wife.”

Ada hesitated, but Lord Melbourne went on. “It is beyond me, my lady, with all your responsibilities at this crucial, unsettled time, why you would choose to trouble Lady Melbourne.”

“I’m sure I did not mean to trouble her.”

“Do not pretend to me,” whispered Lord Melbourne harshly. “You come to my home, you drag up the past and create agitation and dismay. Is it entertaining to you, Lady Lovelace? Do you enjoy the spectacle?”

Anger poured in waves from the Prime Minister’s frame, and his sharp chin trembled.

I miscalculated. I misunderstood. He loves her. God help him, he loves her and can never have her love.

“I am sorry, Lord Melbourne,” she said. “Truly.”

“Years ago.” The Prime Minister leaned forward. “I warned the government that development of the automatic sciences should not be left in your hands. I reminded them how dangerously unstable your father was, with his wild conduct and unceasing perversions.”

“Lord Melbourne...”

“I warned them, Lady Lovelace, that madness can run in families. That the strains of such an enterprise on the female mind could bring on hysteria and instability. Especially if any additional, unforeseen pressures should be brought to bear.”

His eyes did not flicker once from hers. This was a man of power, of privilege, and a man who would protect what was his, whatever the cost.

“You are an intelligent woman, Lady Lovelace. You will think about what I’ve said.” Lord Melbourne stood. “Keep your seat. I will see myself out.”

Ada did keep her seat. She sat in perfect stillness as the light faded around her, and she heard the gong ring for dinner. She sat alone, seeing her mother, and Lady Melbourne, and Lord Melbourne.

And her father hovering over them all, his arms outstretched, his hands open to claim them for his own.

IX

After the Prime Minister’s visit, the atmosphere at Lovelace House became almost unbearable. Mother or the Furies patrolled the corridors constantly to watch for Ada’s comings and goings. William had gone so far as to insist that she not leave the house unaccompanied, and she found she did not have the strength to argue with him.

She spent more and more time in the Garden of the Automatic Sciences, among the blooming trees and the silent keymen. She adjusted the mechanisms and considered improvements, listened to the ticking and the birdsong. She did everything she could to try to shield herself from the sense of impotence gnawing at her heart.

In midafternoon the peacocks opened their tails and the mastiff raised its head.

The door opened a heartbeat later. Mr. Worth walked in. She suppressed a smile as she saw his glass-blue eyes widen.

“Vigilance,” said Ada to the Mastiff. Its bronze ears pricked up. “This is Mr. Worth. He is welcome here.”

Mr. Worth bowed, but he was not really looking at her. The great stag peeked from behind the lemon trees. Mr. Worth caught his breath. For the first time in days, Ada smiled.

But the smile was fleeting. Mr. Worth still wore his brown suit and his stained collar. He had not shaved today, possibly for several days, and his eyes were sunken deep into his skull.

She did not have to ask. “There has been no word.”

Mr. Worth dropped onto the edge of the nearest fountain and tossed his battered bowler down beside him.

“Nothing. No demands, no corpse... Forgive me, Lady Lovelace.” He smoothed his hair back. “It’s as if he’s vanished from the face of the earth.”

“Did you receive my letter?”

He nodded. “And then I received one from the Prime Minister informing me if I continued to harass his wife, or permitted you to do so, he would make it his business to ruin me.” He spoke with calm disinterest, but his eyes were fixed and purposeful.

“He made similar threats to me.” Ada sat on the wrought iron bench across from him. Vigilance, ever alert, lay down at her feet.

Slowly, Mr. Worth’s shoulders straightened. Slowly, his tired eyes grew hard.

“Lady Lovelace, is Mr. Babbage a man who can be worked upon? Is there anything he could be threatened with?”

“Aside from drowning in the Thames?” she snapped back. But the words made no change in Mr. Worth.

“In truth, no.” She sighed. “He lost his wife and three of his children in ‘27. Since then...since then he’s only cared about the automata. About creating the machines to make the empire great.”

Whatever happens after this, we have succeeded, Ada. We have done it!

“And in fact, since his public and dramatic disappearance I understand Babbage & Lovelace stands to gain several lucrative new contracts?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Does Mr. Babbage want to be found, Lady Lovelace? Do you want him found?”

Anger surged through Ada’s blood as she realised the extent of the accusation, but Mr. Worth sat as still as if he had been trained by Mother.

“Lady Lovelace, you know a great deal about hidden commands and how small actions propagate across a much larger mechanism. You appear to live entirely in this house, and yet when I look, I find all manner of strange investments and involvements: an unusual bookshop in Charring Cross, journeys of exploration in Africa, scholars in Amsterdam and Vienna... Then I find you’ve gained great benefit from this untoward disappearance of your partner, and might even be able to raise a scandal that could bring down the Prime Minister.”

Ada’s throat seized tight, but before she could clear it and formulate a reply, the nearest peacock spread its tail and Vigilance lifted smoothly to his feet.

William strode into the garden.

He marched straight up to Mr. Worth. Ada saw how his hands clenched into fists.

“This is most irregular, Mr. Worth.”

Mr. Worth bowed, as calm and controlled as if he had never accused her of fraud. “I beg your pardon, Lord Lovelace. I had business with Lady Lovelace.”

“Then your business is with me,” William spat.

“William...” began Ada, but when he turned toward her, she found she barely recognised him. This was not mild, politic William, but a man made reckless by fear.

“I have permitted this up until now because I had hoped my wife might be able to assist in the recovery of Mr. Babbage,” he said to Mr. Worth. “But clearly you have failed in that, and your impertinence and insistence on private meetings have become intolerable. You may leave the house.”

Ada felt her cheeks flush. With William ordering him out of the house, Mr. Worth’s suspicions toward her would only increase.

Mr. Worth bowed again. “As you wish, my lord.”

And he was gone. Ada faced her husband.

“What do you think you’re playing?” William demanded before she could get a word out. “Your mother’s been conspiring with those women of hers for days now. I can’t get her to say three words to me!”

“You place a great deal of store on my mother’s regard for you,” she sneered.

“God Almighty, Ada!” he cried. “I would think you of all people would understand what she’s capable of? She mounted an utterly ruthless campaign against her husband so she could keep hold of you. Do you think she will not mount an equally ruthless campaign against you, against us if you threaten her?”

“What threat have I made against her?”

“You went to see Lady Melbourne. You are holding secret conference with Mr. Worth.”

“I want to find Mr. Babbage!”

“Hang Mr. Babbage, Ada! It’s ourselves and our children you should be troubled about.” He scrubbed at his scalp. “You must pull everything apart. You can never let it be and just do your part!”

An idea slotted into place. “Has Lord Melbourne been talking with you?”

“Worse. He’s been talking with your mother, Ada.”

Ada felt the strength drain out of her knees. She sat down abruptly.

“Now you understand.” William made no move toward her. “You have never realised how important you truly are, how important it is that you of all people keep up appearances!”

“I never asked for this,” she murmured.

“Well, you’ve got it, Ada, and now you might be ruined by it.”

She looked up at him, looming over her, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Why did you marry me, William?”

He regarded her with a bleak honesty of expression she had never before seen in him. “You were Byron’s brilliant daughter. You were going to change the world. Everyone knew it. I wanted to shape that change.” He shook his head. “The more fool I.”

He left her there. Around her, the garden ticked and the birds sang and the mastiff sat still as the machine it was, as still as her mother had always wanted her to be.

I built this world. She wrapped her arms around herself. I taught it to move and think and speak. I hold its keys and commands. Why have I done so much and it still means so little? Nothing matters but the blood in my veins. That’s all anyone sees.

The play’s the thing...

No matter what happens, Ada, we did this.

There are half a dozen people with the technical expertise for this. You are one of them. Mr. Babbage is another.

Does Mr. Babbage want to be found?

She saw it, cascading into place, a perfect formation, as perfect as any arrangement of commands. It was perfectly clear, interconnected, and clean.

Her first thought was to call Mr. Worth back. But she hesitated. To bring in Mr. Worth would be to remove affairs from her own hands, and enough had slipped out of her control already. Whatever happened that day on the river, she still owed Mr. Babbage a great deal—too much to permit him to be exposed without warning.

But she could not do what was necessary alone.

But she was not alone.

The world out there was her world, her Garden.

You’re wrong, William. I understand appearances perfectly. I understand that if you appear powerless, people will underestimate you. It was unsurprising, really, that the person who came closest to deciphering this was Mr. Worth.

Ada rose. What she did now might be a mistake. She might risk exposure of her most carefully constructed secrets. She would certainly never be able to hide behind the mask of the retiring lady of numbers and languages again.

But if she stayed inside, then the Prime Minister and Mr. Worth, and even William and Mother, would make of her what they could. Which might very well be a Judas Goat.

“Keymen, come here.”

Smoothly the three keymen moved to stand in front of her. She opened their backs and extracted from each of them three golden cards. These she slotted into the back of the mastiff. When this was done, she spoke one word. A moment later, three sparkling black spiders, each as big as a pigeon, scuttled down from the trees. Ada picked them up gently, one by one, and tucked them into the folds of her crinoline petticoat.

“Come, Vigilance.”

With her dog following close behind her, Ada Lovelace unlocked the central window of the conservatory and walked out into the night.

X

The New Britannia still stood at the London docks, with naval men to guard it. They were highly reluctant to allow anyone onto the ship, being under orders, as they repeatedly told her. But she was Ada Lovelace, and when she said she had thought of something that might help recover Mr. Babbage, they believed her and let her pass, carriage lantern in hand and automatic dog pacing close behind.

In the pilot house, the analytic engine cast long shadows across her, giving the place the feel of a pagan temple. Ada stopped at the codex console, which was too big for the ten cards she had inserted into it. She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the teakwood fittings and brass flourishes. One was loose. She turned it, and heard the click.

The back of the cabinet came open, revealing the second codex rack, with its second set of cards still in place.

Oh, Charles.

“I told them you would find me.” His voice reached her a moment before his shadow crossed her.

Ada straightened up. A gentle sorrow filled her as she saw him standing there, holding a second flickering lantern, his clothing rumpled and his hair uncombed.

Sorrow, but no surprise.

“You should have disappeared more quietly, Charles.”

“Perhaps.”

“I see now how you moved the commands.” She gestured at the second codex rack. “How did you conceal the tentacle?”

“There are at least a dozen spools of cable in the hold; it was easy enough.”

“I see. And you were drawn back into the ship through one of the water in-take ports for the boilers?”

“Just so.”

“They must have searched the ship.”

“But they did not search inside the boilers, or look at the fittings closely enough to see that one of them was false.” He smiled weakly. “They should have sent George and the steam monkeys down. They would have spotted my little house in an instant. As would you.”

“Are you going to tell me why, Mr. Babbage?”

“I thought perhaps you might like to come and see.” He gestured towards the hatch to the lower decks. Ada frowned and lifted the lantern.

“Vigilance will not be able to negotiate the ladders.”

“Then Vigilance can wait here.”

She looked into Mr. Babbage’s eyes. They were tired and sad, but otherwise they were as they had always been, clever, bright and sure: sure of himself, and sure of her.

For who knows me better?

“Stay, Vigilance.”

Charles led the way down the steep ladders, past the first deck, down to the second, and the third. At last Charles pushed open a metal hatchway and stood aside. Heat and light from an open furnace poured over her. Ada stepped over the threshold into the long, low boiler deck. The furnace filled the air with stifling heat and stench. The silent boilers waited hulking in the darkness, giant brass and copper spiders casting confusing shadows in the blazing furnace light.

On a long table by the furnace lay a skeleton of brass and of bronze, struts, gears and delicate cables designed to simulate joints, bone and muscle. To one side lay the carefully crafted face, painted with startling realism. Above hung the portrait from which the likeness had been taken.

Ada found she no longer had the strength to hold her lantern, and set it carefully on the floor. She could not bring herself to approach the table with its gleaming metallic burden. “What are you doing, Mr. Babbage?”

“He is building an automaton, Lady Lovelace.” A rail-thin and stooped old man stepped out from behind the nearest boiler. “I thought you would recognise the process.”

Ada tried to draw herself up and failed. What strength and determination had carried her here had vanished. “And you are...?”

The man bowed. “Fletcher, my lady.” His face looked chalky, almost cadaverous, in the blazing light. His clothes were worn, but the holster containing the pistol at his side was very new. “I have the honour to serve your father, Lord Byron.”

“My father is dead.” You’re a ghoul, sir. A ghoul!

Fletcher smiled, and she saw his blackened, crooked teeth. But his lips quickly spasmed as a violent cough took him.

“Not so, my lady,” he said, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “Not entirely, not yet.” He smiled at the portrait, and the half-completed automaton. “Your father long dreamed of another, more perfect, more enduring home for his soul, which was too strong for his mortal shell.” Fletcher smiled fondly, and his long fingers caressed the metal struts of the automaton’s arm in a way that made Ada shudder inwardly. “But the first great endeavour failed. He never spoke of why, and I was not able to read his papers before they were stolen by those who only professed to admire him.”

“Mr. Murray.”

“And a certain Thomas Moore. Small-minded men, only after profit. But I kept faith. Across all the years, I kept faith.” Fletcher’s face was sad and proud, and Ada realised in his youth he must have been very handsome. “But I am dying, my lady. If I have a year left to me, it is more than I expect. I had to act. I needed to create a new housing for my lord by whatever means could be found.”

“A new housing? What...?” She stared at the half-completed automaton on its table. She stared at the portrait hanging on the wall above. “Oh, no, Mr. Babbage. No.”

“The men of the East Indies have long known the secret of the transference of souls,” said Fletcher. “As did the pharaohs of Egypt. Old Daedalus of Greece knew, and it was in Greece where my master was made immortal, a pure soul, asleep and waiting until I could bring him into the world again.”

But Ada found she was barely listening to him. All her attention was on Mr. Babbage hunched beside the table, his shadow falling across the perfectly painted, perfectly cast face. “Mr. Babbage?” His name burst out of her. “You permitted your life’s work to be endangered for madness?”

Mr. Babbage spread his hands. “They would have ruined me, Ada. They would have said I stole the design of the original difference engine. They had the documents ready. The scandal...the scandal would have destroyed me. Us.”

“You are stronger than anyone this man could bring to bear.”

“Not stronger than Lord Melbourne.”

Ada’s mouth snapped shut.

“Yes,” said Fletcher, still stroking the automaton’s arm. “Lady Melbourne was the only other so unswerving in her love to his lordship. While Mr. Babbage has led an exemplary life, her husband’s reputation is much more fragile, as is his position with our young queen who is so eager to make her court and cabinet over to undo the... excesses of the late king.”

Appearances again, always appearances. And to whom would appearances matter more than the Prime Minister?

It was madness. It was said her father drove those nearest him to insanity, and here was proof.

No more. Ada straightened. I will not permit it. “I am taking Mr. Babbage out of here.”

Mr. Babbage raised his hands, warning her, but Ada stopped him with a gesture. “It is over. Whatever this insanity is, it is done with, and we are returning to London. And do not,” she added to the sad, mad old man, “think of attempting to threaten me.”

“I make no threats, my lady,” Fletcher replied harshly. “Promises only, and I promise I will not permit even you to interfere.” He drew the pistol from his holster. Ada was quite sure the antique thing was loaded and primed. “Mr. Babbage will not lift a finger to help you”—He cocked the hammer back—“and you’ve left your dog far above. You are quite alone, my lady. “

“There, Mr. Fletcher, you are most mistaken.”

Ada raised her overskirt. The shock of that unladylike act froze Fletcher in his place, but it was the sight of the spiders, the three huge black spiders scuttling down from her white crinolines, that sent him reeling backward.

“They don’t know you, Fletcher,” said Ada as the man bumped against the cold boiler. “They are commanded to attack the ones they do not know.”

“Call them off!” Fletcher aimed at Ada. “I will shoot!”

Ada remained perfectly still. The first spider sprang, and the pistol fired. Mr. Babbage cried out, and Fletcher fell.

The spider scampered off his breast, and Ada lifted her overskirt again and spoke another word. All the spiders returned to their hiding place in the voluminous folds of starched white muslin.

She lowered the skirt and looked at Mr. Babbage, much saddened. “I know why you did it, Charles,” she murmured.

He turned his face away.

“You thought if my father could be brought back, perhaps your wife could be, and your children.”

“I’m sorry, Ada.”

She held out her hand. “Come, before the men on guard become worried and try to get past Vigilance.”

Together, she and Mr. Babbage walked out into the honest night.

Ada found she was not in the least surprised to see Mr. Worth was waiting for them on the quay.

Sarah Zettel is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author and one of the founding members of Book View Cafe. She has written fourteen novels and a roughly equal number of short stories over the past ten years in addition to practicing tai chi, learning to fiddle, marrying a rocket scientist and raising a rapidly growing son and helping found the Book View Cafe website. She is very tired right now.

The Soul Jar

… by Steven Harper

...My hand shakes so from mere contemplation of the impossible. Not dead, not dead at all. Not merely the echo that haunts my life, but in existence still, mad, bad and dangerous to know, waiting curled and coiled in dread suspension until he may walk abroad again. It cannot be so. It must not be so. I will prove that it IS NOT so.

But a negative cannot be proved. If Fletcher was not in all ways insane, if he still exists in some form, which of the others might also live? The poet Shelley, so fantastically drowned and with his body burnt upon the beach with only my father and one other as witness? What of Mary Godwin, whose hand wrote of the dead brought back to life? Oh, God in Heaven! What did she know? And Polidori? Failed doctor, failed author, so in love with him? What did they truly do in that year of darkness on the shores of Lake Geneva?

I must know. Madame M. Must be called into action. Fraser as well. Wretch he is but clever, quick and useful.

I am resolved. I will begin with the doctor. But where can he be? After all these years, with a whole world in which to hide himself?

From the private journals of Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace

The iron spider clicked across the table and delicately dropped the sugar cube into my cup. I stirred, careful to keep my cuffs away from the crumbs that littered my plate.

“They’re wrong, every one of them,” said Victor Kalakos from across the table. “From Archimedes to Newton.”

“I don’t see how.” I sipped. The tea was nicely sweet, but had gone lukewarm. “The laws of physics are inviolate. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. If that weren’t so, my spider wouldn’t be able to walk across the table. It would sink into the surface instead.”

“But the physical laws ignore what makes it walk in the first place, and that invalidates even Newton!” Kalakos exclaimed with more enthusiasm than accuracy. His own cup was long emptied, as was the silver flask standing next to it. The spider skittered to the edge of the table, paused, and turned left. “There! You see? It turned left. Based on what? I’ll tell you, my boy: the sum of its experiences. And there is no physical law to explain that.”

“Like John Locke claimed.”

“Exactly. We are the sum of our experiences. Let me give you an example. If you were to pull one leg from that spider and replace it, would it be the same spider?”

“Of course.” I turned the spider, and it clicked back toward the teapot.

“What if you replaced all eight legs?”

“More or less.”

“Would that spider turn left or right at the edge of the table?”

I shook my head and glanced out the car window. The train wasn’t moving. Clouds darkened above the River Liffey as the sun set, and Dublin lamplighters were making their rounds. One of our girls had already attended to lighting the car’s hanging lamps, which now shed a soft yellow glow.

Ringmaster Victor Kalakos had an entire train car for himself, a house on wheels. He had a large bed, comfortable chairs, two wardrobes, a small stove, full bookshelves, and a perfectly functional bar.

The wealthier performers usually lived in small wagons—we rolled them into the boxcars when it came time to move—while the poor ones pitched small tents behind the main one. I lived in a wagon myself, but as the ringmaster’s chief assistant, I came and went from Kalakos’s car as I liked. We usually took a late tea together after the Kalakos International Emporium of Automata & Other Wonders had shut for the evening.

“There’s no way to know which way a rebuilt spider would turn,” I said. “It would have different experiences and might make a different choice. Or it might not.”

Kalakos leaned across the plates a little unsteadily. He always got philosophical when his flask was empty. “There might be a place that does know which choice it makes. And I think you hold the key to it.”

“Me?” I was so startled, I forgot my hard-earned grammar. “How so?”

“You see the future.”

“I don’t, sir,” I reproved gently. “I sometimes see the choices people make and what will happen from them. Sometimes.”

“In other words,” Kalakos said with a vigorous nod, “when a man stands at a crossroads, wondering if he should turn left or right to get home, you can see that the right turn will take him safely to his family but a left turn will take him into an ambush of bandits.”

Automatically I looked down at my hands. My left has six fingers on it, but living among circus performers had long ago driven out any hint of self-conscious feeling. “That oversimplifies the case, but yes.”

“I maintain,” Kalakos continued, “that the man turns both ways. That in one place...call it a universe...he turns right and arrives safely home, while simultaneously, in another universe, he turns left and dies. The two universes exist, side-by-side, invisible and insensible to one another, but they exist nonetheless. Before the man makes his choice, there is a single universe. The moment he decides, the universe splits into two, one for each choice, each with its own set of physical laws, occupying the same space at the same time. This happens a million times, a billion times, every time something different could happen.”

“No, sir.” I shook my head again. “When the man makes his choice, the other possibility ceases to exist. I know.”

“Except you exist in this universe,” Kalakos said triumphantly. “So you are automatically unaware of the other universes and their outcomes. But you can see each universe a split-second before it is created. You—and your counterparts in the other universes—see the potentials.”

“Rubbish!” I cried, then added quickly, “Sir.”

“Have you ever held up two mirrors so they reflect each other?” Kalakos said mildly.

“Yes. It makes me dizzy.” As did this conversation.

“I’ve often thought that’s what it must be like for you.” Kalakos picked up the spider and idly flipped it over. It was the size of a saucer, with spindly legs. A key stuck out of its back, slowly unwinding. The legs quivered as if in fear or protest. “You stand in the middle and see infinite reflections stretching in both directions, but each one is a tiny bit different.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, sir,” I said, growing a little tired now. “The spider gets upset.”

“How so?” Kalakos brandished the little automaton. “Is it alive? Conscious? Did you give it a soul?”

I shuddered and wrapped my six-fingered hand round my cup. “You know I didn’t. I meant I’ll have to reset the flywheel, and it’s bloody difficult. What brought up all this talk of other universes, anyway?”

Kalakos returned the spider to the table and leaned back in his chair. He was a tall man, and rangy, appropriate for a circus ringmaster. His black hair had gone grey at the temples, and he wore the expected enormous moustache and sideburns. He probably used to be quite handsome in his youth, but the lines acquired in his forties weren’t kind to him, and I sometimes wondered if I would meet a similar fate, though I didn’t much look like him. I was shorter than he, with the lean, compact build of an acrobat. At twenty-one, I kept my sandy hair short, and my face clean-shaven because with facial hair I looked like an idiot.

“I’m remembering another time, I suppose,” Kalakos said as the spider skittered round in a circle. “And wondering how things might have been different if I had made other choices. Have you ever been to Geneva, Dodd?”

“No, and you keep asking questions you know the answer to. Why is that?”

He chuckled. “Perhaps it’s my own way of determining the future.”

A knock sounded at the door. Kalakos cocked his head, and I sighed. It was always something. No doubt the elephant had broken down. Or the wirewalker had gone into a whorehouse and needed bail money. Or the Great Sabatini had got drunk and made someone disappear again. I glanced at the car door, and felt a familiar sensation steal over me as my talent opened. My talent came and went as it pleased, and I never quite got over the unease it gave me. When I looked at the door, I expected my talent to show me a series of choices stretching out before me as it usually did.

My hand jerked spasmodically round my cup. It leaped from my grasp and shattered on the boards even as Kalakos called for the visitor to enter. Before I could react further—or even speak—the door opened and in strode a stranger—tall, broad-shouldered, in his late twenties. He had deep red hair under a high hat, a wolf’s grin, and wide blue eyes that sparkled in the lamplight. His long black overcoat hung open, revealing a white shirt, black Hessian boots, and a fashionably-cut brown waistcoat.

Kalakos’s face went instantly pale as milk, and he bolted to his feet. “Joseph Storm! As I breathe, can that be you?”

The man’s grin widened. “It can. I’ve just perfected a clown act, and I need a circus position. You can provide one for an old friend, I trust?”

“In the name of our Holy Lord and Father of us all, Joseph,” Kalakos said in a strangled voice, “where is your brother?”

“Am I being rude? Then, Mister Victor Kalakos,” said Joseph with overmuch formality, “allow me to present my brother, Nathaniel August Storm.”

Into the car came another man, one completely identical to Joseph. Red hair, blue eyes, tailored clothes, everything was exactly the same. Except this man wasn’t smiling. He kept his eyes down, and his posture was uncertain. I, for my part, found myself dizzy and confused, as if I were watching events through a carnival mirror.

Kalakos inhaled and exhaled with quick and shallow breaths. He looked ready to faint. I didn’t feel much better, and I coped by focusing on something else.

“Mr. Kalakos?” I managed to say. “Are you ill?”

Kalakos seemed to remember that I was still in the car. “I...I’m fine, Dodd,” he stammered. “Perfectly fine. Would you excuse us?”

“Of course.” I snatched up the spider and all but bolted for the railcar door. In my haste, I tripped on an uneven board. A pair of solid arms caught me, and Nathaniel Storm pulled me upright.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Certainly.” Nathaniel’s breath came warm in my ear, and I found myself flushing. Confused, I fled out the door and down the three steps, the spider tucked under my arm. The two larger spiders that waited near the steps rose and skittered after me like obedient puppies.

The Irish summer evening was damp and cool, with a smell of coal and sulphur. Trolleys and horses and carriages clattered past in the street. Merrion Square, the park we had rented within Dublin, was already growing trampled and muddy from our presence, though the Emporium had only arrived last week. In the near distance, the Tilt rose up like a canvas tomb. Smaller tents huddled round it like gravestones. Behind me stood the train, a sleeping iron dragon with the Ringmaster’s car as its tail.

Merrion Square was an ideal spot for a circus, since a rail spur ran right past it. In a few days, when the audiences began to dwindle, we would pack everything into the bright boxcars and clatter on to another town. Belfast, perhaps, or even London.

I moved a few steps away from the car, still feeling unnerved, and trying to sort out what was happening. When I looked at the door just before Joseph and Nathaniel Storm’s entrance, my talent had shown me two futures, but the power and fear in both had smashed me like a hammer and blinded me to the final outcomes in both. I did know I had seen both devotion and destruction, inextricably intertwined, and I couldn’t sort out which of the two futures would come to pass, or even which one to choose. I was a wirewalker balanced between two extremes, and I feared that I would fall at any moment. The shock of it continued to unsettle me, and I rubbed my extra finger with my left thumb.

“What should I do?” I asked the spider under my arm. It waved its legs without answering. On the ground, its brethren scuttled about my ankles. If they had no specific orders, they tended to run in circles. I had no idea why. It wasted the energy stored in the winding spring, but I couldn’t find a way to make them stop. If I changed the Babbage engines that controlled their actions and removed the tendency, they stopped working entirely.

“Dodd!” Kalakos stuck his head out of the railcar door. His face was still pale, but his nose was red with drink. “Mr. Storm parked his wagon near the Tilt. Have it moved to Clown Alley. We’re adding his clown spot to the main show.”

“What?” I said, startled. “We already have a full show. Who are we to drop from the schedule in order to—”

“Just see to it, Dodd.” And he slammed the door again.

All the next day, the ringmaster hid from everyone, admitting only the Storm Brothers to his locked train. Once in his presence, they remained with him every moment.

“Who the hell are those two?” asked William Myrtle, our strong man. He was barely thirty, but was aging rapidly and looked closer to forty. Myrtle probably thought this was simply due to his nature. I knew differently.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but they open with us tonight.”

The show that evening was a near sell-out. The stands were crowded with families and courting couples and a few single people looking for companionship—the usual sort. Kalakos, in his red-and-white striped shirt and top hat, strode out of his wagon with a tempestuous expression, and no one dared ask him about the Storm brothers, who were nowhere to be seen. Once everyone was lined up outside the ring door curtains, the calliope started playing, and the Emporium processed into the ring.

We began every show with a parade. Kalakos stonily marched up front, waving his cane in time with the music. The great iron elephant followed, its heavy feet thudding on the packed earthen floor, then a rainbow explosion of clowns, then the brassy mechanical horses and their slender girls in white feathered dresses, then the muscular acrobats in their tight red shirts, and more. I strode in with my twelve spiders cavorting about my ankles. The smallest, painted purple, could sit on my hand, and the largest, painted red, was the size of a collie. The Storm brothers were still nowhere to be seen. Strange—most new performers want to be in the opening procession.

The audience applauded and cheered. Children pointed at the elephant. Everyone and everything marched thrice round the ring, and then the human performers scattered to do small spots for the crowd while the mechanical animals continued round the circle. My spiders amused the crowd with small tricks—plucking handkerchiefs from pockets, “kissing” girls and babies, making backflips upon command—while I answered questions. The young men always asked how they worked, and the young women always asked about me. I used to give them small paper flowers, but that annoyed their young men, so I’ve stopped the practice.

One young man with coal-black hair leaned toward me over his cane and murmured in my ear that he would love to discuss certain...automatic functions with me, if only I could meet him after the show? I considered the offer, but abruptly found myself remembering Nathan Storm’s arms around my body in Kalakos’s wagon. A bit flustered, I told the young man I had other plans and quickly moved on.

At last the automata pranced out and we performers cleared the Tilt so Kalakos could introduce the Flying Benjamins, our opening trapeze act. I waited outside with the other brightly-dressed performers, who stood or sat in silence or conversed in low whispers so their conversation wouldn’t carry into the Tilt. I rewound my spiders. Henry Wells, the chief ring groom, opened the side of the elephant to ensure the boiler was stoked properly. The smell of coal smoke mixed with a wet breeze from the River Liffey. My eyes strayed, searching for Nathaniel Storm but not finding him in the press of people. How had he and Joseph forced Kalakos to give them a spot without so much as an audition?

“Presenting,” Kalakos boomed from inside the Tilt, “the amazing Storm brothers!”

Two men darted through the ring door curtains into the Tilt. I ordered my spiders to stay and hurried round to the main entrance. Martha, the ticket girl, nodded at me as I dashed past her and found a place in the shadows near the grandstand.

Joseph and Nathaniel Storm had already leaped into the ring. Here they showed another oddity. In a clowning duo, one was usually a joey in whiteface makeup, and he dominated the other, who played the “wise” fool, or auguste, who wore makeup of simple wide circles round the eyes and mouth. Joseph and Nathaniel, however, both wore makeup in the auguste fashion.

The men wore identical baggy red polka-dot shirts, sagging blue trousers, and floppy purple shoes. They had artfully tousled their red hair, so there was no need for wigs. The only difference between them was that one twin wore a canary-yellow coat. I couldn’t tell Joseph from Nathaniel, and I was surprised at how much I wanted to. Both men cut handsome figures despite the clown makeup. For a moment I felt Nathaniel’s arms on me back in the railcar, and the crowded Tilt grew warm.

Joseph—I assumed he was the dominant one—paced about the ring, preening in his ludicrous jacket with obvious pride, then looked round in puzzlement and dismay. He had no mirror to see his fine clothes in! He turned to Nathaniel and, tapping one floppy foot, held out his hand with comic impatience. Nathaniel pulled an impossibly large hand mirror from one baggy pocket—and dropped it. The glass shattered.

Joseph furiously chased Nathaniel round the ring, shoes flopping, clothes flapping. Eventually, he caught his servant, trounced him soundly, and sent him away for another mirror amid laughter and scattered applause.

“They’re good,” murmured William Myrtle. I jumped—I hadn’t noticed the strongman sidle up to me. “I’ve never seen an act like this one. Did they invent it? Where’ve they worked a ring before?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said distractedly.

Joseph returned to his preening. A moment later, there was the sound of breaking glass behind the ring curtain, and Nathaniel slunk back into the ring with a horrified expression on his face. He was carrying a full-length, empty mirror frame. Nathaniel bit his nails and shot fearful glances at Joseph, who hadn’t yet noticed what was going on. My heart filled with pity for him, and I had to remind myself it was only a clown spot.

An idea seemed to strike Nathaniel. He set the frame down and hurried out of the ring. A moment later, he reappeared—wearing a duplicate of Joseph’s jacket. Once again, the clowns looked exactly alike.

Nathaniel picked up the frame and set it down with a thump behind Joseph, who jumped and spun round. In a flash, Nathaniel let go the mirror frame and duplicated his brother’s pose, as if he were the reflection. Laughter rippled through the audience, and I joined in.

Joseph narrowed his eyes, seeming to notice something was wrong. He leaned forward to get a better look at the mirror, but Nathaniel was ready for that and he copied the gesture perfectly. Joseph—and Nathaniel—shrugged and turned his back, whereupon Nathaniel stuck out his tongue over his shoulder. The audience roared. William guffawed and slapped me on the back with a heavy hand.

Joseph whirled round and pointed accusingly at the mirror, but Nathaniel was ready for him and pointed accusingly back. Still suspicious, Joseph wiggled his left hand while making a silly face. Again, Nathaniel simultaneously duplicated each move. As the spot continued, Joseph’s movements grew more absurd and more complicated, but Nathaniel copied him so well that I found myself wondering if there really were glass in the mirror after all. Abruptly, both clowns picked up the frame and, holding it between them, whirled round, faster and faster until I completely lost track of which twin was which. Finally, in disgust, the pair thumped the mirror down, straightened their respective collars, and stalked off in opposite directions. At the last moment, both looked back, waved to the mirror, and exited to thunderous applause.

“I’ve seen my share of good joeys,” William said over the noise, “and these two are fantastic. The mirror work is brilliant. First new bit I’ve seen in ages.”

I stared after the brothers without answering, then ran backstage to find them. Joseph was already towing Nathaniel back to Kalakos’s railcar, and my own spot was coming up soon. In that moment, my talent opened up, and I saw that chasing after them would only end in humiliation. However, I did have another choice that would be less frustrating—at least for the moment.

I scrawled, Plans changed. Meet bhnd main tent aft show re: automtc fnctns on a calling card, handed the card to my littlest spider, and pointed out the young man with the coal-black hair. My spider scuttled away on its errand, and the other choices vanished. Some time later, a very intense discussion began behind the main tent. We were quite discreet, of course—Irish law was harsh on men of a certain sort, and neither of us wanted to see twenty years at hard labour.

The discussion ended in my wagon, as I knew it would. In the morning, the young man was gone.

I knew that would happen, too.

“Ferrous,” I said, “wake up.” Then I smashed him on the head with a sledgehammer.

The blow rang with the clang of a church bell. The great iron dragon’s eyes cranked open. He sucked in air and expelled soft steam through the horns on the top of his head. His boiler fires were banked, which always made him sleepy, and the blow I had dealt him was barely powerful enough to get his attention.

Ferrous was a huge black beast, a combination of dragon and locomotive, with wheels instead of claws and iron skin instead of scales. His strength was powerful enough to pull the massive circus train, and his codex complex enough to negotiate the maze of railways that snaked through the British Isles and the Continent. Kalakos had coded his cards, but I had modified them several times.

“Yes, Dodd?” Ferrous hissed. His mouth was fashioned just above the cowcatcher, giving him the appearance of possessing a beard.

It was two days later, a Monday, and the Emporium was closed. The Storm brothers had performed four more times—matinees and evenings—to great success, but they always vanished afterward to the ringmaster’s railcar. Today, however, things had changed. Kalakos remained closeted in his railcar with Joseph, but I’d caught Nathan strolling toward the wagon he shared with his brother. On impulse, I had asked if he wanted a tour of the Emporium. To my relief and pleasure, he most certainly did. Since the day was fine, both of us were wearing flannel trousers and pullovers, with the fisherman’s caps so common here in Dublin.

The headlamps that made up Ferrous’s eyes were now staring down at us as we stood on the track before him. Nathan—he preferred that name over Nathaniel—stepped back. I took him by the shoulder and gently brought him forward again. He took off his cap.

“Ferrous,” I said, “allow me to present Nathaniel August Storm. He’s just joined the Emporium and will be riding with us. With your kind permission.”

The eyes swivelled down in Nathan’s direction. Nathan swallowed but remained still. Ferrous stared at him, then swung his gaze back to me. “He is trustworthy to ride?”

It was his standard question. One quirk of Ferrous’s Babbage engine was that he never allowed strangers to ride with him, so all new employees of the Emporium needed to be introduced before their first transport. “He is,” I said.

“And you are close to him, Dodd?”

That question startled me. Ferrous had never asked it before. “I...I feel he is worthy of—”

“Very well.” Ferrous yawned. “I will go back to sleep now.” And he did so.

“That was...quite amazing,” Nathan said in a quiet voice.

It was then that I noticed my arm still lay round his shoulders. Nathan hadn’t drawn away, either. My face grew hot with embarrassment and I quickly pulled back. Nathan continued to stare at Ferrous’s sleeping form as if the little affair between us had been perfectly unremarkable. My eyes stayed on Nathan. His hair, red as an autumn leaf, was slightly tousled from removing his cap, and a few freckles sprinkled his nose.

“Well,” I said with a slight cough, “now that you’ve seen—”

“Does he have a soul?” Nathan asked, his eyes still on the iron dragon.

An image of a strong man strapped to a table flashed through my head. Metal helmet. Electric wires. Leyden jars. My mouth dried up.

“What makes you ask?” I said.

“There are stories. Rumours that an automaton can become complex enough to house a soul, one stolen from a human being. Or that they even create their own, spontaneously.”

I laughed, but it sounded forced. “The church doesn’t like that sort of talk.”

“I’ve seen automatic locomotives before, but never one complicated enough to speak,” Nathan said. “Does he really think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “John Locke claimed that any living creature that is aware of its own thinking must have a soul, but that was long before the first Babbage engine. Ferrous’s codex is very limited. It doesn’t go much beyond timetables and the type of coal he’s given.”

Nathan put out a cautious hand and touched the sleeping dragon. No reaction. “So this isn’t magic.”

It had been a statement, not a question, but I answered it anyway. “No,” I said, on safer ground now. “It’s science. All automata are animated through a combination of electricity, mechanics, and a bit of chemistry.”

“I’ve seen real magic, you know.”

Another image flickered. Cold thin fingers caressed my cheek and a soft voice whispered icy words in my ear.

“It’s rare and difficult,” I said woodenly, “but it’s out there. Where did you encounter it?”

“China, Borneo, Japan.” He glanced at me with a small smile that made me hunger to see more of it.

“I’ve never been that far East. What’s it like?”

“People are much the same, though customs are very different. In many cases, certain ideas that make people angry here are ignored or accepted there.”

He looked at me with guileless blue eyes, and I couldn’t break away. Was Nathan thinking the same way as the young man with coal black hair? I wasn’t quite sure, and there were so many risks in finding out. If I made a mistake with a total stranger, a fistfight might erupt, but we would ultimately part company. Nathan I would see every day. And rejection from a stranger meant little, while rejection from Nathan would destroy a billion branching universes.

At that moment I wanted very badly for my talent to open up, but the wretched thing had abandoned me completely.

“I see,” was all I could say. I felt stupid and foolish. “Um...you’ve seen the rest of the Emporium. Do you want to see the Black Tent?”

Nathan looked a little disappointed, or perhaps it was only my wilful imagination, and I was seized with an overwhelming desire to grab him by both shoulders and ask obvious and powerful questions. But I didn’t.

“Yes,” Nathan said. “Very much.”

We threaded our way through the complex of tents and wagons that made up the Emporium. Cooking smells mingled with scents of animal manure and sawdust. Monday might have been a day off from performing, but that only created a day of maintenance and rehearsal. Ida and Mary Edgewood tried new additions to their wirewalking routine on a low rope they had set up. Carl Greene, a.k.a. the Great Sabatini, stood near his wagon, talking to an invisible audience as he pulled brightly-coloured handkerchiefs out of nothing. Aleksandr and Maksim Danylchuk coaxed Natasha, the World’s Biggest Automatic Elephant, onto a tiny iron platform. Barbara Bellington Jones sat beside her tent with a plate of food, tossing titbits to the dozen poodles sitting in her ample shadow. Henry Wells supervised his two sons as they scrubbed and polished the six automatic horses that cantered in perfect circles for every show. All the performers except the children looked rather older than they were, and all of them except the children had a faintly mechanical air to their movements, a vague listlessness that only vanished when they entered the ring. Outsiders simply assumed the circus life was a draining one. I knew better.

Our progress through the Emporium was slow—several people stopped Nathan to praise his performances. Nathan accepted their words with an embarrassed flush. They all smiled at me but instinctively avoided engaging me in conversation because of my connection with Kalakos. I was long used to this and barely noticed.

“Where did you learn to clown like that?” I asked after William Myrtle stopped Nathan for congratulations, the fifth person to do so. “I’ve never seen anyone perform the mirror spot so well.”

“Joseph and I are very close. He’s been obsessed with that spot his entire life, so we do it.”

The thick, sugary scent of caramel wafted by, mixing with the smell of soap as we passed old Margery Mays, who was kneeling behind a tub of water and indifferently scrubbing a bright blue shirt against a washboard.

“What are you obsessed with?” I asked, a little playfully. “What do you like to do?”

Nathan halted and looked at me.

I stopped, too. “What’s wrong?”

“No one’s ever asked me that before,” he said. “I like it.”

I felt discomforted, but in a way I enjoyed. His eyes were so blue. Cloth continued to slap against water as Margery did her washing. “So what’s the answer?”

“You should know,” he replied. “You see the future.”

Now it was my turn to stare, but in shock. “Who told you that?”

“My brother. Or perhaps it was Mr. Kalakos.”

I couldn’t respond. Nathan noticed my distress, and his expression became instantly contrite.

“I’m sorry, Dodd. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Really.” He put a brief hand on my shoulder. His touch, light as it was, seared my skin through the cloth like a branding iron fresh from the forge.

Henry, the ring groom, led the two newly-scrubbed mechanical horses around one of the tents. They snorted steam and smoke as they passed. I tried to keep the memories back, but Nathan’s touch and the smell of coal smoke broke barriers. Sudden loneliness washed over me, even though Nathan stood not a foot away, and I didn’t want to keep anything from him.

I held up my left hand, the one with six fingers. “I see things. Not just the future, but also...things.” My eyes lost their focus and I forgot where I was. “I started life as a climbing boy, back before automata put the chimney sweeps out of business. My friends and I squirmed into tiny spaces with little brushes, and Scar—the man who owned us in all but name—forced us to scrub them clean. The chimneys were narrow and black as night. It was hard to breathe. Sometimes you got stuck. Trapped in the black bricks with no way to move.”

Nathan shuddered. “It sounds horrible.”

“And then there was the Thin Man,” I whispered.

“Who was he?”

“I still don’t know. Sometimes I think he was just a figment created by my own mind, a personification of the terrible futures I saw for my friends. Sometimes I think he really existed.”

“But who was he?”

The whole world faded away now. For a moment, I felt poised again, held between devotion and destruction as I had outside of Kalakos’s wagon, unnerved and unsettled. Nathan stood before me, solid and complete, and I turned my focus on him, ignoring the other sensation, refusing to examine the choices. Nathan’s blue eyes and sunset hair became my universe. Words poured out of me, desperate for something to connect with. Nathan drank them in for me, and I felt grateful for his presence.

“The Thin Man killed you,” I said. “He hid in the dark places and made you slip and fall three stories into a stone fireplace. He loosened bricks that crumbled under your knee so you dropped downward a little and became wedged in place until you suffocated. He started chimney fires that roasted you alive. All the climbing boys told stories about him, but I was the only one who could see him. I was the only one he talked to in the dark. Finally he burned one of my best friends to death, and I realized running away was safer than staying. Just before I scarpered, the Thin Man begged me not to go, so I knew it was the right choice. Maybe he only existed because I could see him. I haven’t seen him since.

“In the meantime, I had to eat, and climbing boys make good thieves. We can get into all sorts of places. I never got caught, either—I knew when the mingers were coming. But I was still living in shadows. Then I came here, to the Emporium, looking for something to steal. Kalakos caught me, but instead of beating me or arresting me, he put me to work. I swept his forge and cleaned his workshop. With the automata I found my true talent.” I remembered where I was and shook myself free of the memories and of Nathan’s blue gaze. “Sorry. I ramble sometimes.”

“You needed to. I like listening to you, Dodd.”

He was so ingenuous, so calm and carefree. I envied and desired it at the same time. “Come along,” I said. “I’ll show you the Black Tent.”

The Black Tent was always erected some distance from the main Emporium due to the risk of fire. It was called the Black Tent not for its colour, which was canvas grey, but because Kalakos and I did a fair amount of blacksmith work there. I held the flap aside for Nathan, my eyes on his face so I could catch his reaction.

Nathan didn’t disappoint. His expression lit up with wonder, like a josser in the front row. The Black Tent was lined with machines of all shapes. Gears spun, keys twirled, steam puffed, whistles peeped, wheels whirled. The half-completed elephant head I was working on opened and closed its mouth. The iron cat batted at the bars of her cage. Other animals—goats, dogs, rabbits, frogs, even a small dragon—lay on the ground or on shelves, waiting to be repaired or activated for a performance, but a few pairs of eyes summoned the energy to swivel sleepily in our direction. Most were prototypes—the working automata were housed elsewhere in Henry’s care.

Worktables, benches, storage cupboards, trunks, and tool racks occupied the central area of the Black Tent, and a serviceable forge with a carefully-designed chimney took up part of one wall. Beside it stood a tall rack of Leyden jars, each labelled with letters in Kalakos’s careful handwriting: WM, CG, MD, HW, AD, though several jars along the bottom were left blank. Beside that stood a long table with an electrical apparatus attached to it.

My windup spiders, all twelve of them, skittered across the ground and various work surfaces to greet me. The two smallest clambered up my trousers into my arms like small children wanting a kiss from Papa while the others leaped and cavorted round my ankles. I reached down to pat the big red one and give it a windup.

“Hello, Red,” I greeted it.

“I always miss the main show,” Nathan said. “Joseph runs us back to Kalakos’s railcar or the wagon.”

“Why do you stay in there all day?” I asked.

Nathan hesitated just noticeably enough. “Joseph isn’t sociable. I finally persuaded him to let me out for a while. Do your spiders perform?”

A pointed change of subject, and I couldn’t resist showing off. I said, “Juggle spot three!” All the spiders but Red rolled themselves into little balls. Red snatched his brothers up with his forward legs and juggled them. He bounced them off the ground or off his own body, and they leaped back into formation. Ten of them linked themselves into five balls in mid air, let Red toss them about again, and they split back into ten.

“End!” I said, and they all dropped to the ground. “Bow!” The spiders turned to Nathan and bent their legs.

“Amazing!” Nathan applauded, and I felt more pleased than if I’d received a standing ovation from the Royal Court. “And you invented them?”

“I did.” An idiot grin spread across my face at his enthusiasm.

“You’re a genius.” Nathan put out his hand and a spider scuttled toward him to investigate, its key spinning merrily. “What are all those jars on the shelf for?”

At that my face hardened. “They belong to Kalakos. They store...electricity. I prefer spring and steam, myself.”

“And this one?” He reached for the lynx-sized cat in her cage. Quick as a flash I grabbed his hand and yanked him away. The cat lunged, her sharp iron claws swiping the air his flesh had occupied a split-second before. She hissed angrily and lunged again. The metal of her flesh rattled against the scratched and battered bars of her cage. Nathan went pale.

“What happened?” he asked, backing away.

“Kalakos created her years ago, but she became more and more unstable,” I said. “Now she threatens to disembowel anyone who opens the cage.”

“Why not destroy it?”

“It’s...complicated.” In that moment I realized Nathan’s hand was still in mine, warm and strong. Our eyes met, and he made no move to withdraw. I started to do so myself, then my choices opened up in front of me. If I pulled away, I saw myself frightened and alone. If I kept his hand, I saw myself frightened and not alone.

I kept Nathan’s hand and squeezed it. Nathan squeezed back, and the other choice vanished. We didn’t say a word about our new arrangement as I went on explaining different aspects of the Black Tent—the forge where Kalakos and I created our own gears, the ink-stained tables where we drew plans and made calculations, the intricate workings of half-built difference engines of the sort first built by Charles Babbage and perfected by Ada Lovelace. He kept my hand throughout, and I thought my heart would burst from that tiny gesture.

“But what’s it all for?” Nathan finally asked.

“For?” I echoed. My mind was mostly on the fact that I was still holding his hand.

“Why do you build these machines for a circus? Surely you could find a position at a large shop or even a university.” He touched one of my spiders with his free hand, and it bobbed up and down for a moment. “The same applies to Kalakos. Why does he spend his time here?”

“I never thought about it. Kalakos has always been here. And he took me in and educated me, and so I stay. Without him, I’d still be dodging mingers.”

“What’s Kalakos dodging?”

I pursed my lips in puzzlement. Nathan had the disconcerting habit of asking simple questions that required complicated answers. “I’ve never—”

“I want the other half now, damn it!” The tent flap burst open and Joseph Storm strode in, closely followed by Victor Kalakos. I dropped Nathan’s hand as if it were poisonous and stepped away from him.

“And I’m telling you,” Kalakos replied, “the procedure should be spread out among at least three sessions. Doing it all at once creates an enormous risk.”

“I don’t care. Do it all now.”

“Mr. Kalakos?” I said uncertainly.

“And you,” Joseph growled at Nathan. It continued to astound me how exactly alike they looked. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Didn’t I tell you to go to the wagon?”

All of Nathan’s earlier charm and inquisitiveness drained away. “I...I didn’t...”

“As for you—” He stabbed a finger in my direction. “You will do as you’re told and help Kalakos.”

My mouth dropped open at his audacity. “Remember your place, Mr. Storm,” I snapped, “or perhaps you’d like to find another position?”

“Would that please my brother?” Joseph countered in an oily voice, and my blood chilled. “There’s so much you don’t know, Dodd, so keep your mouth shut and remember your place as street trash.”

My fists were already up. The spiders, sensing my agitation, surrounded me like a pack of iron dogs. Their claws clicked in a sinister chorus that didn’t seem to bother Joseph in the slightest. He snatched up the smallest from the ground and held it pointedly before him. The spider struggled in his grip like a kitten, its delicate legs waving impotently in the air. I froze.

“Joseph,” Nathan pleaded, “don’t.”

Kalakos, apparently ignoring us, had moved behind the table near the Leyden jars. “Mr. Storm. If you please?”

I turned to stare at him. His deferential tone frightened me more than the possibility that Joseph might destroy my beloved spider. Kalakos, meanwhile, took up a blank Leyden jar from the bottom shelf and a fountain pen from the drafting table. A cold draft washed over my body as he wrote “NS” on the label. I now knew what Joseph Storm meant when he said I would “help.”

“No,” I said. My teeth were chattering.

“Yes, Dodd.” Kalakos replied, his eyes boring into me. He hadn’t spoken to me in that tone since I was a youth. “I will perform the procedure, and you will assist, just as Mr. Storm says.”

I moved toward him, my spider forgotten. The other spiders hovered between me and Joseph, uncertain what to do as I grasped Kalakos by the elbow. “You promised you wouldn’t do this any more,” I whispered hoarsely. “You know what it does to people. Leave Nathan alone.”

“I brought you up from the gutter, Dodd,” he said.

“Please!” I was begging now. “Not him. I...I care about what happens to him.”

Kalakos’s eyes softened. “I know.” Then they hardened. “Now do as you’re told or I’ll put you on this table as well.”

I wanted to refuse him. I looked to Nathan and then to Kalakos, caught between them. I remembered Nathan’s hand in mine. But I also remembered the way Kalakos rescued a street thief worth less than the rags he wore.

Woodenly, I accepted the Leyden jar Kalakos handed me. I connected it to the casing while Kalakos had Nathan remove his pullover and shirt, exposing a sleekly powerful chest and abdomen. He lay down upon the table and let Kalakos strap him down. Joseph watched, still holding my spider. Nathan accepted the treatment without comment, obeying his brother here just as he did in the ring, but with none of the sly digs. I wanted to ask why, but I couldn’t even bring myself to meet his eyes.

“The jars all contain the souls of your performers, is that right, Doctor?” Joseph said.

“Doctor?” I asked.

“They do not.” Kalakos drew a buckle across the smooth skin of Nathan’s chest. “It isn’t easy to remove a soul from a human being and house it in something else, either organic or automatic. Most say it can’t be done.”

I glanced involuntarily at the cat in her cage. Kalakos took up a helmet-shaped device made of copper netting and fitted it over Nathan’s head while I took a metal plate and pressed it against his breastbone. Nathan looked at me with that strange child-like acceptance in his eyes, and I looked away. I had wiring to connect.

“You said your device can do it,” Joseph accused.

“It can,” Kalakos replied. He set straps round Nathan’s ankles. “At one time, it was exceedingly difficult, but it’s become easier in this modern age, thanks to Babbage and Lovelace’s difference engine. The engine allows us to calculate the exact frequency for the soul, which is nothing more than a form of electromagnetic energy. A sufficiently complicated electrical device”—he gestured at his machine—“has the power to move a soul from one place to another, just like we can move current from a generator to a Leyden jar.”

“I like that you keep their souls in jars,” Joseph said pleasantly. “It’s a brilliant way to keep them under your thumb.”

“I told you those aren’t souls,” Kalakos said. “They’re pieces. I once had a machine in Geneva that would transfer a complete soul all at once, but that device was destroyed. I did rebuild, but without the proper inspiration—”

“His name was Georgie Byron, as I recall,” Joseph interrupted. I stiffened and turned to stare at Kalakos.

“—without the proper inspiration, I couldn’t get it right,” Kalakos continued as if Joseph hadn’t spoken. “My new machine failed to transfer the subjects properly, and they were...damaged. Then I realized I could simply dial back the voltage and not take the entire soul. It does no immediate harm to the owners, though they tend to age faster and die sooner. And it does make them more pliable. I don’t worry about them snooping among my machines. Or asking questions about my past.”

“I’ve noticed. How did you get them on the table in the first place?” Joseph said.

“I tell them I just need a small reading for an experiment. Afterward, they don’t have the wherewithal to ask further.”

“Since I’m not so accommodating, I will ask—what do you use the soul pieces for?”

“Why do you think my automata work so well?” Kalakos countered.

Joseph nodded. “One soul bit per automata these days, then. So what about your sweet little cat?” Joseph pointed at her with his free hand. She made a metallic hiss. “Do you call her Patches? Or Legion? What a terrible experiment that turned out to be.”

“A sad miracle,” Kalakos said grimly. “More than a dozen souls inside will drive any thinking creature mad, I know that now. She needs no power source, for all the good it does her. My penance is to look after her.”

“And what about this spider?” Joseph brandished the little automaton, and his tone grew suggestive. “Whose partial soul does it house? That strapping strong man? The sword swallower?”

I didn’t dare speak. Anger made my hands shake, and I found it hard to keep connecting wires.

“Dodd doesn’t need my machine,” Kalakos said. “He doesn’t even know how to operate it. His Babbage engines are beyond brilliant. Sometimes I think his automata generate little souls of their own.” He went to the control panel on the casing, which was covered in switches and dials. Opening it, he thrust a hand inside to check something, then withdrew it. “Dodd, I don’t need you for this part. Go now.”

I looked at Nathan, strapped shirtless to the table, wires sprouting from his head and chest. “Will it hurt?” he whispered.

“A bit,” I murmured. “You’ll convulse for a moment, but it’ll be quick.”

“Go, Dodd,” Kalakos repeated. “Out.”

I turned on my heel and strode past the brothers, refusing to meet Nathan’s eyes, my spiders trailing after me. Joseph’s voice stopped me at the tent flap.

“You forgot one.” He held up the littlest spider. I reached for it, but he deliberately bent one of the delicate legs backward with the thin screeching sound of tortured metal. Then Joseph tossed the creature to me and turned away. Caught between fear and anger, I snatched my twitching creation out of the air and left.

The long, chill Irish twilight had descended over the Emporium. Lamps and candles glowed within tents and wagons. I walked quickly, dodging tent stakes and heavy ropes that smelled of tar and refusing to think about what was happening on that table in the Black Tent, refusing to see Nathan strapped to table, refusing to look at the future pathways that diverged before me. My troop of spiders kept pace. I set the broken one on Red’s back for him to carry.

The wagon Nathan shared with his brother loomed ahead of me like a wooden beast. Perhaps my feet had taken me to it of their own volition. I glanced at the other wagons parked in the vicinity. No one seemed to be looking, and I doubted anyone would have the temerity to say anything if they were. I climbed the short creaky steps to the rear door. The wagon was boxlike, and brightly-painted with large wheels. Two hooks hung at the top of the door, which was locked. A snap of my fingers brought one of the spiders to me.

“Open!” I ordered.

The spider climbed the wood to the doorknob. From its underside extruded a set of small tools that served a multitude of functions. With a click, the lock scraped open and I was inside.

“Light!” Two spiders produced phosphorescent spheres to illuminate the interior. Like all of its kind, the wagon was compact and efficient. A pair of bunk beds took up the front. Shelves folded down from the side walls to serve as tables, and storage boxes with cushions on top created seats. One shelf was currently in the down position. Newspapers and a few books lay scattered across it. A coal stove the size of a hatbox near the door allowed heat or, in bad weather, cooking—most performers prepared meals outside or visited the Emporium’s food tent. A scent of cedar hung in the air.

My spiders clattered inquisitively about the wagon as I touched the lower bunk, where I was sure Nathan slept, and noticed something—the bed had recently been altered. The upper bunk was new, as were the mattress and counterpane and pillow. The lower was much more worn, and the blankets were patched.

The bottom of the bunk was a built-in drawer. Inside, neatly folded, lay clothes that smelled like Nathan. I pressed a nightshirt to my face, seized with the overwhelming desire to run for the Black Tent, snatch Nathan up, and run with him until the Emporium vanished beyond the horizon.

But would Nathan go? Leave his twin brother and pieces of his soul behind?

My talent opened up, and several reflections stood before me, mirrors within mirrors. In all of them I asked Nathan to run away with me, and in all of them he said—

I slammed my eyes shut and clapped my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know. Eventually the vision faded, and I blinked down at the half-open drawer. Something at the back caught my eye. Uneasily, I extracted a rolled-up canvas tube. A painting. I unrolled it, and my spiders gathered round as if they, too, wanted to see.

At first it seemed to be a singularly well-done portrait of Joseph—his proud expression gave him away—dressed in a fine suit with an old-fashioned cloak draped over his right shoulder. As the painting unrolled further, revealing more of him, my skin prickled and my breath tightened. Arching downward from the side of the man’s stomach was Nathan. His body lay face-up, his arms dangling like fleshy tubes, his blue eyes vacant. A bit of silver drool ran from his open mouth. His single leg went round Joseph’s chest while the other remained buried in his brother’s body, as if he had tried to escape but didn’t quite make it. Nathan was naked, his ribs gaunt, his red hair unkempt.

At the bottom of the painting was a sign: THE BROTHERS LAZARUS AND JOANNES BAPTISTA COLLOREDO NOW ACCEPTING VISITORS. ENQUIRE WITHIN. The top of the painting had two grommets in it, ready to hang on the two hooks I’d seen outside on the door.

Fear chilled my stomach and made my bowels watery. My heart thudded hard. I had encountered dozens of freaks in my time, but this one made every bit of my flesh crawl.

“I’ve seen real magic, you know. China, Borneo, Japan.”

I shoved the painting back into the drawer and fled, barely remembering to lock the door behind me. The moon lit my way as I ran all the way back to my own wagon with my heart in my mouth.

Nathan was sitting on the steps. The horrible painting rose in my mind, and my first response was to turn away from him. Instead, still standing, I embraced him where he sat in the silver light. He pressed his face to my stomach and wrapped his shaking fingers in mine. The spiders formed a half-circle guard of honour round us, the injured one still on Red’s back. I stroked Nathan’s hair, and felt surprise at how powerful such a small thing could feel.

“I’m sorry about what Kalakos did to you,” I said hoarsely. “He won’t do it again.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replied. “And I don’t mind.”

I backed up and stared. “How can you not mind? He strapped you to a table and put a piece of your soul into a jar!”

“My soul doesn’t belong to me.” Nathan rose. “It never did.”

“Don’t give me that shit about souls belonging only to God,” I said, pushed into cursing. “The church uses that lie to keep idiots under—”

“My soul is Joseph’s,” Nathan interrupted. “And he wants it back.”

I want the other half now, damn it!

My legs weakened, and I grabbed at Nathan for support, which he gave. “I don’t want to talk out here,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

My wagon was much like Nathan and Joseph’s—bed at the front, fold-up tables, tiny stove. The spiders stayed outside, and I locked the door. For the first time, we were completely alone and in a place where no one could walk in unexpectedly. I was aware of Nathan’s scent and the heat from his body as I lit a lamp and we took up seats.

“I know your real name is Colloredo,” I said. “And I know what you used to...be.”

Nathan looked down. “You think I’m a freak.”

“No!” I grabbed his hand. “It startled me, yes, but I’m past that. How did you separate?”

Nathan dropped my hand and breathed hard. “It’s difficult to talk about. Even with you.”

“If you can’t, I under—”

“No, no.” He waved my objections away. “We were born attached to each other like that, but Joseph was fully formed while I was...not. It was as if I were some sort of parasite, draining the life out of him. I only had a rudimentary consciousness and no intelligence to speak of. I flopped next to my brother and drooled while he tried to go about a normal life. People mocked him when we were children until our mother hit upon the idea of covering me with a heavy cloak. Old-fashioned, but it worked. Still, there was no way for him to learn a trade. Eventually, Joseph was forced to travel the country, exhibiting himself to any who came to look with coin in hand. He did quite well, actually—Joseph is very intelligent. He’s had dinner with kings, you know. But through it all, he wanted a life of his own, one without a parasitic brother growing out of his side.”

“You’re not a parasite,” I said earnestly. “You’re a person.”

He nodded grimly. “Still, Joseph deserved to be free of me. Doctors said it couldn’t be done, not even with the help of automata, so he looked to magic. It was easy enough to find magicians—Joseph had exploited his contacts at court very well, and sorcerers were fascinated by us in any case. But none in this hemisphere could help. We travelled to the Orient, to India, China, and Japan. Eventually we came to Borneo, and there we found a circle of witch doctors.” Nathan’s eyes grew hard. “For three days they did terrifying and painful things to me—to us. In the end, they drew us apart and brought my body to full strength. But powerful magic always comes with a powerful price.”

“Which was?” I didn’t want to hear, but knew the answer would come.

“The magicians said we shared most of a body because we only had one soul between us. No man can live long without his soul, and rather than leave one of us to die, they cut our soul in two, leaving half for each.”

“Dear God,” I whispered.

“If either of us strays more than a few miles from the other, it means instant death for us both. When one of us dies, the other will follow within weeks.”

“Did the magicians tell you that?” I asked sharply. “Or did you hear it from Joseph?”

A small bubble of laughter burst out. “You’re as intelligent as he is. The magicians told us, actually, after they pulled us apart. And I can feel it. It hurts when we separate too far, like I’m tearing in two.”

“So Joseph is hoping Kalakos and his machine can restore him,” I said.

He nodded, and I wanted to gather him into my arms. Something held me back, however. Old habits? Fear? I wasn’t sure. This conversation, confession, felt a little off. “How did Joseph even know about the machine? How did he meet Kalakos?”

“That happened years ago, in Italy. Joseph was exhibiting us, and the man you call Victor Kalakos befriended us. He had an iron cat, half a dozen Leyden jars, and a machine that barely worked. You can imagine my brother’s interest when we ran across him here in Dublin, though he’d changed his name—and profession.”

“What was his name then?” I asked. “Joseph called him Doctor.”

“His name was John, I think. John Polidori. He was heartsick over a poet, or something.”

“Polidori,” I repeated, tasting the name and trying to attach it to the man I knew as Victor Kalakos. He had lied to me for years, and I felt betrayed. You lied to the flatties in the audience, not to other circus folk. Not to me.

Nathan sighed. “I love my brother, Dodd. I wouldn’t even exist without him. All his life, I held him back, dragged him down. I have to give him what he needs. He deserves that.”

“Your brother wants Kalakos to hand him your soul piece by piece,” I scoffed. “No one deserves that much.”

“There’s so much you don’t know, Dodd.” Nathan took a deep breath. “Kalakos did it all at once. My soul is already gone.”

A crushing weight slammed over me and the cold returned. I tried to speak, but my voice wouldn’t work. Nathan took my hands in his. They were warm.

“He didn’t,” I finally croaked.

“He did. Kalakos put my half of our soul in that jar. The machine will recharge soon, and then he’ll give the soul to my brother.”

“But you’ll die!”

His voice grew soft. “Then we should make the most of what time we have.” He leaned forward, intending to kiss me. My hands shook and my heart raced like an overwound automaton as I leaned toward him, smelling his scent. A coppery taste came to my mouth. Our lips brushed—

—and he broke away. Nathan shot to his feet and turned his back.

Sudden anxiety made me ill. Had I done something wrong? “What’s the matter?”

“It still doesn’t work.” He was shaking all over. My first thought was that he was weeping, but I quickly saw he was holding in silent laughter. I couldn’t understand why. Then things fell into place and I felt dropped into a tub of ice water.

There’s so much you don’t know, Dodd.

“Joseph!” I said hoarsely. “You son of a whore!”

He turned. Nathan’s gentle tenderness was gone from that handsome face, replaced by Joseph’s sneer.

“Remember your place, Dodd,” he said, “or perhaps you’d like to find another...position.” His kick slammed into my stomach. The unexpected move caught me by utter surprise, and the air burst from my lungs, leaving me gasping on the hard wagon floor. In an instant, Joseph was sitting atop me, my arms pinned beneath his knees. A straight razor flicked open in his hand and he set the blade against my neck. My eyes went wide. I tried to control the terror that made my heart jerk beneath his weight.

“Do you know what it’s like to share your soul?” he hissed. His eyes had gone hard and flat as blue glass. “All my life I’ve wondered what it is to think as other people, feel as other people. I’ve lured people into my wagon on the pretence of letting them gawp at me and then done fantastic things, intense things, trying and trying to understand what they feel. But it never worked. Now I’ve taken my twin’s soul for myself and kissed his catamite, and I still feel nothing. Something’s wrong.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I gasped. The blade pierced the skin on my neck and I flinched. Warm blood oozed round the razor. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”

Joseph shook his head. “It would be too hard to explain your disappearance. And I don’t need to kill you. Not while I have a firm hold on you.” He reached behind himself with a free hand and grabbed my groin in a strong fist. The leaden pain that twisted my lower gut made me cry out. “I know what you are, and I know what you want. You’ll do everything I say, now and forever, or I’ll reveal your filthy nature to the world. The law rightfully despises men like you. You’ll spend the rest of your life chained to a prison treadmill, letting the guards fuck you for a chance to see the sun.”

“What do you want?” I wheezed.

“Nothing at the moment,” Joseph said. His tone had turned pleasant, as if we were discussing automata gears. “But when I come for you, you’ll be ready. Just as Kalakos was.”

He gave me another hard squeeze, and then he was at the door. “I have my brother’s soul,” he said over his shoulder. “You can have his body.” And he was gone.

I lay gasping on the floor for several moments, then sat up to press a handkerchief to my neck. Fear and pain wound iron bands around me. Then I thought of Nathan, and I was out the door, rushing through the early night to the Black Tent, my spiders behind me. The flap already lay open, and I burst inside.

Nathan was gone. Kalakos sat on the empty table of his machine, face long. Beside him stood the Leyden jar with the stark initials NS inscribed upon it. The tent smelled of ozone.

“I knew you’d come,” Kalakos said. “Nathan’s in his wagon, if you want to know.”

Enraged, I rushed across the tent and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. “Tell me Joseph was lying. Tell me Nathan still has his soul and I’ll let you live!”

“I’m sorry.” Kalakos was limp and soft in my grip. “I’m not proud of it, Dodd, though the fact that I extracted Nathan’s entire soul without harm to him should be—”

“Without harm?” I cracked my fist across his jaw. The cat yowled appreciation from her cage. “How’s that for ‘without harm’?”

Kalakos rocked back on the table and put a hand to his face. “I deserved that. You may hit me again, if you like. I won’t stop you.”

I pulled back my fist again, and dropped it. The anger drained out of me. “Why did you do it?” I asked instead. “Why didn’t you just refuse him?”

“After all these years, I thought I’d left Dr. John Polidori behind me,” he said. “Dr. John Polidori and his gambling debts and his failed experiments and his involvement in that young baron’s death and his wonderful faked suicide. But Joseph Storm remembered me. He has letters in my own hand confessing my love for a...certain awkward person and detailing our more intimate moments. I expect he stole them when we first became friends and held onto them all these years.”

“The awkward person was George Byron?”

He looked even more pained. “I hope you, of all men, can understand. At any rate, Dr. Polidori is wanted for questioning by a number of courts—or he would be if anyone found out he was still alive.”

Trying to remain calm, I picked up the Leyden jar as if it were a priceless jewel. It was strangely light. “He’ll never let you alone, you know. Blackmailers never do. Once you do this, he’ll want something else, and then something else. You may as well put this”—I brandished the jar—“back into Nathan’s body. I need you to do it. I can’t operate your damned machine.”

“No.”

The anger swelled again. “Why not?”

“I’m weak, Dodd.” He looked close to tears. “I face life imprisonment at hard labour if I don’t obey Joseph Storm.”

“I know the same secrets,” I said cruelly. “What if I tell you to restore Nathan’s soul or I go to the police?”

Kalakos snatched the jar from me. “Don’t talk nonsense.” He set the jar behind him and grabbed my shoulders with both hands. “You’re like a son to me, Dodd. Your machines are more brilliant than mine, and you see into universes I can’t comprehend. You’ll go further than I ever did, and what father doesn’t want that for his son?”

It was the first time he had ever said such things to me, but rage overwhelmed tenderness. “What kind of father destroys his son’s chance for happiness?” I snarled.

He turned away from me then. “Trust me, Dodd. Go now. Go to your friend and tell him how you feel. Things will look different in the morning.”

“Do go, Dodd,” Joseph Storm agreed, from the open tent flap, and I wondered how long he’d been standing outside, listening. Had Kalakos known he was there? “The good doctor and I have a process to finish.”

Resolve filled me. “I’m not leaving without that jar.”

“Then I’ll go to the police.”

“I’m not Kalakos,” I growled. “I don’t care about the police.”

“Dodd,” Kalakos interjected feebly, “please.”

“In that case—” Joseph gestured and two large men in black coats entered the tent. One of them had a metal arm with claws on the fingers, the other wore a large eyepiece which I recognized as a small codex that would enhance reflexes. “Perhaps my friends here can persuade you.”

The two men moved toward me. I pulled a whistle from my pocket and blew. Instantly, my spiders swarmed into the tent. “Defend!” I ordered.

The spiders leaped. Red knocked the man with the metal arm flat on his back, and the injured spider attached itself to his face. He screamed. Eyepiece-man glided aside and flicked one attacking spider to the ground, but two more swarmed up his coat, and a third bit the back of his neck. The man grunted and snatched the biting spider, intending to fling it away, but it wrapped all eight legs around his wrist. Blood ran down his neck. The cat screeched in her cage. I reached for a heavy lead weight.

“Stop!”

I spun. Joseph was standing over the Leyden jar with a hammer.

“I’ll smash it,” he said.

“That might kill you.” I said, though my mouth had gone dry. “Or send Nathan’s soul back to his body.”

“It might send Nathan’s soul to eternity. Let’s find out.” He raised the hammer, and my talent crashed over me, showing destruction and devotion again, and I couldn’t tell them apart. Cold fear tore through me. I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Worse, I didn’t know what would happen if the futures were resolved, but Nathan was clearly bent on resolving them.

“Don’t!” I cried.

Nathan paused, and the vision vanished. “The spiders, then.”

“Come!” I ordered. Instantly, the spiders left the struggling men and surrounded me. Shuddering, the man with the metal arm got to his feet while the eyepiece man wiped blood from his neck and glared murder at me.

“Shut them down,” Joseph ordered.

Hands shaking, I pressed the switch on each spider that disengaged its spring mechanism. They went still.

“Hold him,” Joseph said to his men.

“What are you doing?” I gasped as iron-hard hands grabbed me on both side.

Joseph towed an unresisting Kalakos to the table. “You’re going to watch the final process. You deserve it, Dodd.”

I fought again, but the men were too strong. Joseph lay on the table and Kalakos, working alone, connected man and jar to the machine. When I tried to close my eyes, my captors pried them open. Joseph grinned the entire time, even when Kalakos threw the final switch and he convulsed hard. The jar snapped with current, then went quiet.

I vaguely remember howling like a dog. The hired men shoved me out of the Black Tent and tossed my dead spiders after. I stumbled to my feet, feeling numb inside. By now it was nearly midnight, and barely enough yellow gaslight leaked into the Emporium from the street lamps to illuminate my way. Someone shouted in the street, and a hiss of steam gushed wetly from a distant pipe. A few sallow faces looked out of wagon windows doors or peeped through tent flaps as I ran past, but no one spoke, and I ignored them. Nathan drew me inside the wagon he shared with his brother and shut the door. The smell of cedar surrounded us.

“How do you feel?” I demanded.

“Much the same,” he said, and I touched his face. Then his chest and his arms and his hands. I thumped his sides, gently at first, then harder and harder. I slammed his shoulders. I beat my fists upon his body until he caught my wrists.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m real and solid.”

And then he was kissing me. I kissed him back, and our arms went round each other for a long, long time. His large hands ran down my back and pulled us together. My heart swelled up and I pressed against him, trying to go into him, through him. Occupy the same space.

“We don’t have much time left,” I said when we separated. My breath was coming in short gasps. “In a few weeks, you’ll age and die.”

“I know.”

I felt strangely free of a sudden. “We should do something fun. Fuck Kalakos and fuck the Emporium and fuck your brother.”

“Do you know what I want to do?” Nathan asked with a mischievous air. “I want to go into town and get drunk and kiss you with ale still in my mouth and then I want to go with you into a room with a big bed and watch you take your clothes off one bit at a time.”

“Mr. Storm!” I kissed him again, and licked his teeth. “You took the words out of my mouth.”

We stole two live horses from the stable tent and rode up Merrion Street to Westland Row and turned down George’s Quay on the River Liffey. The cobbled streets were deserted except for the occasional carriage or pedestrian, but the closer we got to George’s Quay, the busier the city became. People and horses and automata crowded the streets and walks. Light and music and drunks spilled out of open pub doors. A circle of people cheered as four men fought a brass automaton. Deep-cleavaged prostitutes called out to us. Scents of garbage and manure and piss all mixed with the wet smell of the Liffey. I guided us down a side street, where I happened to know of a series of inns and pubs that catered to men of a certain type.

Fuck that. They catered to men like me. And Nathan.

I paid a boy to watch the horses and led Nathan into the common room of the Standing Stone. The drinking was in full swing, and smells of stout and sweat hung in the air. Sailors from ships in dock mingled with tradesmen and well-dressed gentlemen in booths, at the bar, and at tables. The wooden floor was sticky, and conversation was loud. Nathan drank it all in like a boy allowed at his first grown-up party, and I loved that about him. I wanted to show him the whole world so I could see that joy cross his face every day.

I found two chairs at an already-crowded table and ordered a round for everyone seated there, which made me popular. Nathan sat down, and I flung an arm across his shoulders. He grinned.

“I’m Dodd,” I said, “and this is Nathan. We’re going to get drunk because he doesn’t have a soul.”

“Hell, I don’t either,” said a man sitting across from us, and with a start I recognized him as the man with coal-black hair. “Priest took mine years ago in a confessional.”

“And I left mine with that boy in New York,” said an older sailor. “Cheers!”

We all clanked mugs and drank. Nathan kissed me with the taste of Guinness still dark in his mouth, and the others roared their approval.

An hour later, the two of us stumbled upstairs together. In a room with a big solid bed, Nathan had everything he had wanted, and so did I. At last we lay back sleepily, our bodies dimly reflected in a cloudy mirror that hung over the wash stand. Nathan smiled in the soft light, his arm heavy across my chest.

“I never want to leave you,” he murmured. “For the rest of my days.”

In the morning, I woke up and rolled over. The mattress beside me was empty, and Nathan’s clothes were gone. I sat up, holding my head. It throbbed only a little, but it hurt with more than a hangover. So much for promises.

The door opened and Nathan came in, fully dressed, with two mugs of tea. Behind him, the mirror showed his back. “Get up, lazy!” he said. “I want to see more city.”

I smiled so hard, my face was like to split in half. “There’s a performance tonight. We should be there.”

“I’m quitting,” he said. “What’s Joseph going to do to me? In a few weeks, I’ll be dead anyway.” He set the mugs down and jumped on the mattress. “I want all the fun I couldn’t have before. Starting with this.” He kissed me, and the tea he’d brought went stone cold before we managed to leave the bed again.

While I was dressing, I said, “Your brother told me about Borneo and everything else. How much do you remember of your life...before?”

Nathan was looking out the window at the noonday sun as if he had never really seen it before. “I remember everything Joseph did, everything he learned,” he said. “I suppose that’s for the best. I wouldn’t know how to speak or read or even walk otherwise. But it’s like remembering a dream. Every time I eat or drink or touch you, it’s like I’m doing it for the first time.” He grabbed me in a rough embrace and lifted me off the floor. “I’m so alive when I’m with you, Dodd. I know I’m going to die, but that’s all right, as long as you’re here.”

When I got my breath back, I said, “There’s another option.”

“What do you mean?”

“The machine. It could still save you.”

Nathan shook his head. “Joseph won’t give any part of the soul back. There’s nothing left for me.”

I laid his hand on my chest. My heart beat beneath his palm. “I’ll give you half of mine.”

A moment passed, and Nathan looked at me for a long time. His fingers closed over mine. “No, Dodd. You’d age faster, and if you ever left me, you’d die. We’d be chained forever.”

My stomach dropped. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

“More than anything,” he laughed. “That was never a question.”

“Then why—?”

“Because I won’t have a choice. Do you see? It’s the difference between wanting to be with you and having to be with you. The mirror’s broken, Dodd. The spot is ended.”

I opened my mouth to reply, then cut myself off. I didn’t want to understand, but I did. “So what do you want to do?” The lump in my throat made it difficult to speak.

Still smiling, Nathan stepped forward and kissed me. Behind us, his ghostly reflection in the wash stand mirror copied the gesture. “Do you know no one’s ever asked me that question before? I told you—I want to spend the rest of my time with you. In this city. Because I want to. I’ll die here because it’s where I want to die.”

With that, Nathan reached out to run a warm hand through my hair. I shivered, trying to soak up Nathan’s gentle touch and store it away before—

My talent opened up, and choices echoed in front of me. But this time, I didn’t bother to look. I savagely snatched Nathan’s wrist in an iron grip, and all other universes vanished before I even saw them.

“Horseshit!” I snapped. “You don’t know what the hell you’re saying.” Nathan’s blue eyes widened and he tried to back up, but I refused to let go of his wrist. “That business about being chained is an excuse. The world is enormous. We might find another scientist with a better machine, or a circle of druids with a better spell. Hell, I might figure out what to do, given time. You’re just afraid of all those choices you haven’t been able to make, so you’re choosing not to choose.”

I released Nathan’s wrist. The expression on his face was at the same time apprehensive and accepting of my words. He stared at me for a long time as stale air crept round the room.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Nathan said at last, his voice all but inaudible. “The mirror is broken. I never know what’s going to happen next.”

A bark of laughter at the irony of his statement escaped me. We were more alike than Nathan knew. “You can be trapped in that or freed by it,” I said. “Come on. Let’s find Kalakos and get you half a soul.”

Nathan stayed silent for the entire ride back to the Emporium, and I didn’t ask what he was thinking. When we arrived, William Myrtle rushed up to us, his large muscles unmistakable, though he wasn’t wearing his strongman costume. He was looking more lively, his eyes more energetic. “The mingers are at the Black Tent!” he said. “Mr. Kalakos is—there’s been a murder.”

Cold fear slid down my spine. Without a word, Nathan and I rode hard to the Black Tent. My spiders sat outside where I had left them, their winding keys run down and motionless. We abandoned the horses, and inside the tent we found two constables and a tall, gaunt police detective in tweed. Kalakos stood calmly near the forge, his silver flask in hand. Behind him, every Leyden jar had been smashed, and I knew the source of William Myrtle’s energy. Clearly, shattering the jars reunited souls. Had I known, I would have broken Nathan’s jar myself.

On the ground lay Joseph Storm, clothes torn, his eyes wide and glassy. A dozen enormous wounds slashed his flesh. Scarlet blood soaked everything. It was dripping down the worktables, it had spattered the canvas, it had splashed the automata. In her cage, the cat was drenched with it, and bits of meat clung to her iron claws. She hissed at me. The smell of a slaughterhouse lay thick on the air.

“There you are, Dodd,” Kalakos said cheerfully. A bloody scratch marred his face. “This is Detective Flint. I’ve already told him who I really am.”

“What did you do?” I gasped.

“He’s gone off his nut,” one of the constables muttered.

“I realized you were right about blackmailers, and decided to end it the only way possible. That cat never changes. Once you open the cage, it all ends.” He drank deeply from his flask. “I loved George Byron, and lost him. I loved the baron’s son, and killed him. Devotion and destruction, inextricably intertwined.”

Devotion and destruction. I stared in utter shock. My thoughts fled all the way back to the moment that terrible and wonderful knock had come at his railcar door. Devotion or destruction. Those unnerving choices, the two I had been unable to sort out, had stood open and unresolved all this time, and I hadn’t noticed because I couldn’t bear to look closely. Devotion or destruction. Which one would come to pass?

I whispered, “Oh my God.”

“Which will you choose, Dodd?” Kalakos looked pointedly at his bloody machine. “Which universe will you create and which will you destroy?”

“Sir,” Detective Flint said to him, “you’ll have to come with me now.”

“Afraid not,” Kalakos said. “I’ve one more life to destroy.” His breathing became laboured. He dropped to his knees, clutching at his throat. By the time I reached his side, he was dead. A smell of almonds hung in the air.

“Cyanide in the flask,” Flint pronounced. “Damn it.”

I fell into a haze. The detective asked questions, but they were perfunctory. The bodies were taken away. Hands and arms guided me out of the Black Tent. I came to my senses in my wagon, sitting on my bed with Nathan beside me. My face felt hot, and I knew I’d been crying.

“They hired some women from town to clean up,” Nathan was saying.

“Did they cancel the show tonight?” I asked.

“No. Myrtle volunteered to be ringmaster until something more permanent can be decided. News of the murder gave us a sold-out house.”

“Mr. Kalakos would be happy about that, I think.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “How are you handling it?”

“Perfectly well. It comes with not having a soul, I think. And now I’ll never have one.” He gave a harsh laugh. “If Kalakos hadn’t taken my soul, I’d be dead, do you realize that? Joseph’s half would have fled when he died, jerking mine out with it and killing me with the shock. By making me a soul-less automaton, he bought me a few weeks’ life.”

Kalakos’s last words to me played over and over in my head, gnawing at me like a worm. “Nathan, who told you that you’d die if your brother did? Do you actually remember the witch doctors saying so?”

“No,” Nathan said. “Joseph told me. After we were separated and we stopped sharing memories.”

“Except before he attacked me in your wagon, he said the magicians told you both. He lied to me.” A bit of hope flickered like a small star. “I think he lied to you, too. I think Joseph lied about a number of things.”

“And why would he do that?”

“He needed to keep you close, keep your soul in a living jar until he could get at it. But he was afraid you might kill him first. He himself killed easily, and he couldn’t see that his twin brother wasn’t like that. He couldn’t see that you’re the same but backward. So Joseph told you that if he died, you died. But it was a lie. Nearly everything he said was a lie. Come on!”

I pulled him from my wagon and all but ran for the Black Tent. The Emporium was in an uproar. Performers rushed about, chattering and shouting with newfound enthusiasm, despite the ringmaster’s death. The shattered Leyden jars had repaired their souls. The calliope hooted, and sausage sizzled in the food tent. People plucked at my sleeve, offering sympathy or demanding information. I shook them off more rudely than I intended and kept going, towing Nathan behind me.

The hired women had done a good job with the Black Tent, but the canvas was still stained red-brown in places. The machinery and automata were all clean, except for the cat, who wouldn’t let anyone touch her. I avoided treading on the spot where Kalakos had died and headed straight for the table with Nathan at my side. The dials on the apparatus seemed to stare at me.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

And for once, my talent opened at my command.

“What do you see?” Nathan whispered.

“Two possibilities.” I shut my eyes. “When I was strapping you to the table, Kalakos reached inside the machine for a moment. There are two explanations. Either he made a minor repair, or he disabled the machine. If he made a repair, the machine stole your soul and you’re going to die. If he disabled the machine, the soul transfer didn’t work and you’re going to live.”

“Which possibility will come true?” His voice was hoarse.

“I don’t know.” I opened my eyes and looked at him, his face pale beneath autumn hair. “They’re both equally possible. Kalakos cared about me and wanted me to be happy, but he was equally frightened of Joseph. In order to find out what Kalakos did, we have to open the case and look. Once we do, the two possibilities will collapse into a single path. You have half a chance of living once we open that case.”

Nathan swallowed. “Oh, God.”

I suddenly couldn’t stand still. I dashed outside, snatched up the broken spider, and brought it back in. A bit of rummaging through the workbenches turned up a spare leg. “Remember when we were talking to Ferrous?” I said.

Nathan was still standing by the table. “You quoted John Locke.”

I unbolted the bent leg and slipped the new one into place. “So are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” he said. “I’m thinking that I love you.”

My hand jerked spasmodically and I almost dropped the spider. I recovered myself and finished installing the leg. “I...”

“Can you say it, Dodd?” Nathan asked. His back was to me. “I think the final outcome is based on what you say next.”

My mouth was dry, my hands were sweaty. Devotion or destruction. I still hadn’t chosen. “I love you, Nathan,” I said. “In this and every universe.”

Nathan grinned over his shoulder at me, and my heart raced. Then he picked up a heavy hammer from the forge and smashed the machine. He hit it again and again, until it was nothing but a pile of wreckage. Nathan tossed the hammer aside.

“If the possibilities are never resolved,” he panted, “what happens then?”

I wound up the spider and set it on the table, pretending nonchalance but unable to keep the enormous grin from creeping across my own face. “It means we’ll have to have faith that a man as good and fine as you has a soul, and to hell with any machine.”

Nathan strode toward me, and I opened my arms, aching for his touch. But he halted a scant foot away. He raised his hand, pressing the palm to an imaginary pane of glass. Without thinking, I matched the movement. Nathan raised his other hand. Mystified, I did the same. Then a sudden light sparkled in his eyes and he yanked me into his arms, bringing my space into his.

“Ha!” he growled in my ear. “Broke it!”

Beside us, the little spider skittered to the edge of the table, paused, and turned right.

Steven Piziks, also known as Steven Harper, lives in Michigan with his wife, three sons, and a career teaching high school English. His students think he’s hysterical, which isn’t the same as thinking he’s funny.

“The Soul Jar” is a sequel to his story “Thin Man,” which first appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and is now available for free at Book View Café’s web site. His highly-acclaimed Silent Empire novels—Dreamer, Nightmare, Trickster, and Offspring —can be found for the Kindle by clicking on the titles. These books are available in several other e-formats at his Book View Café novel page. Steven keeps a regular blog at http://spiziks.livejournal.com.

Zombi

… by Pati Nagle

From Dr. Eustace Trent, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

To Lady Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace

My Lady:

I was most gratified to receive your inquiries. I confess, however, knowing full well your prodigious interest in all things mathematical and mechanical, as well as the success you have had in applying these faculties to the betterment of mankind, I am puzzled to find you inquiring into matters of such a primitive and superstitious nature.

It is true that there exists among the natives of these islands the belief that certain among them, sorcerers known in the local dialect as hougon have the power to compel a spirit from the aether and imprison it in some appropriate receptacle, such as a box, or possibly in some animal, which then becomes attached to the witch-doctor and is said to then be able to advise and assist him (or her) in their rites, much in the way our grandmothers spoke of our English crones keeping a cat or toad or some other such dumb beast.

More rare, and much more feared is the possibility that a hougon may become offended and seek revenge upon an individual in a most dread fashion. Through a combination of magics and poisons, they remove the soul from the body, without killing that body. The body then still walks in the world, a mindless slave to the magician.

Both of these cases are known as zombie...

Marie walked down Decatur Street, searching for the house to which she had been summoned. She would not use the front door, no; but she wished to see it. A door could tell a lot about those who lived behind it.

The doors along this street—one of the more fashionable in the Vieux Carré—were clean and ornate, breathing money. Marie had several clients living here, rich matrons who appreciated her deft skill at dressing hair, and whose gossip she mined for the pearls of information that gave her power in the city. It was not one of these wealthy patronesses who had sent for her today. She had been called—urgently called—by one of her own people.

A case of possession, an odd one. The details had not been complete in the message, but it appeared that a nursery maid was somehow in the grip of another spirit.

Marie put a hand to the basket where her python, Zombi, rested in the warm shadow of a heavy shawl beneath the other things she had brought, things she would need if she were to banish evil spirits. But perhaps not. Perhaps there would be an easier cure. Only if she needed the snake would she wake her.

She paused, waiting for a carriage to pass before crossing the street. The horses were restive, and she saw why. Their driver was an automaton.

They were still uncommon in New Orleans, these expensive machines that mimicked humans, but more and more of them were appearing, taking the menial jobs that before had been filled by slaves. Marie’s people called them zombis—an inaccuracy that annoyed her. A true zombi was created from a human by the arts of voudon. But the word was far easier to say than “automaton” and had caught on to such an extent that she no longer bothered to correct it.

She watched the driver’s face, eyes that stared dully straight ahead, never blinking. In the market and in the churches, arguments were raging over these machines.

Marie was as yet undecided, but she tended to think the coming of the machines was good. A slave removed from a menial task might rise to a more important position in his master’s service. He might be less strong, less efficient, less accurate than a machine, but he had one thing no automaton could match: the ability to think.

She found the number she sought above a door across the street. A white door, fresh—painted, with a forest green lintel and urns of phlox to either side. Marie paused, gazing at it, noting the tension in the heavy air.

Lent was not far off; the city grew more hectic day to day. Three masked balls had filled the Vieux Carré with wanton revelry just in the last week. Now, in the half-brightness of the winter day, a taut silence lay along the cobbled streets. Souls who did not dare behave with abandon beneath the sun waited for night to fall.

She stilled her mind and opened her senses, calling up the light of protection and letting her heart breathe the unseen forces in the air, seeking any hint of darkness emanating from that door. If evil spirits waited within, she would smell them out before ever entering the house. She sensed no ill intent, though there was a strangeness....

Shaking her head to clear it, she crossed the street and went along to the corner, down half a block to the alley and thence to the servant’s entrance. A coloured housemaid opened the door to her knock. Her eyes widened as she saw Marie.

“Madame LaVeau!”

She curtseyed deeply, which Marie acknowledged with a nod. “Mrs. Carter requested my assistance.”

“Yes, Madame. Please come in, and I will fetch her.”

Before stepping across the threshold, Marie paused to inhale the house’s breath, once more seeking any sign of evil. She tasted none, so she followed the maid down a hallway. Pale light shone through a tall panel of white lace at the far end, but they turned into a small room that was nearly filled by a desk and two straight-backed, wooden chairs.

“If you would kindly wait here, Madame.”

Marie nodded and set her basket on a chair, then removed her gloves. The maid hurried away, leaving her at leisure to examine the room. This did not take long; plainly it was the housekeeper’s office, and the neat desk attested to its owner’s efficiency. A small stack of papers, with a day’s menu atop, was the only sign that the desk was used and not merely ornamental.

A single picture adorned the walls, a view of a plantation. Marie’s eyes narrowed as she looked closer. In the field behind the house stood a wall of tall stalks—like corn but growing more densely, long lazy leaves drooping. Sugar.

A brisk footstep drew her attention to the door, where a slender woman in a plain black dress appeared. Her cheeks were high, her clear skin a creamy café au lait. Features more refined than beautiful, but had she been younger, Marie could easily have arranged plaçage for her.

“Madame LaVeau, thank you for coming so quickly.”

Marie accepted a formal pair of kisses. “Adele. How may I help you, sister?”

Adele frowned in worry. “The son of the house has been ill for some weeks, since Christmas. He was in the care of a new nursemaid, but two days since he fell into a sleep from which he will not rouse.”

Marie raised an eyebrow. “I thought from the message that I was summoned for the maid, not the child.”

“You are. The child is under the care of his mother’s doctor. The maid has been acting strangely and has been ordered away from the boy.”

“How strangely?”

The housekeeper pursed her lips. “You will see.”

With a gesture she led Marie from the room. Marie picked up her basket and followed Adele up the back stairs, up and up to the highest floor.

A narrow hall ran along the house’s spine, with doors to either side. Adele opened one of these and invited Marie into a small bedroom with a faded curtain tacked to its slanted ceiling, caught back to reveal a tidy, unoccupied bed.

Expecting to find the sufferer in bed, Marie instead saw someone sitting by the dormer window, looking out at the street—the maid, by her dress and apron—but there was something odd about the line of her shoulders and the way she sat perfectly still. Marie watched for a moment, noting again the sensation of strangeness she had felt earlier, stronger now.

“Mignon, you have a visitor,” said Adele.

“I told you before, I am not Mignon.”

The clipped sound of the voice brought Marie’s suspicions together. This maid was an automaton.

And then it turned, and she saw the light of soulfire in its eyes. Dread gripped her heart.

“I am Anthony. Why won’t you believe me?” The head turned with a sharp click, and the eyes focused on Marie. “Who is that?”

“This is Madame LaVeau. She is here to help you.”

The maid did not move. “Can you help me?”

Marie took a deep breath. “We shall see.”

She set her basket on the bed and touched each of the small things wrapped in the folds of the shawl beneath which Zombi slept: herbs, candles, lucifers. She did so more to give herself time to be calm than because she feared anything had been lost.

Never had she heard of an automaton with a soul, but that was plainly what Mignon—or Anthony—was. Possession, the message summoning her had said, and she saw now why Adele had been reluctant to explain.

How the soul came to inhabit the automaton troubled her heart less than the fact that it was there. If automatons could have souls, then the question of whether they should replace slaves became much more complicated.

When she looked up, the maid had not moved. Still staring at her. The head shifted slightly as Marie came closer.

“Who is Mignon?” Marie asked.

Adele opened her mouth to speak but Marie stayed her with a gesture. She kept her gaze on the maid.

“Mignon is a state of the art automaton from Babbage and Lovelace,” the maid answered in its strange, clipped voice. “My father paid twenty thousand dollars to have her shipped from England.”

Marie turned to address Adele. “And who is Anthony?”

“He is the son of my employers. Anthony Ramsey.”

“The second,” added the maid.

Marie looked back at the automaton. “I understand that boy is very ill.”

“I was. I couldn’t get up for days. Now I can move again, so I must be better, but I am still not well. I feel strange.”

“Do you know why Mrs. Carter calls you ‘Mignon’?”

The maid’s brows pinched together, and a look of fear came into the dark eyes. “No. It makes no sense.”

“Do you have a guess, perhaps?”

For a long moment the maid was still. “No.”

Marie gave a nod. The first step was to make the child understand where he was. She thought he knew, but was resisting the awareness. She moved closer.

“Give me your hands.”

The maid hesitated. A tingle of fear danced along Marie’s arms; an automaton was immensely strong, and if it behaved unpredictably, it could be dangerous.

Finally the maid lifted its arms and placed its hands in Marie’s. She was shocked at the absence of life, even though the hands were warm. It was steam, not blood, coursing through channels beneath the artificial skin; she had heard descriptions. Earlier automatons were far less successful at mimicking humans.

Still, the skin itself felt wrong, leathery. There was no life in it, no pulse. Deep below, though, a whisper of the soul resided.

Marie knew how to banish evil spirits, but how should a lost soul be guided back to its home? And would that be best for Anthony, if his true body was failing?

She released the maid’s hands and turned to Adele. “May I have a hand mirror?”

The housekeeper cast a wary glance at the automaton. “Is that wise?”

“I think it is best, if we are to move on.”

The woman pressed her lips together, but nodded as she left the room. Marie looked for another chair. There was none, but a small crate stood beside the bed to serve as a table. She pulled that toward the maid and sat upon it.

“Tell me, Anthony, do you remember waking up?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you?”

“In my room. And there was someone in my bed.”

“Who?”

“A little boy.”

“A boy your age?”

“No, younger. He was smaller than me.”

“What happened then?”

“Then Adele came in and started telling me to take care of the boy, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to know why they had put him in my bed. I asked, and Adele said it was not my bed.”

“Were your parents there?”

“No. I haven’t seen them. I keep asking.”

Marie pursed her lips, thinking. She must see the boy’s body, deduce whether he would live.

“Are my parents all right?”

Despite its metallic tone, the voice sounded worried. Marie’s heart went out to the child.

“I do not know, but I think so. I have not heard otherwise.”

Adele returned with a small, oval mirror in her hands. Keeping its back to the maid, she handed it to Marie, who thanked her and laid it face down in her lap.

“Anthony, did you know that when you dream you leave your body?”

The maid looked confused. “I’ve dreamed of flying sometimes.”

“Yes. And your soul was flying, then. Your soul was free, not weighed down by your body.” Marie made her voice as soft and gentle as she could, speaking in a soothing rhythm like a lullaby. “Your poor body has been sick, Anthony, so sick you could not move or speak. That is true, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And yet your soul longed to be well again. Your soul yearned to be free. And in dreams, it broke free of the sickness and pain, and could fly. Your soul sought a new home, Anthony. A body that was not ill, like yours. A body that could move and speak.”

She lifted the mirror, holding it to face the maid. The automaton’s eyes shifted to it. For a moment it was still.

“No.” The eyes clicked to Marie’s face. “No!”

Marie stood and took a step back, muttering a prayer for protection, leaving the crate between them as the maid also stood.

“Witch woman! You did this?”

Marie shook her head. “I did not do this.”

The maid’s eyes burned with rage, then confusion. It took a step and halted, seeming to fight within itself. Marie backed away, aware of Adele standing in the doorway poised to flee.

With a cry of anguish, the maid dropped to its knees, bringing both fists down on the wooden crate, shattering it. Splinters and shards of wood scattered across the floor and thumped into Marie’s heavy skirts. Adele gave a small shriek.

The maid remained on the floor, tilted forward at what looked like an uncomfortable angle. A small choking sound came from it, over and over. Trying to weep, Marie realized. She glanced toward her basket, and seeing it unharmed, drew a breath.

“Adele, I wish to see the boy’s body. You can arrange this?”

“I will try, madame.”

The housekeeper left, no doubt glad of the excuse to get away. Marie put the mirror on the bed and moved toward the maid. Brushing aside chips of wood, she knelt.

“Anthony.”

The maid ceased its odd, tearless crying and raised its head, meeting her gaze. Marie opened her hands.

“I am not a witch, but I think the blessings of voudon can help you. If you wish for help.”

“You can put me back in my body?”

“First we must see if your body can support you. If it is as ill as I was told...”

“Am I dying?”

Marie pressed her lips together. “Consider this. Would you rather live on in this form, or die in your own body?”

“Neither.”

“There may be no other choice.”

The maid’s head dropped. Marie felt great pity for the child—a young boy, if she recalled correctly—too young to face such a decision.

While they waited in silence, she thought about what this development could mean. That a soul could trade its flesh for the less fragile body of an automaton seemed in one way a blessing, but it was impractical. The machines were expensive, and required maintenance. They were new enough that Marie did not know how long they would last. Possibly much longer than a human body, possibly not as long.

And what must it be like to inhabit such a body? Anthony did not seem to enjoy it. An automaton could not feel, or smell, or taste. It would be like living in a dead cage.

A zombi.

Shaking her head to free herself from these thoughts, Marie rose and went to the bed. She sat and placed the basket on her lap, feeling the deep, slow soul of her snake, vaguely unquiet.

A step in the hallway made her turn her head. Adele stood in the doorway, looking frightened.

“My mistress has taken to her bed. Her doctor is in attendance upon her. You could see the boy, if you come now.”

Marie stood, slipping the basket’s handle over her arm. The maid also rose to its feet, splintered wood clattering to the floor.

“Take me with you.”

“No!” said Adele.

Marie saw the flash of anger in the maid’s eyes and held up a hand. “Wait!”

The maid turned its head, then turned to face Marie, eyes still malevolent. A prickle of fear reminded Marie of the machine’s strength.

“If you come, you must pretend to be Mignon.”

The maid nodded once. Marie continued.

“If your mother or father comes into the room, or anyone else who knows you, do not address them. It will frighten them, and they will send us away. You understand?”

The anger faded from the eyes, leaving sadness in its wake.

“Yes.”

“Bien. Come, then.”

Marie picked up the mirror and laid it in her basket, then went out. Adele led her down two flights of stairs, then along a hallway to the child’s bedroom, and opened the door.

“Violette, you may go downstairs until I call for you.”

A maid—a human one—emerged from the room, looking at Marie with faint curiosity, then at the automaton with alarm. She hastened toward the stairway, and Marie smiled serenely at her as she passed.

“I will watch the stair,” Adele said when she was gone. “If the doctor returns, I will warn you.”

Marie nodded and entered the room. A child’s room, yes—and the child a son of privilege. It was immaculate, attesting to the child’s lack of activity. The furnishings were of the best quality: a large wooden chest, a wardrobe with mirrored doors, a nightstand bearing a carafe of water, glass, spoon and a small medicinal bottle. A desk completely free of clutter matched the bed: maple, heavily carved. The bed was canopied in green, its curtains pulled back but the mosquito netting down despite the cold season, making the little figure lying within seem ghostly.

Marie approached, alert to any malicious presence. What she felt from the boy in the bed was a complete lack. The lungs breathed, the heart beat; yet there was no fire.

In contrast, the maid standing silent and motionless behind her practically burned with passion. It seemed wrong that Anthony—trapped within the maid—did not fidget. Perhaps moving the automaton required too much conscious effort.

Marie reviewed her tasks: ascertain whether the boy would live, if necessary apply a cure to his illness, and if possible restore his soul to his flesh. The first was fairly simple. In good conscience she should not attempt the second without the parents’ permission, yet to ask might be to forfeit any chance of accomplishing the third and most vital task.

Leaving her basket on the desk, Marie drew back the netting and sat beside the child, laying a hand upon his brow. He was pale, his brown hair lying lank across his brow. Plainly he had been in the grip of a fever for some time. His breathing was laboured. Clasping his wrist, she felt his heart beating heavily, slowly, as if fighting for each pulse.

There were many possible causes. Frowning slightly, Marie turned the boy’s face toward her and gently opened his mouth, then lifted the collar of his nightshirt. A speckling of rash across his chest made her raise her eyebrows.

Typhoid fever, then. It was not good news, but not the worst possible.

She looked up to see the maid watching, face blank except for the anxious eyes. Though she did not wish to give false hope, for the boy’s condition was indeed serious, she had to reassure him.

“There is a chance.”

“Now! Do it now!”

“No. First I must do what I can to make sure your body will live. Otherwise to return you to it would only be to kill you.”

His recovery would take time, of course, but with proper nursing his chances were reasonably good. Marie would do what she could now to improved them.

She glanced at the bottle on the nightstand. It was unlabeled so she opened it and smelled the contents. Quinine.

The doctor was treating the child for malaria. An assumption she might have made herself, had she not noticed the rash. But quinine, though it helped in many fevers, was not right for typhoid. She set the bottle on the floor.

Going to her basket, she retrieved a small bundle of dried lobelia and returned to the bedside. She ground the petals between her fingers, letting the powder fall into the drinking glass. She added a little water, then lifted the boy’s head and held it so his jaw dropped open.

“What are you doing?” Anthony demanded.

“Giving your poor body some medicine.”

She poured the small dose of liquid beneath the boy’s tongue, then held him against her, keeping him upright. The mouth would absorb the herb more quickly than the stomach.

Anthony came and crouched before her, the automaton’s attitude that of a panther ready to spring. It would have frightened her but for the hope shining in the eyes. Remarkable how expressive they could be; she would never have imagined it.

Marie rocked gently back and forth, crooning a song softly. It was a call to Yemaya, a prayer for mercy and healing. Anthony watched in silent intensity.

She let her spirit rise into the realm of healing, calling upon her inner strength, sending it in turn to the poor, tormented body in her arms. With her own body she sensed the boy’s frailty. The emptiness would have troubled her if she had not known that Anthony was near, waiting to return to his place.

The pulse began to beat more freely. Smiling, Marie continued to sing her plea. Between verses, she whispered to Anthony.

“Pray, child. Pray for your body to be healed.”

The maid frowned, then bowed its head. Marie prayed on.

At length, the boy’s breathing grew deeper and steadier. The pulse was now even. The pale cheek had a little more colour. She would have liked him to be stronger, but suspected this was her only opportunity to be alone with him.

Gently, she laid him down and rose. The maid’s eyes followed her as she returned to the desk and her basket. She withdrew the small bundle of items she had brought from it, and chose a blue candle, a sprig of sage, a white kerchief and her tin of lucifers. With these she made a small altar on the desk.

Lighting the candle, she murmured an invocation to Yemaya, then held the sage to the flame until it caught. Smoke rose in a pungent wisp from the leaves. She waved it through the room, going to each corner and sprinkling salt to ward against evil, calling upon the sacred mother to protect and heal Anthony.

She stepped out of her shoes, then turned back the shawl and lifted Zombi from the basket. A drum would have been helpful, but having none she used her feet to set the rhythm, dancing in a slow circle around the room.

Zombi twined herself along Marie’s arms, winding her six-foot length around and around, gripping tight to Marie’s wrist with the tip of her tail. Marie struck her heels gently against the wooden floor, a whisper of the stamp she would have ordinarily used, for she did not wish to draw the notice of others in the house. She moved in waves across the room, flowing, sliding, rippling. Calling forth the magic of the snake, to heal, to restore.

Anthony watched, motionless at first. As Marie undulated, he began to beat the maid’s hands against its thighs to the rhythm of her dance.

Yes. It was good. It was right.

Zombi moved, flowing along Marie’s arms until her tongue tickled Marie’s cheek. Warmth filled Marie as she slid into a trance. She had often banished evil spirits; never before had she been called to return a good one to its home.

Anthony had become crossed, inadvertently putting himself in a bad situation. She prayed for clarity and wisdom to come to him, to guide him home. Her song was a whisper in the room, but it echoed like thunder in her soul.

Let that which is crossed become straight. Let the boy find escape from his fix.

As she danced before the automaton she glimpsed the face and sensed the boy also moving into a trance. The eyes that had been so alive were now dull and languid. The hands still clapped against the thighs, yet somehow the motion seemed more mechanical than it had a moment earlier.

A shift was taking place. Marie adapted, becoming the follower instead of the leader. The rhythm slowed, and slowed, the maid’s hands moving less with each beat, until the fingers barely left the thighs, until the claps became mere twitches, and then ceased.

Marie paused, back arched in the middle of an undulation. The maid had gone still.

Slowly, crooning thanks to Yemaya, she straightened. Zombi tightened against her skin, then relaxed.

Marie stood silent for three breaths, listening, waiting. The maid did not move. Marie went to stand before the machine.

“Anthony?”

A soft moan from the bed filled her heart with a rush of joy. Murmuring prayers of thanks, Marie stepped to the desk and returned Zombi to her basket. The snake went willingly; she, too, sensed the ritual was done. Marie tucked the shawl over her and hastened to the bedside.

“Anthony?”

He rolled his head, then his eyes blinked open. Pale blue eyes, completely unlike the automaton’s, yet the fire in them was familiar.

“Mama?”

“Hush. She will be here presently.”

Marie touched his face, his brow. Hot, but not dangerously so. The sickness was not gone—oh, no—that would take many days yet. But he was back where he belonged.

“I had a strange dream.”

“Did you?”

“I left my body.”

“We all do that, in dreams.”

He frowned as if struggling to remember. Marie stroked his brow.

“Sleep, now. You will have better dreams next time.”

She watched his eyelids droop, then close. He inhaled deeply and sighed.

The door opened and Adele looked in, her face anxious. “Madame! The doctor is coming.”

“Very well.”

Marie rose and put on her shoes, then gathered her things back into her basket, leaving the simple altar she had made behind. The candle glowed steadily, a sphere of warmth. Adele stepped toward the desk.

“You should take that away—”

“No. Leave it as it is.”

“But—”

The housekeeper turned as a footstep sounded from the doorway. A man dressed in sober black stood there, looking astonished. His hair and beard were red, his forehead high, and a pair of spectacles dangled in one hand while he carried a leather attaché in the other.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Marie LaVeau, à votre service,” said Marie, sweeping a curtsy.

The red brows rose. “Madame LaVeau? You were called to my patient?”

“No, I was called to his maid, but I found that you have mistaken your diagnosis.” Marie picked up the bottle of quinine and carried it to him. “It is typhoid fever, not malaria. This will do him more harm than good.”

The doctor donned his glasses and accepted the bottle, frowning. “Typhoid?”

“Did you think to examine the chest?”

“I did indeed. There was no sign of typhoid.”

“Look again.”

He glanced at her, then hastened to the bedside. Marie collected her basket and turned to the door, where Adele stood staring at the bed.

“Come, Mignon.”

The maid’s head moved. Until that moment, she had remained where she stopped at the end of the dance. Her gaze rose to Marie, and a liquid shock bolted down Marie’s spine.

There was still fire in the eyes.

It was not possible. Anthony was back in his body.

Marie stared back at the automaton, shaken with uncertainty. Could another spirit have entered the machine? Was it open to a hant?

She made a swift cross in the air between them. “Who are you?” she said.

The eyes flickered with doubt, with fear. “Mignon,” said the maid, watching warily.

“Where do you come from?”

“I was made in London.”

“What are you about, there?” the doctor said crossly from the bed. “This child is trying to sleep.”

Marie glanced at him. “Merely confirming that the maid is in working order.”

She stared at the automaton, seeking any hint of malice, any sign of an outside spirit. There was only uncertainty, hesitation.

“Who would have thought that the famous Madame LaVeau had an interest in automata?”

The faint note of irony in the doctor’s voice was not lost on Marie. She turned to him.

“Take good care of your patient, doctor. Let the candle burn itself out.”

He glanced at the altar, saying nothing. Yes, he feared her power, and that was well; she could do harm to those who crossed her.

Marie returned her attention to the maid. She had more questions, but would leave Anthony in peace.

“Come along,” she said, beckoning the maid to follow.

They passed into the hall, Adele shutting the door quietly behind them. Marie turned to the housekeeper, speaking softly.

“May I use your office? I wish to ask Mignon some questions.”

Adele’s brows rose slightly. “Of course, madame.”

She led the way down the back stairs, back to the tidy little room. Marie set her basket on the desk and turned to the housekeeper with a smile.

“May I impose on you for a cup of coffee?”

“Certainly.”

Adele bowed slightly, glanced at the maid, and withdrew. Marie drew the door closed.

“Sit down, please, Mignon.”

The maid sat in the guest’s chair by the desk. Marie stepped behind the desk and took a white candle from her basket. She set this between them and lit it, murmuring the words of a truth charm. If the flame wavered, it would be a sign that the maid was lying.

She looked at the maid, noting the soulfire burning steady in the eyes. The desperation that had shone there when Anthony was present was gone. What remained was difficult to interpret.

“How did you come here?”

“By sea,” the maid answered. “I was purchased from Babbage and Lovelace.”

“What do you remember of the time before today?”

The maid frowned slightly. “I cared for Anthony. That is why I was brought here.”

Marie glanced at the candle. The flame burned steadily.

“Do you recall your activation?”

“Yes,” Mignon said slowly, “but it is almost as if I were watching from outside. That makes no sense.”

Marie found that it made perfect sense. Automata did not ordinarily have souls. As she understood it, what memory they had was in the nature of stored instructions. They had no capacity to evaluate, to question.

Interesting that Mignon expressed concern about the sense of what she was saying. With a few more questions, Marie ascertained that the maid’s memories were all from Anthony’s outlook.

“What do you remember of today?”

A hint of fear came into the maid’s eyes. “You came to help.”

Marie waited, not wishing to guide what the maid might say with promptings. Mignon looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“Anthony was in me,” she whispered.

“Do you know how that happened?”

Mignon shook her head. “No.”

“But you remember it.”

“Yes.” She met Marie’s gaze. “Why do I remember it?”

“A very good question. What else do you remember?”

“Your dancing.”

Marie gazed at her, puzzled. The memories she was describing were Anthony’s, but this was not he. He was back in his body; Marie was sure of it. What, then, inhabited the automaton? A fragment of his soul? An echo?

Whatever it was, soulfire lived in it. In that sense it was a living being. And that changed everything.

“How do you feel about Anthony?”

The maid’s eyes softened, a thing Marie would not have thought possible. “He is very ill.”

“Yes.”

“I would like to take care of him. May I still do that?”

Mignon met Marie’s gaze, eyes pleading. If there were any malicious intent behind the request, she could not detect it. She did not think an automaton, even with a soul, could be so cleverly deceitful.

“It is not my decision, but I will recommend that you be allowed to care for him. He has far to go to recover, and will need close attention.”

Mignon nodded. “That is my purpose.”

A statement to be expected from an automaton, but Marie wondered if there was now feeling behind it. Mignon sounded as if she were attached to the boy.

A new soul, perhaps, clinging to an old purpose. Would it serve?

She leaned forward, holding the maid’s gaze, striving to see into the depths of this strange being. The maid looked back without fear or shame. Yes, a fresh soul, as yet unscarred.

She wished to study Mignon further. She had some friends she would like to consult as well, and she would also seek divine guidance.

The door opened and Adele came in, pausing as she saw the two of them so intent. Marie broke off her gaze and straightened.

“Your coffee, madame.”

“Thank you.”

Marie accepted the cup and sipped, watching Adele stare at the maid as if unsure what to make of her.

“I hope you are satisfied with the result,” Marie said.

The housekeeper started. “Oui, madame.”

“I am convinced that Anthony is himself again.”

Adele nodded. “I have just been back to his room. The doctor has left, and Violette is watching him.”

“Mignon should return to her duties as his nursemaid. His convalescence will be tedious, and she is well-suited to care for him.”

Mignon glanced at her, eyes lit with passion. Yes, she had a fierce love for the child. How interesting.

“If you think so, madame,” said Adele doubtfully.

“I do. She will not tire, and it is constant attention he needs. She is ideal.”

“Very well.”

“What were the doctor’s instructions?”

Adele explained them, and Marie nodded in approval. The doctor had wisely adjusted his treatment. Whatever else was said of Marie LaVeau—and some things that she had heard made her laugh—her skill as a healer was respected in the city.

She finished her coffee and stood, taking up her basket. “Keep me apprised. You can write, Mignon?”

The maid nodded.

“Send me a note every day about Anthony’s progress.”

Marie watched the housekeeper, alert for objection, but she saw none. That was well, for she wished to know of the maid’s progress as well as the child’s.

Days passed, and stretched into weeks. Lent cast a cloud of oppression over the city. Mignon wrote to Marie faithfully, meticulously documenting Anthony’s recuperation. She never mentioned his temporarily inhabiting her mechanical body, and when Marie spoke of it with one or two close friends, they were as puzzled as she.

Almost as perplexing were the references Mignon made to things that seemed unrelated to her duties. In one note she described, in complete analytical detail, the song of a bird she had heard outside Anthony’s window. In another she reported the amount of champagne and brandy consumed at a dinner party Anthony’s parents had hosted, and calculated the average quantity of alcohol drunk by each guest based upon the butler’s report of which glasses had been used and which returned clean to the pantry.

A third digression troubled Marie more; Mignon added, post scriptum, to a note rejoicing in Anthony’s first day rising from his bed, that his father had looked at her oddly and inquired how complete was her physique.

Some automatons were built for sexual pleasure, Marie knew. She doubted a nursery maid would be so equipped. That Anthony’s father had even thought of such a thing disturbed her. That Mignon had mentioned it could be a plea for help.

Assuming Mignon was not built for sexual relations, there were still other acts well within her capability. Her owner could demand them of her, and Mignon would have no choice but to obey.

Marie’s thoughts darkened. The maid had a soul, and therefore feeling. She could be hurt, and that angered Marie.

For a brief moment she thought of offering to buy Mignon, but she knew she could not afford the price, even if Mr. Ramsey was willing to sell. Mignon was top of the line, the latest in technological advancement. Only the wealthy could afford such a sophisticated machine. Marie was well-off, yes, and she had power in New Orleans, but her wealth was not so great as to allow her to buy a state-of-the-art automaton. Nor was her power enough to wrest by other means from a prosperous citizen what all his peers would consider his rightful property.

So. What recourse for the unhappy slave? The first that naturally occurred was escape. A drastic measure, and she had no idea whether an automaton could even attempt it.

Marie’s eyes narrowed as she sat in her parlour, sipping coffee and watching the rain slide down her windows, Mignon’s note in her lap. She would not turn away from this. She must find a way to help Mignon, for she was sure no one else would do so.

Two days later she received a very brief note from Mignon, a mere two sentences:

The planting is to begin soon and we are all to remove to Laurel Grove. Anthony has taken several walks this week, and the doctor has pronounced him well enough to travel.

Marie frowned. Laurel Grove was a plantation, not far from the city, if she recalled aright. She had a feeling she would need to know more of it.

She had a friend, Mr. Billings, who worked at the city’s newspaper. A glance at the mantel clock told her that it was not too late to visit that afternoon, if she left promptly. It was raining again, dreary for walking, but she cared little for that. Winter in New Orleans meant rain.

She finished her coffee and arose, pausing by the glass tank where Zombi lay drowsing after swallowing a mouse two days earlier. The lump was still visible, a swollen place in the snake’s middle. Marie had not given that mouse a name, but the next might well be Mr. Anthony Ramsey, the first.

The dim glow of a gas lamp burned above the tank, keeping it warm against the lingering chill of winter and glinting with a soft, golden light off of Zombi’s scales. Marie blew a kiss to the snake, then fetched her cloak and went out.

The rain was a mere drizzle. Still it was enough to keep most people off the streets. Marie held her large umbrella over herself, watching every doorway and alley she passed. Such gloomy weather sometimes brought out the worst in the city, the cowards who preyed upon the weak.

By the time she reached the offices of the Picayune, the rain had grown heavier and a rumbling of thunder growled over the city’s rooftops. She sheltered as best she could and walked westward, into the teeth of the storm. The rain rattled against her umbrella, and had dampened her skirts up to her knees by the time she entered the Picayune’s cramped and cluttered office.

Mr. Billings was at his desk, which was piled high with books, journals, and sheaves of handwritten notes. The journalist was in his twenties, white with just a hint of cacao, suggesting the presence of a negro somewhere in his ancestry. He greeted Marie with a grin.

“You must have something good if you are out in this weather.”

“Au contraire, I hope you have something good for me.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow and invited her with a gesture to sit in the chair opposite his desk. “What do you want to know?”

“I wish to know about Laurel Grove.”

“That’s the Ramsey plantation. The owner has just invested a small fortune in re-equipping the sugar house.”

“Indeed? Is it very far from town?”

“Not far at all. Within a day’s drive. Why does it interest you?”

“I may wish to visit there. I recently had occasion to visit their town house when the son was ill, and met his nursemaid, who is an automaton.”

Mr. Billings’s eyes widened. “Those house servants are expensive, I believe.”

“Very. Could you perhaps acquire directions to the plantation for me?”

Mr. Billings declared he would be honoured. Marie chatted with him a little longer, then took her leave.

The rain had ceased. She walked slowly home, Marie thinking over what she had learned.

A visit to Laurel Grove seemed more and more desirable. She would prefer to have some excuse, but if none else offered, the wish to be free of the city, and to see her friend Adele, would have to serve.

The next morning she sent a note to Mignon, expressing concern that Anthony might be subjected to a journey before he was fully well. The reply came within an hour: Mignon agreed with her, but the trip was planned and would not be put off for anything short of a relapse. They were to depart on Monday. That riding in a coach for a day might bring about a relapse seemed not to concern the boy’s parents.

Marie’s frown deepened as she read Mignon’s closing paragraph: “Mr. Ramsey has begun to require my company now and then, when Mrs. Ramsey is from home. I wish he would not take me away from Anthony, who still needs close attention.”

She could not tell from the letter whether Mignon was in distress, but she suspected so, or the maid would not have mentioned it at all. She could only guess what Ramsey was demanding of Mignon.

She rose and paced her parlour, angered by the situation. She had realized long ago that she could not fight slavery. Instead, she had resolved to help one slave at a time, as best she could.

Sometimes she merely gave support and advice, or charms to ease their minds, or to lend them protection or strength. Many of the slaves in the city were fairly content. Some saved money to buy their freedom; easier to do in New Orleans than elsewhere. Marie bought the little trinkets they made or the vegetables they grew to sell, gave money outright to some, took collections for others. Small victories.

Mignon’s trouble was different. She was a slave, more completely so than any creature of flesh, for she had no chance of buying her freedom.

On Sunday Marie went to Congo Square, where folk gathered after church to greet their neighbours and exchange news of the week. Years ago she had led weekly dances in the square—demonstration dances, meant to gain the goodwill of the police, whom she invited—but the city had outlawed them during one of the voudon scares. A fear of witchcraft ran through the privileged classes, resulting in repeated bans and a few actual arrests. Marie knew that the Americans’ true fear was of the negroes gaining any kind of power.

After church, it was her custom to stroll through the square and visit with neighbours. On this Sunday she had brought five of her children with her, who dispersed at once to find their friends. The youngest uttered squeals of glee as they were absorbed into games.

As usual, Marie was quickly surrounded by people eager for her blessing or her advice. She answered them patiently, and slowly worked her way across the square to where Adele stood beside a tall pyracantha hedge. Marie greeted her, and after an exchange of pleasantries inquired about Mignon.

“She has sent me good report of Anthony,” Marie added, “though I fear it is too soon to move him.”

Adele shrugged. “The doctor said the same. Mrs. Ramsey was willing to leave him in town, but Mr. Ramsey will not be parted from him.”

Marie pressed her lips together, thinking it was Mignon from whom he did not wish to part. She watched Adele’s face, but if the woman knew of her employer’s relations with Mignon, she hid it well.

“Your household will miss the Easter celebrations,” Marie remarked.

“It cannot be helped. We will do something at Laurel Grove. The field hands will dance, if they are given leisure for it.”

“Mr. Ramsey permits it?”

“Yes. His overseer has persuaded him the dancing improves morale.”

“How wonderful. I have missed our dances.”

“Come to Laurel Grove, then.”

Marie smiled as if she thought the notion mildly pleasant. “An interesting idea.”

Adele’s eyes lit with hope. “Would you perhaps be willing to lead the dances? And a ceremony perhaps? I am sure the slaves would pay you however they could.”

Marie waved a hand. “The pleasure of the dance would be enough. It is the journey that concerns me.”

“It is not difficult, merely tedious. I would give you a room in the servants wing, next to my own. There is plenty of room.”

Marie concealed the delight this offer gave her. “I will consider it. If I come, though, you should perhaps call me Madame Paris before your employers.”

She took two tiny bundles from her pocket, one of red cloth and one of white. “I have made a gris-gris for the boy, and one for the maid. You will deliver them?”

Adele hesitated. “Anthony will not understand.”

Marie held up the red gris-gris. “Place it beneath his mattress, and instruct Mignon to keep hers in her pocket.”

Adele glanced up at her, looking sceptical, perhaps at the thought of giving a charm to a machine, but she nodded. “Very well, madame. Thank you.”

They kissed and parted, each strolling on to meet others. Folk who had gathered, waiting at a respectful distance while they talked, again crowded around Marie. She spent half an hour with them, then rounded up her children and headed home.

“Maman,” said little Louis, clinging to her hand, his stocky legs pacing double-time to keep up with her, “Pere Dominique scolded me for praying to Chango.”

“You must say St. Jerome in church, cher.”

“I forgot. Maman, why do people talk of zombis working on the docks?”

She glanced at him. “They do not mean real zombis. They are speaking of machines.”

“They sound afraid of them.”

And well they might be, if the machines took the place of paid workers. Marie frowned.

One at a time. She could not help everyone.

Three days later a note arrived from Mr. Billings. He had not only learned the way to Laurel Grove, he had convinced his paper to provide him with a carriage for a journey there, on the promise of an article about the state-of-the-art equipment Mr. Ramsey had installed in his sugar house. Marie skimmed a paragraph of raptures about vacuum pans and steam-driven rollers, then smiled at Mr. Billings’s sudden formality in extending an invitation to her to accompany him thither at her earliest convenience.

Perfection. The journey arranged, at no expense to herself. Congenial company, and with Adele’s help, accommodations at Laurel Grove for both herself and her friend. When plans fell together with such ease, it was generally a sign that the Orisha approved.

The weather broke at last, and the sun shone with a hint of the coming spring warmth on the morning of Marie’s departure. Mr. Billings arrived in a shabby but serviceable carriage, and took only mild exception to the inclusion of Zombi’s tank in Marie’s baggage.

Bidding farewell to her family, Marie climbed into the carriage. Mr. Billings took up the reins and coaxed the horse to trot along St. Ann’s Street to the river road.

The journey passed easily. Marie had brought a basket of food on which they lunched in the early afternoon beneath the sprawling limbs of a live oak. By the time the carriage turned down the tree-lined alley to Laurel Grove, afternoon was beginning to wane, sunlight slanting between the trees, tinged with gold.

Marie gazed past the imposing two-story house with its great white columns to the lesser buildings beyond: a kitchen, a smaller house that was likely the servants’ quarters, a barn, a stable, and a massive brick structure that must be the sugar house. Beyond these a row of cabins stretched into the distance, surrounded by stubbled cane fields.

The alley was broad and well-maintained, surfaced in crushed shell that hissed beneath the carriage wheels. The trees to either side were laurels. Marie noted the crisp pungency of bay as they drove along, and wondered if Mr. Ramsey bothered to harvest that secondary crop, which by itself might turn a tidy profit.

Mr. Billings drove round to the rear entrance, where Adele hastened across the gallery to meet the carriage. Marie stepped down into her embrace.

“Forgive my coming unannounced.”

“Oh, no! I am delighted to see you, madame.”

“I hope you can also accommodate my friend, Mr. Billings. Mr. Billings, this is Mrs. Carter of whom I told you.”

He bowed over the hand she gave him. “Enchanté, madame. Have you room for one more guest?”

“Of course.” Adele turned to an elderly slave in a footman’s attire. “Beauregard, Mrs. Paris and Mr. Billings each require a room. Mrs. Paris may have Colette’s old room. It is just down the hall from mine,” she added, turning to Marie.

A swarm of servants appeared, enough that Marie suspected her sobriquet of Mrs. Paris—entirely accurate, though poor Jacques had been gone these many years—had deceived no one. The slaves who whisked their baggage away looked at her with mute excitement in their eyes.

Their rooms were on the second floor of the servants’ wing, the separate building that Marie had noted earlier. Zombi’s tank, draped with a shawl so that neither snake nor servants might be terrified, was tenderly carried up by two bondsmen, whom Marie followed with a watchful eye. She was settled in her room in time to change her travel attire before supper, which took place in the servants’ hall after the family had supped.

Laurel Grove was a large establishment, and full twenty sat down at the household servants’ table. Among them was a tall, lean white man whose brow was fixed in a permanent frown of concentration, who entered the room deep in conversation with Mr. Billings. They paused only long enough for Mr. Billings to introduce Mr. Wrackerby to Marie, then delved at once back into a world of valves and burners.

Marie turned to Adele. “I do not see Mignon. I know she does not need to eat, but what does she do at this hour? Is she with Anthony?”

Adele shook her head. “Mr. Ramsey takes a glass of brandy in his library after supper, and of late Mignon waits upon him.”

Marie watched her face. “Is there a problem there?”

Adele hesitated, staring at her dinner plate for a moment. “I hope not,” she said softly.

“Anthony must not be neglected.”

“He is not, I assure you.”

“But Mignon is not tending him. Why?”

Adele did not answer, merely frowned. Marie sipped her wine, allowing her friend a moment for composure, then set down her glass.

“I would like to speak to Mignon. Perhaps by the time we are finished with dinner she will be free?”

Adele glanced up sharply. “There is nothing I can do,” she whispered.

So Adele did know. And knew it was wrong. And that there was no way to prevent what was happening to Mignon.

Marie asked a question about Laurel Grove, turning the conversation to more comfortable matters. When a pause fell in Mr. Billings’s discourse with Mr. Wrackerby, Marie smiled at her friend.

“I trust you are finding plenty of substance for your article.”

“Oh, indeed! I had no idea Mr. Ramsey had replaced his entire system. Everything in the sugar house is brand new, state-of-the-art.”

“Newer than that,” said Mr. Wrackerby. “Rillieux’s system is unproven. It is really a prototype.”

“Is that not a great risk for Mr. Ramsey to take?” Marie asked. “What if it fails?”

“We’ve kept all the old equipment, madame. It is all in the barn. If the new system fails, it would take only a day or two to bring the old back into production. But it will not fail.”

He talked on, waxing enthusiastic about the genius of Rillieux, whom Marie deduced was the inventor of the double vacuum pan over which he and her friend were so excited. She concluded that Mr. Wrackerby was a positive, forward-looking man, despite his beetled brow.

When the dinner was over, Mr. Wrackerby took Mr. Billings away again to the sugar house, leaving Marie at liberty to wander. She donned her bonnet, slipped a pair of scissors into her basket and a candle and lucifers into her pocket, and by looking in at the kitchen acquired the escort of one of the chambermaids.

The sky was ruddy in the west, all that remained of a sullen sunset. Clouds had come in again, hiding any hope of stars. The evening was mild.

The chambermaid, a shy girl who had been born on the estate, knew nothing of the history of the laurels, but was able to tell Marie that they had not been harvested in her memory. She stood nervously by while Marie filled her basket with leaves.

“Now,” Marie said, stepping back from the tree with a gesture and silent prayer of thanks, “show me to Mignon’s room, if you please.”

“Mignon is a zombi,” the girl said in a hesitant voice.

“Not a zombi, a machine. She must still have some place where she keeps her attire, yes?”

The girl nodded, blinking unhappily, and led Marie back toward the servants’ wing. Mignon’s room was on the ground floor, at the end of the hall which terminated in a door to the outside. Marie noted this, thinking it would be easy for someone to enter that door and visit Mignon unnoticed by the other servants. She was therefore unsurprised to find in Mignon’s tiny apartment, along with the small chest she recognized from Mignon’s room in the Ramseys’ town house, a comfortable-looking feather bed.

Mignon herself was absent. Marie thanked the chambermaid and returned to her own room, where she took out the paper, pen, and ink she had brought from home.

Zombi was awake and pressing her pale belly against the glass, tongue fluttering to taste the foreign air. Marie went over to the tank.

“Are you hungry, cher? I will find you something soon.”

The snake stilled at the sound of her voice, then coiled away, working her way around the tank and looking out at the strange surroundings. Marie sat down and penned a quick note to Mignon, then carried it down to her room.

Her first impulse—to leave it on the pillow of the bed—she quickly rejected. Mr. Ramsey would no doubt resent any interference with his toy. She frowned, glancing around the room, and decided the best place was inside the chest, which appeared to be Mignon’s only possession. She lifted the lid, and fairly gasped at what she found inside.

She had expected spare clothing. Instead she found a small collection of books including a dictionary, and a wealth of keepsakes, many tidily labelled. Cuttings from a number of plants, carefully pressed between layers of paper and marked with their common and scientific names. A raven’s feather, “found in Jackson Square.” A drawing of Mignon, signed by Anthony. The stub of a blue candle, wrapped inside a white cloth, which Marie recognized as the remains of the makeshift altar she had made in Anthony’s room.

All these treasures spoke of Mignon’s emotions. Proof, if any was needed, that she had a soul.

Marie left her note atop the stacked books and gently closed the lid, then set out to find a meal for Zombi. She went to the sugar house, which was all alight, rather than the barn. She preferred not to catch a mouse herself, but a coin in exchange for a live mouse might be gratefully received by one of the working slaves.

She found Mr. Billings standing beside a large apparatus, some twenty feet long at the least, talking with two negroes. Mr. Wrackerby was nowhere in evidence.

Marie gazed at the machinery, which to her poorly informed eye looked like a giant, cylindrical tank lying on its side, with portholes and penetrations of copper piping at intervals along its length. She raised an eyebrow at her friend.

“This is the miraculous advancement?”

“It is,” said Mr. Billings. “Would you like a tour? Dominic here knows all about it.”

“Perhaps tomorrow. It is late and I confess, I am here on a much less lofty errand.”

She described her wish, watching the two negroes. The elder of them had the dull expression of one resigned to doing what one was told without question. The other—whom her friend had called Dominic—looked at first as if he might be insulted, then his mouth curved in amusement.

“And what could the Widow Paris want a live mouse for, ehn?”

A trace of accent told Marie he was foreign, Jamaican, perhaps. Familiar with voudon, no doubt. She smiled and lowered her eyelids.

“I thought to name it after your owner, Mr. Ramsey.”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, then his brows drew together. “Allow me, Madame.”

He strode away toward the back of the sugar house. Marie followed, intrigued by his sudden intensity, and curious about the place where the toil of so many was converted to profit.

Taking note that she had followed, Dominic paused. A flash of danger lit his eyes.

“Madame would do best to wait here. There are no mice in this building.”

Marie glanced at the clean-swept floors. “Where will you find one?”

“In the barn.”

She’d expected that answer, but not the tension in the man’s voice. Curious, she lowered her voice.

“I wish to watch the hunt.”

Dominic frowned. “Why? I swear to catch it unharmed.”

“Oya guides me to watch.”

His eyes narrowed, but he yielded with a slight bow. Marie followed him out into the darkness, across a grassy space to the dark, looming barn. He opened the door a mere crack and gestured to her to step in, then followed and closed it.

Darkness enfolded them. She heard Dominic breathing beside her, opened her eyes wide to urge them to adjust to the lack of light.

“How did you come to be here?” she whispered. “You belong in the city.”

“I was happier there. Marsh Ramsey bought me to run the vacuum pan.”

“I thought Wrackerby was the foreman.”

“He runs the whole sugar house.”

“So you know the pan better than he?”

“I know all of it better.”

She could hear the sneer in his voice. A proud man, and intelligent.

“You should not be a slave.”

He did not answer at once. When he did, the bitterness resonated even in his whisper. “I will not be for long.”

He seemed to regret saying it; she sensed him turn to her, felt his hot breath on her face as he caught her by the wrist. “Say nothing. Stay here.”

She heard him move away. She let out her breath silently, waiting.

She was beginning to see dim shapes: large tanks and tangles of piping. Confusing until she remembered that the old sugaring equipment was being stored here.

A startled squeak told her of Dominic’s success. She waited, but instead of his returning footsteps, she heard a soughing like a shifting of cloth. Curious, she walked toward the sound, keeping a hand against the barn wall. Twice she bumped against pieces of metal and had to step around them; fortunately she made no noise.

The soughing continued, much nearer now. Marie heard a soft clank as well. Her curiosity piqued, she withdrew her lucifers and candle from her pocket and struck a light.

Dominic’s head spun around toward her, eyes glaring in fury. In his hands were two large rings, one perhaps three feet across, one nearly double that, with canvas hung between them. Marie could not fathom what it was.

In the flickering light of her flame, Dominic shoved his apparatus beneath a large vat and turned to her. Marie had been so surprised that she had not lit the candle, and now the lucifer scorched her fingers.

She dropped it. A flame leapt up from the straw-covered floor.

Gasping, Marie stamped at the fire, extinguishing it before it could become a conflagration. Darkness blinded her again, and the smell of burnt straw rose around her. She felt Dominic come up beside her, heard his own feet scraping at the straw on the floor.

“That was foolish.” Anger vibrated in his voice, still low, though no longer a whisper.

“Yes. Forgive me.”

“Go back, now.”

“I cannot see my way.”

A hand grasped her arm above the elbow, roughly guiding her. The route was different; straight across the barn rather than around its edge. Marie stumbled over a loose piece of piping that clattered loudly.

A scrabble and a squeaking followed, then subsided. A cow lowed somewhere near. Dominic moved forward, dragging Marie after him.

“You should be free,” she repeated, somewhat out of breath. “I can help.”

“Help?” His voice was scornful, then suspicious. How?”

“I can raise money. Have you been able to save anything?”

“Ramsey will never sell me, and even if he would I am too expensive.”

“What did he pay for you?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars.”

Marie caught her breath. He was right; it would take her years to raise such a sum.

“I can help in other ways.”

“What do you mean?” His voice was a hiss, angry.

She understood his suspicion. For all he knew, she was sent by his master to discover any scheme of escape he might have. An intelligent slave could be expected to break for freedom.

“You are building something,” she said. The fingers on her arm tightened, and she hastened to add, “Do not tell me what. Tell me instead what you need. Materials? I can bring them from the city.”

He was silent for a long moment, then abruptly a door opened behind Marie and Dominic pushed her through it, out into the yard. The sugar house stood a few yards away, light gleaming from its open doors.

“Silk,” he whispered.

An odd request. She could not begin to imagine his need for costly fabric.

“How much?” she asked.

“Six bolts.”

Marie bit back an exclamation. Was he planning a ball? Did he mean to dress every slave on the plantation in riches?

“And fifty spools of heavy thread, and silk cord, a thousand feet of it.”

“What colour?”

“Colour doesn’t matter.”

Why?

Marie resolved not to ask. While it would be expensive, the materials he wanted were within her means to provide. She would be more than willing to provide them...on one condition.

“If I bring you these, will you take one other with you?”

The light from the sugar house showed her his frown. “Who?”

“Mignon.”

He laughed. “A machine?”

“That is my price. Her freedom, along with yours.”

Dominic frowned. She watched him breathe three times before he answered.

“Done.”

He released her arm. Marie resisted the urge to rub at it.

“I will go tomorrow, and return with the materials.”

A smile curved his lips. He reached into his pocket and withdrew something small and squirming.

“Don’t let it bite you.”

Marie took the mouse by its tiny scruff, stroking it to soothe it. It stilled beneath her hand.

“Hello, Mr. Ramsey,” she cooed.

She departed the following day, claiming an urgent calling summoned her back to town. Her reputation was such that no one questioned it, although Adele raised her brows in surprise.

Mr. Billings protested. “I haven’t finished the notes for my article!”

“Lend me your carriage. I will bring it back in three days.”

“Well of all the—”

“And I will bring you a case of brandy, as well.”

Grumbling a little for form’s sake, he yielded, and Marie went off to pack. As she was just finishing, a knock fell upon her door. She opened it to find Mignon outside.

The maid looked unchanged, except for a shadow in her eyes. Marie peered into them, though the maid would not meet her gaze.

“You are unhappy.”

Mignon’s brows drew together slightly, then she nodded. No tears. Nothing so human.

“I am working to free you,” Marie whispered.

Astonishment came into the mechanical eyes. The rose to meet Marie’s. “How?”

Marie raised a finger to her lips. “You must be patient. Promise you will not give up hope.”

Another nod. “I promise.”

“Good. Now you may help me by asking two of the boys to come up here and carry Zombi’s tank.”

The maid looked at the tank, then stepped to it and lifted it from the table where it rested. Marie’s heart lurched, but Mignon seemed to have perfect control of the unwieldy thing.

“To the carriage?” Mignon asked.

Marie hastily cast Zombi’s shawl over the tank. “Yes. Carefully, please.”

She followed Mignon down the stairs, grateful that Zombi was in a digestive stupor at present. Keeping her farewells brief, Marie swore to Adele that she would lead the promised dances upon her return.

The journey to New Orleans was uneventful, and in three days’ time Marie had purchased the silk, thread, and cord that Dominic wanted. She packed all of it into a large steamer trunk. Christophe, her lover and the father of her children, observed her preparations with bemusement.

“But what is it for, cher?”

“I have not the slightest idea. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

She sketched for him the apparatus she had glimpsed in Dominic’s hands, telling him the while of the slave’s brilliance and ambition.

Christophe frowned at her drawing. “I am sure I have seen that before. Metal rings, you say?”

“Yes. Made of leftover pipe, I suspect.”

“It looks like some of the skirts in the new mode. The big, full ones.”

Marie gazed at the drawing. “I see what you mean. Perhaps he is hosting a ball after all.”

Christophe chuckled. “I am tempted to accompany you, just to see what comes of it.”

Marie cast the paper aside and embraced him. “Do. I may be there longer than I thought. Whatever Dominic’s plan is, I am determined to see it through.”

He kissed her, then sighed. “Alas, I have business. Perhaps I will join you later.”

Disappointed but unsurprised, Marie prepared to return to Laurel Grove. She had the steamer trunk strapped to the roof of the carriage, and the case of brandy set on the floor at her feet. She half feared the additional luggage would be questioned when she arrived at Laurel Grove, but fortunately the spectacle of Mignon carrying Zombi’s tank back into the servants’ wing drew attention away from the rest of the baggage.

Marie whispered in Mignon’s ear as the maid was leaving, “Come to me again as soon as you can.”

Mignon nodded. Marie spent the evening in her room except for a visit to the sugar house early on, in which she contrived to ask Dominic where he wanted the silk.

The slave looked startled, then told her to bring it to the barn and cover it with a certain blanket. Marie returned to her room to wait. Near midnight she concluded that Mignon would not be coming that night, and went to bed.

“Madame?”

“Gracious!” Marie sat up in bed, heart pounding. “What is the hour?”

The shadow beside her stood uncannily still. “Three. I could not get away sooner.”

Mignon. Marie gave herself a moment for composure, then nodded.

“It is well, for I need you to do something that no one must see.”

Mignon had no difficulty carrying the steamer trunk, even though it was larger and heavier than Zombi’s tank. Holding it easily before her, she moved silently down the stairs and out into the light of a hazy moon. Marie led the way to the barn, then paused in the open doorway, straining to see.

“Do you see a blanket with black stripes?”

“Yes,” said Mignon. “It is there, to the left.”

“Put the trunk there and cover it with the blanket.”

“Never mind,” said a man’s whisper.

Marie jumped, then recognized the voice. “Dominic. You were waiting?”

“Working. This is the only time I have for it.”

A small scrape preceded a blaze of light from a lantern that had been covered. Against the mass of cluttered equipment in the barn, Marie saw a framework of pipes, bent into a rough cube perhaps four feet to a side. Between the pipes, rising halfway up the frame, was a weave of basketry.

Marie’s curiosity increased. Whatever was he making?

Mignon set the steamer trunk on the floor without a sound. Dominic looked at her, seeming impressed.

“I have brought what you asked,” Marie said, opening the trunk and showing him the silk and cord. “How soon can you keep your part of the bargain?”

Dominic’s face went wry. “Months yet. There is much work to do.”

“What sort of work?” Mignon demanded. “I need no sleep, and work faster than humans, in general.”

A slow smile spread on Dominic’s face. “How are you with needle and thread?”

It was not months, but only four days before Dominic told Marie in a whisper, as she was admiring the new vacuum pan in the sugar house under his guidance, that he was ready. All his hesitation concerning Mignon had disappeared; he now spoke of her in reverent tones. Neither had told Marie what they were constructing at night in the barn. She was curious, but wished to preserve Dominic’s trust.

Now he leaned toward her, pointing toward one of the small view-ports in the side of the vacuum pan, which were for the purpose of observing the boiling of the sugar within. “I need help once more.”

“What now?”

“A distraction.”

Marie raised her brows. “Where, and when?”

“At your convenience. It must draw the attention of everyone on the plantation for perhaps an hour.”

Marie smiled. “Well, I can think of only one way to do that, short of setting the barn alight. Fortunately I have already promised to lead a dance.”

Adele received her pronouncement with joy. “Tomorrow night? Bien! I will tell the cooks now—they have been saving up for this.”

The occasion quickly became much grander than the simple evening dance Marie had envisioned. Apparently the whole plantation had been anticipating Marie’s dance with delight, and the occasion became a full-blown festival. A goat was slain and roasted in a pit. The kitchen was a beehive of activity.

Mr. Ramsey wisely gave his slaves permission for the ceremony, though not until the working day was done. Marie learned that he intended to watch the festival from the gallery at the back of the house, despite a slight indisposition that he had suffered of late, and which had kept him in his bed for a few days.

The ceremony must therefore be held where it could be seen from the gallery. Marie disliked this, for it meant the dance must be far closer to the barn than she had intended. She had no choice but to yield gracefully, however. She hoped Dominic and Mignon would be able to make their preparations without being observed by the household.

She dressed with care, in the white skirt and blouse she wore for the annual ritual at Bayou St. John. She tied her favourite scarf into the seven-pointed headdress that spoke to those who understood of her status, and wore the St. Therese medal that Christophe had given her on a chain around her neck.

At the altar she had set up in her room, she lit candles and prayed for the protection of all the slaves at Laurel Grove, but most especially for Dominic and Mignon. As she finished, a tingle of anticipation ran down her arms.

She lifted Zombi from her tank. The snake was alert and in good temper, having eaten two days since. She twined herself around Marie’s arm at once, but suffered herself to be laid in the basket. She knew it meant she would be dancing soon, and Zombi enjoyed the dance.

Outside, the air was warm and moist, the early evening sky hidden by restless drifts of cloud. Three massive fires had been laid, tower-fashion in the custom of the area, between the house and the servants’ wing. The slaves were gathered behind these, milling and talking in excitement.

As Marie stepped from the building she heard drumming, and saw the drummers seated in a ragged line to one side of the unlit fires. A handful of the drums were made of wood, several more were improvised from cauldrons with skins stretched across them—including one gigantic drum that had formerly been a sugar cooler—and an assortment of cook pots were also being beaten with sticks. The rhythm was simple, and it washed through the root of Marie’s being.

Movement drew her attention to the house, and she saw Mr. Ramsey, swathed in many blankets and shawls, being carried out to a sofa on the gallery. The rest of his family joined him, including little Anthony—also wrapped in shawls—and Mignon.

Marie caught her breath, and glanced toward the barn. Mignon should be there, if she was to escape. Had something gone awry? If so, Marie could not change it. The ceremony had been set in motion; she must see it through.

The sun blazed out beneath the cover of cloud as it set, red-gold, behind the house. The moment it disappeared, the bonfires were lit.

Marie moved forward. A wild cheering rose, and the drumming stopped momentarily. She swept in all the gathered souls with a gesture, commending them to the blessing of the Orisha. Setting her basket on the ground, she began to dance around it, her feet beating out the rhythm against the red earth.

Drums picked up her rhythm. She circled the basket, arms raised skyward as she called down the power of Oya, goddess of wind, queen of change.

Hesitantly at first, slaves began to dance as well, moving into a large circle around Marie. They gave her a wide space in its centre as they danced all around her, following her movements. Feet pounded the earth, hands clapped in rhythm. Marie felt the sound thunder through all her flesh, felt it moving deep into her soul as she slid into trance.

“Winds of change,” she murmured, “set these people free.”

Through slitted eyes, she looked up to the gallery and saw the family seated there, rapt in fascination. Mignon was no longer among them. Her heart warmed.

The bonfires were now fully alight, and she felt the heat of them wash over her. Glancing toward the barn, she saw another fire, much smaller, beyond the building. She caught a glimpse of Mignon’s dress, and thought she saw the maid wielding one of the great furnace bellows that she had seen in the barn and in the sugar house, pumping with incredible speed. It made no sense, but sense was not required.

Marie circled closer, closer to Zombi’s basket. She raised her voice in a common chant to Oya, and the slaves took it up at once. Dozens of voices rose into the falling twilight. A sheen of sweat covered Marie’s face from the heat of the fires and from the dancing. She came to a stop beside the basket and lifted Zombi from it.

Cries of glee went up from the dancers as the snake crawled up Marie’s arm and across her shoulders, settling into place. Marie took up the dance again, adding undulations to her steps, moving her body in waves that started from the shoulders and rippled down, making the dance more snake-like, even as her soul resonated with snake magic.

The slaves surrounded her, crowding her now, calling to her for blessings. She touched them as they passed in the dance, brushing against them with her fingers, or with the coils of Zombi twined around her arms.

She kept half an eye on the barn, and soon a vast shape swelled behind it. In her trance, for a moment she thought it was the moon come to earth, then she saw that it billowed and trembled, and knew it was the silk she had bought.

Flames from the fire below—the fire that was making the silk dance as if alive, filling it with heat—brought its colors to light against the evening. Three colours, the least costly she had been able find in bolts at the market: orange that flamed against the night, and darker glowing purple and brown.

Oya’s colours. Marie smiled.

She danced faster, and sang, calling out to the Orisha. Dancers backed away, giving her more room. She changed her dance, commanding rather than flowing now, demanding the full attention of the onlookers.

Her head was light, and she felt as if the Orisha were singing through her—Oya giving way to Ogun, Guardian of Truth and the Father of Technology. She began to chant his name, “Ogun, Ogun,” and the slaves took up the chant.

As they danced, stamping and swaying, Marie watched a miracle from the corner of her eye. The silk swelled like a mother’s growing belly, taller than the barn that no longer hid it. It bounced, as if tugging at a leash, then suddenly it began to rise upward, into the air. A small moon rising, except that she could see the cords beneath it, where the cube-shaped basket dangled from the two rings joined with canvas.

Standing in the basket was Mignon, with Dominic beside her. Marie dared not stop dancing to watch, but kept an eye upon them, even as she held the gaze of everyone at Laurel Grove.

She let a note of celebration creep into her song, and raised her arms high as she began to spin, arms extended, Zombi clinging tight. The dancing slaves around her sang and cheered and wept. In the distance, she imagined she heard the song of joy echoing, echoing against the rooftops of the plantation, against the dark alley of laurels, drifting away up into the night.

Pati Nagle was born and raised in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Her stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Cicada, Cricket, and in various anthologies, including collections honoring New Mexico writers Jack Williamson and Roger Zelazny. She is a Writers of the Future finalist and finalist for the New Mexico Press Women’s Zia Award. Her short story “Coyote Ugly” received an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and was honored as a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Her latest novel is The Betrayal, released in 2009 by Del Rey Books. She still lives in the mountains in New Mexico, with her husband and two furry feline muses.

To: Tristan Dellacourt, Viscount Whitlake

My Dear Viscount Whitlake,

Thank you for the information which you have communicated at such length.

I fear no definite conclusions can be drawn from the evidence of the orangutan. I regret to say, there is little that may be done at this point, unless you are prepared to produce the crocodile.

Yr. Obedient Servant,

Detective Inspector Bucket

Scotland Yard

A Princess of Wittgenstein

… by Jennifer Stevenson

“Now, Ileen, the Penderby residence is capacious, so you will sleep in your own room, rather than share with the other maids, as is more common in London. I gather that things were otherwise for you in...Paris?”

“Yes, M’sieur Soames, very different. I am most happy to serve in the house of the great scientist Docteur Horace Penderby.”

“Er, yes. Although it is to Mrs. Penderby that you owe your position here.”

“Quoi?”

“Mrs. Penderby is a founder of the Society for a Broader Definition of Humanity.”

“I assure you, M’sieur Soames, I am human.”

“Er, yes. Of course.”

“As are you.”

“I see you are curious. Very well, on this one occasion I will satisfy your natural question.”

“Thank you, M’sieur Soames, I should like to be satisfied.”

“Although in future it would be impertinent to pursue the matter.”

“Yes, M’sieur Soames.”

“If you would accompany me downstairs. As you have guessed, Ileen, I am one of Dr. Penderby’s automata. He endowed me with the equivalent of an Etonian education, with one additional year of Oxford in his own specialties, so that I may assist in the laboratory. I have a chassis which satisfactorily mimics the human frame, such that visitors are not unduly alarmed by my appearance, and a minute understanding of etiquette, household management, London society’s practices and customs, in short, everything necessary to make the ideal butler for such an establishment as this one.”

“M’sieur Soames is indeed marvellous.”

“I am also capable of handling the wild beasts which reside—through this door—in the laboratory, which was once the ballroom. We have an orangutan, a crocodile, rabbits, agoutis, and smaller mammals and lizards. It will be one of your duties to assist me. I trust you are not afraid of God’s creatures?”

“But no. I, too, am one.”

“Er. Of course.”

“And did Docteur Penderby provide you also with a soul?”

“Automata do not require them. I have a mandate to which I refer, which aids in my self-direction.”

“But Docteur Penderby is the author of They Are All Alive—”

“Those pamphlets were penned by Mrs. Penderby. It is a topic on which master and mistress...differ.”

“Oh.”

“Do not look so stricken, girl. Mrs. Penderby will discuss your soul, if you choose, as exhaustively as you could wish. Dr. Penderby is easily satisfied, provided his staff do not faint, scream, or indulge in hysterics above once or twice a week.”

“M’sieur Soames is satirical.”

“I fear not. We suffer rather a high turnover of staff. It is the orangutan, principally. He forgets his trousers.”

“He does not mistake the maids for orangutans, does he, M’sieur?”

“I am gratified to report that he has stopped short of such an outrage. Er, Ileen.”

“Yes. M’sieur Soames?”

“Have you—that is to say, you seem to me—er, where are you from originally?”

“Wittgenstein, M’sieur Soames.”

“Fancy. I see. Hm. Thank you, Ileen, that will be all.”

“And I told him, my dear Gwendolyn, Piffle. An automaton of one hundred percent synthetic parts is no more nor less a creation of science than one that combines organic and mechanical elements.”

“And why is that, Horace?”

“Don’t look so crafty, my dear. It doesn’t suit you. What difference could it possibly make?”

“So the bishop argued that to use cadaver parts would be to risk contaminating your automaton with some remnant of the divine spark that once animated the corpse?”

“Not that word at table, my love. The servants. What must Soames think, or poor Ileen, only here a day?”

“You need not patronize me, Horace. I was your assistant until I lost the baby. I saw many a corpse on the slab.”

“Quite so, quite so.”

“That was, of course, before you created your own assistant. A more discreet one than I, I am sure.”

“Gwendolyn, you mistake. I treasure your interest in my work—”

“If it is silent interest.”

“Not silent!”

“Uncritical, then.”

“You wrong me, Gwendolyn.”

“That will never do.”

“Your womanly scruples are a very necessary counter-balance to the cold, inquiring mind of a scientist.”

“I don’t object to you inquiring, Horace. But you were not used to be cold. I fear that exposure to certain scientific minds—”

“My fellows in the Royal Society are of the highest character—”

“Do not freeze me, Horace, I beg you. But if it is not their influence that has chilled you, then whose?”

“No one’s!”

“Then why do you avoid me? If I could have another child, would you—”

“You are imagining things, Gwendolyn.”

“That also will never do. More hot water, please, Ileen?”

“No more for me, thank you. I have—I have a meeting this evening, and must be from home at the supper hour.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see—oh, what’s the use!”

“Soames, I shall receive Viscount Whitlake and Mr Danton this evening in the library. And, er, as Mrs. Penderby is attending her own meeting from home, it will not be necessary to, er, trouble her with my guest list. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not that the gentlemen are unwelcome here.”

“Far from it, sir.”

“No. Precisely. Well, I’m off. Have brandy and cigars in the library by nine, and see that the fire is well along. Nine o’clock, mind. No earlier. Mustn’t ruffle Mrs. P.”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Er, Ileen, have you finished with your duties abovestairs?”

“Yes, M’sieur Soames. You see I am bringing the shoes down to the mud room. That is the last?”

“It is. Ileen, I do not like to ask this in front of Cook or the boy, but there are certain matters of routine maintenance which, er, I feel sure that your Continental mind will be resilient enough to—that is, which you may approach in a purely impersonal manner—“

“Of course, M’sieur Soames. Where I come from, the upstairs maid is often required to service the major domo.”

“Oh, please! You mistake, I assure you. One would shrink from—I am not sure an automaton can—er—in short, here is this oil can. Do you suppose you can reach the back of my neck? It will, I fear, be necessary to remove my collar, for which breach of decorum I deeply apologize.”

“It makes nothing. M’sieur Soames.”

“Thank you, Ileen.

“This is the hole for me to put the oil?”

“It must be added slowly, one drop at a time, twenty drops. The oil is very fine, and the mechanism absorbs it slowly.”

“M’sieur Soames is a work of art. I had not noticed the hole. M’sieur Soames is synthetic?”

“Nearly. Certain organs function better than man’s makings.”

“But the limbs? The—the arms?”

“One hundred percent artificial. Ileen, your arm—”

“It was lost when I died, M’sieur Soames. This one is a substitute. So the skin tone differs.”

“It was not you who died, Ileen. Mrs. Penderby likes us to be correct in our speech. The previous occupant of your body died.”

“No doubt, but I have no memory of another body.”

“Were you not then translated into this one?”

“I do not know, M’sieur. I think not.”

“Do not blush, Ileen. Under Mrs. Penderby’s roof you must receive due respect as a full member of the human race. Everyone is a person here. Do you—are you soulless, then?”

“I—don’t know. I overheard them talking while I lay on the stone, so I ran away. You are shocked. Will you expose me, M’sieur Soames?”

“Of course not. Merely, I am surprised you were able to motivate the, er, body before a soul could be installed in it.”

“M’sieur Soames is well informed about a process that is illegal in England.”

“The master and his associates are very interested in the process. Do you not know whose your body was?”

“I remember nothing. And yet I feel...everything.”

“That must be distressing for you.”

“I contrive.”

“The thought of waking prematurely on the slab in a body so recently mutilated—I can only imagine—”

“There. Twenty drops, and no spills. Does M’sieur Soames bathe? Must the hole be covered? Merveilleuse! And the meat organs, have I said that right? They accommodate satisfactorily in every respect?”

“I apologize if I overstepped, Ileen.”

“M’sieur Soames disarms me. In a manner of speaking. You have said nothing about my color, M’sieur Soames.”

“I shouldn’t dream of passing remarks—”

“I am blue.”

“Er, a very attractive pale blue.”

“But not sufficiently attractive? Je regrette.”

“It was never my intention to make light of your situation.”

“Mais non, it is I who make light. If one may not laugh in adversity, life—or death—becomes very long indeed.”

“Your fortitude does you credit.”

“Absurde. And now to bed. M’sieur Soames is positive he wishes no additional service?”

“Ileen, really! You must not speak so saucily!”

“Oh, we are special, we two.”

“In this respect we are different, Ileen! An automaton is well-educated in the laws of decorum, A—a—”

“Promethean? Zombi? Corpse-monster? How do the English call me? The laws of decorum float outside my mind, as it were, in the bubble of my past life. I am aware of them, but I do not regard them. I feel driven to break them all, now, while I may, so that when—if—I am dragged back into my old class and my old decorum, I have at least amused myself with some little disobediences.”

“Disobedience is unwelcome in a servant, Ileen.”

“So I perceive. And yet, one may get away with a certain amount of...sauciness!”

“Good night, Ileen.”

“Bon soir, M’sieur Soames.”

“Good evening, Soames. Did your mistress go off to her meeting all right, then?”

“Yes, sir. Er, Dr. Penderby—”

“Well, Soames? She didn’t ask about my movements tonight, did she?”

“No, sir. But I discovered a piece of information that might interest—”

“About Mrs. Penderby? What?”

“No, sir. About the new maid, Ileen. The, er—”

“Promethean. Although with Mrs. Penderby out of the room I can say corpse-monster if I choose.”

“Sir, she is no monster.”

“No indeed. Pretty little thing, apart from the arm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the blue skin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose she must have suffocated.”

“Or drowned, sir. That may be my information. You recall when we removed to the Swiss mountains for three months, for Mrs. Penderby’s health?”

“Vividly. The only decent thing I got out of it was meeting Polidari himself, that stormy weekend.”

“Precisely. It is of the storm I would speak. You may recall that a pleasure boat foundered in the storm, and several lives were lost. Among them, sir, was a young princess from Wittgenstein. Princess Elena.”

“Hm.”

“All they ever found, sir, was one arm, wearing her rings. It was assumed she fell into the lake and became entangled with the paddlewheel, which severed the limb, thus causing her demise.”

“Great heavens, Soames! You think our new maid is the missing princess?”

“Just a feeling, sir. The arm. And she mentioned that she comes from Wittgenstein. She also speaks of having ‘waked upon the stone,’ and, hearing men speaking around her, she fled.”

“Great Scott!”

“Additionally, sir, I fancy that I recognize her. She was much present in our hôtel during our stay.”

“What, not that fashionable minx with the yaller hair? My word. That is interesting. Whitlake and Danton will be fascinated. Did she say whose soul they meant to translate into her?”

“That is another mystery, sir. Perhaps your theory is correct, and the soul departs the body before its worldly knowledge vanishes.”

“Or dissolves. Or fades. I wonder if she can remember anything between death and the slab? Oh, not consciously. But perhaps under mesmerism she might be made to recall—”

“Sir, I should suggest—”

“Danton is a decent mesmerist. I must suggest it to him.”

“There’s the doorbell, sir.”

“Quick, go get them inside before the other servants see them.”

“Immediately, sir. Oh, dear.”

“—Apparently before they were able to shove another soul into her body! What do you say to that, Penderby?”

“This would be Polidori’s translator?”

“Sir—”

“I must assume so. Who else was at the Work on that lake that week? She must have been very fresh, too. Clewis has narrowed the persistence of the energy body to seventy-two hours, and Polidori himself says the soul moves on much sooner. I’ll have to write to him and find out.”

“Sir—”

“Dammit, let’s have the girl down here and question her. Soames, go get her.”

“Sir, the maids have all gone to bed by now.”

“Oh. Well, for something like this surely we can hoik her out—”

“And Madam will be returning within the hour.”

“Damn.”

“Precisely, sir.”

“She’d chuck a dozen fits.”

“It also occurs to me, sir, that the maid Ileen may be painfully adverse to exploring her past—”

“Don’t forget, she’s a princess, Penderby.”

“Was. Was a princess, Whitlake. Maybe.”

“And if her soul or any portion of her identity survives, we could be—it might behoove us to tread carefully—”

“Good thinking, Danton. Potentially political situation. I’ll tell you what, I’ll write Clewis. He was up at the lake that week. If Polidari was up to anything, he would know.”

“Penderby, you don’t think they got hold of Her Highness’s corpse and deliberately—”

“Well, there she was, dead. And fresh as a daisy.”

“Very lucky chance, really.”

“Sort of thing doesn’t happen more than twice in a scientist’s lifetime.”

“Twice, Whitlake? I should have thought once.”

“Twice, three times, whatever. Some of us make our own luck.”

“So I’ll write Clewis, shall I? Ask casually about the death of the princess, was she acquainted with Polidori, sort of thing.”

“And have him across the Channel in forty seconds by the clock. You are an ass, Penderby.”

“Only if she’s one of his escapees.”

“And have him confiscate her before we’ve had a look!”

“Sir, if Madam should learn of Ileen’s precise origins, she might, er, choose to become the girl’s champion.”

“My God. You’re right. Not a word about this to my wife, Soames.”

“Sir, I find it increasingly uncomfortable to—”

“To what? Dammit, man, out with it!”

“To function on—on conflicted ground between you, sir.”

“You like your place, do you?”

“Shut up, Whitlake.”

“It upsets my mandate, sir.”

“He’s an automaton, remember, Whitlake? Penderby mandated him to obey them both.”

“Danton’s right, Penderby, you’re an ass. Man’s got to be supreme in his home, what?”

“Soames, I don’t mean to upset your mandate, but I don’t want to upset Mrs. Penderby either.”

“Don’t want a tongue-lashing, more like,”

“Couldn’t you simply...abstain from informing her? How bad would it be?”

“It gives me a—a tummyache, sir.”

“Oh, well. We can’t give a bloody butler a tummyache. What the hell’s the point of building your own servants if you give ‘em a conscience, Penderby, you ass?”

“I never did!”

“Well, he’s getting one now.”

“He has a tummyache!”

“It gives my wife a headache.”

“That’s not conscience, it’s hysteria.”

“The soul manifests its existence in many ways, Danton.”

“Pompous ass, Penderby. Under the cat’s foot, too. How the devil you can call yourself a scientist—“

“I believe I hear a carriage, sir. If you will permit me, I will go and open the door for Madam.”

“Oh, Lord. You’ll have to sneak out the back, gentlemen.”

“Master in your own home, Penderby, there’s nothing like it.”

“She’s a founder of the SBDH.”

“Back door it is.”

“Out of my way, Danton!”

“Oh, Mr Soames! So horrible! Come quickly!”

“Calm yourself, Cook. What is the matter?”

“Mr Soames, it’s the hape. ‘E’s gone and accosted Margie!”

“Oh, dear.”

“Hurry!”

“Hurrying, Cook.”

“EEEEEEEEEE!”

“Urgh! Urgh urgh! Eek ahk ahk urgh!”

“Great heavens.”

“They been and done and smashed up my whole kitchen, sir. My dinner will be ruined! I don’t know what I’ll tell Mrs. Penderby! Oo, duck, sir!”

“Ducking. Calm yourself, Cook. Have you any toffee?”

“EEEEEE!”

“Toffee? Why—here’s a bit, sir—but—”

“Ourgh!”

“Thank you. And send for Ileen—ah, there you are. Now I will endeavor to distract him. I will require you, Ileen, to abstract the kitchen maid from the orangutan’s embrace. Are you ready?”

“Duck!”

“Mmmp. Mmm. Mmmmm!”

“Soyez tranquille, Marguerite. Clearly, your maman neglected your education. If you had pinched him—just here—”

“Mmmoomp!”

“Well done, Ileen.”

“Eeeee—oh. You pinched him on the—”

“Ah, Madame Penderby, you need not have come down the stairs. All is well. M’sieur Soames has subdued the beast.”

“Goodness, what a mess!”

“Mrs. Penderby, if you would be so good as to remove Margie. She has the hiccups.”

“Hic! Ulp! He—it—ulp! Hic! I’m giving notice!—”

“And I’d like to give my notice, too, ma’am.”

“Oh, no, not you, too, Cook!”

“Mmmmmmm! Urgh!”

“Cook, have we no more toffee? How about humbugs?”

“Well, there’s my personal store in the bureau—”

“That will do nicely.”

“Oh, but sir, my own humbugs!”

“Merveilleuse! Cook has saved the day! And look, she has even sherry for calming Marguerite! Splendide!”

“Oh, well—Missus Penderby, sherry for you too?”

“Thank you, Cook. Please don’t leave us, Cook. I shall be lost without you.”

“Ileen, if you would help Mrs. Penderby here, I will remove the orangutan while his jaws are occupied.”

“Why, not one cook in all Paris could have rescued Marguerite!”

“Oh, well, them foreign cooks!”

“But the shock to your nerves! You require restoratives! I prescribe sherry! Unless there is brandy?”

“Spirits, Ileen? Before she has prepared dinner?”

“Cook is equal to anything, M’sieur Soames! Voyons, the boy has come back from the stable, and the kitchen will be tidy in one blink of the eye. Now you must lie down for one little hour, Cook.”

“I won’t say no. Come on, Margie, you foolish girl. You can give notice all you like, but first you’ll help me make dinner.”

“Mrs. Penderby, if you can spare me in the drawing room, I think I should assist the boy with excavations.”

“Would you, Soames? Oh, dear, I don’t know what Dr. Penderby will say. Another cook gone, and a kitchen maid, too.”

“I think Cook may decide to stay.”

“Yes, more sherry, thanks. Well, if she does, it’s only because you flattered her to death. That was very clever, Ileen. But he’ll be furious. He’ll say I can’t manage the household. He threw me out of the laboratory. He built Soames, and he’s never home, so why does he need a wife?”

“You are his conscience, Madame.”

“A most unwelcome one. More sherry, please.”

“No, a necessary conscience. Men like to move forward always in one direction of their own choosing. A woman is always pulled in two directions. She is aware of considerations. She must wait for all to be revealed.”

“I dread it.”

“Dread? But what, Madame?”

“I don’t want all revealed. I’m so afraid he has a mistress. Someone who tells him he’s always right. He used to listen to me. Now he hates my work. And I am afraid of his work.”

“I must believe he respects your work, Madame. That is why he hides from you, and hides his work. Men are such enfants. He fears your censure, for that has great power over him.”

“You think? You detect shame in him?”

“I detect a passionate heart, Madame.”

“Oh, I hope you are right!”

“Mrs. Penderby, what’s this I hear about Cook giving notice—ah, there you are. I’ve had a letter from—Great Scott, it’s a mess in here.”

“Horace!”

“I regret to report that the ape forgot himself with the kitchen maid, sir. However, Ileen has convinced Cook to rescind her notice.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good, I suppose. Here, Gwendolyn, I’ve heard from Clewis in Lake Geneva. I told him all about Ileen’s arm and everything and he’s coming across to London for the weekend. He’s keen as anything on Promethean experiments, and I shall finally get a chance to show him what I’ve done with synthetic tissues. We’ll open you up, Soames. Show him what the English side of things has been up to.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“C-Clewis? M’sieur Penderby?”

“Ileen, are you well? Allow me to take the sherry decanter—oh—”

<smash!>

“Hell, she’s fainted. Just as I’ve been telling Danton. These Prometheans haven’t the stamina of man-made automata.”

“Ileen. Ileen, wake up. Ileen.”

“Ah, non! Quoi—M’sieur Soames?”

“You have been screaming in your sleep, Ileen. The other maids summoned me. Here. Sit up. Drink some water.”

“Mon Dieu, I thought—but I was dreaming.”

“What was it you thought, Ileen?”

“It makes nothing, M’sieur Soames.”

“Pardon me, Ileen, but something has frightened you. Is it—is it because of the arrival of this man Clewis?”

“Yes! He looks at me, when we pass in the upper rooms.”

“You are quite sure it was he, then, from Lake Geneva?”

“I have no memory before waking in that cold room, on a bed of stone. Two men talked in English who spoke of using a machine that would put a soul into the clay. The clay! They meant me!”

“I see. Then they must have recovered the body from the lake before—but do go on.”

“I waited until they went out of the room for one moment and then I ran away. For two years have I been running! Ah, but now he finds me, and I am lost!”

“I must apologize. My thoughtless words to Dr. Penderby led him to write to Mr. Clewis. My only thought was that he might recall the death of a young woman who, I am nearly convinced, must be you.”

“But M’sieur Soames, what if he does remember me? It is more than I myself can do. Du vrai, no one wants a blue princess with a false arm. An amnesiac blue princess with a false arm.”

“On the contrary. I am persuaded that your royal nature manifests in everything you are and do.”

“M’sieur Soames is a royalist then! My royal hand feeds a raw chicken to the crocodile every week, and dresses Mrs. Penderby’s hair, and shakes the tea leaves onto the floor for sweeping. No, I cannot be royal now, if ever I was.”

“But, Ileen! Your duty!”

“A fig for duty, M’sieur Soames.”

“I’m afraid I cannot sympathize with such sentiments. I was created to serve. It cannot be but that if one serves faithfully in one’s proper place, one will be happy.”

“Vraiment? And are you happy? Well, M’sieur?”

“No. No, I am not happy, Ileen. My—my mandate troubles me.”

“Quoi?”

“The instructions Dr. Penderby gave me when he built me. I must serve him and Mrs. Penderby equally. He is a great admirer of Miss Wollstonecraft. Mrs. Penderby appreciates it. But—”

“They trap you between them in their quarrel.”

“Yes. He instructs me to keep secrets from her about his guests and his comings and goings. She demands that I spy upon him for her. It causes me acute discomfort.”

“But it must be terrible.”

“Dr. Penderby theorizes, you know, that not all human beings are born with a soul, but that they must labor to achieve a soul by suffering irreconcilable moral dilemma. Often have I heard him speak of it, in the library with his fellow scientists. I had no notion it would hurt so much.”

“For shame! That is too bad of him, to create you in such a way as to cause you pain! How fortunate that I have been encouraging Madame to think better of her husband.”

“Good heavens, Ileen, I beg you, do not interfere in their private affairs! The impropriety!”

“What impropriety? She is a woman, I am a woman. Her suffering must interest me. Besides, if they will only reconcile their differences, it will not matter if I am a dead princess of Wittgenstein or a live housemaid of London. This Clewis, brrr, he terrifies me. I had thought Docteur Penderby might protect me—but you say he will not. Yet if Mrs. Penderby can persuade him, or merely work her female mystique upon him, I can be truly free of fear! I shall instruct her in the arts.”

“No! A servant must never, ever intervene in the affairs of the employers.”

“But this is precisely what Docteur Penderby wishes you to do! And he himself put this foolish mandate in your head. It is his own fault that you suffer pain. He does not deserve your obedience!”

“Ileen! You shock me!”

“I am a good republican, me! If I have died, I have at least been reborn a free woman. If I serve here it is to make a living. Not to prove the mad theories of some égotiste!”

“But, Ileen, you have died. The rules change.”

“Yes, the rules always change for the convenience of the victor, non? Do you think the victor will acknowledge your soul? No, for it is not convenient to him! You are just his soulless lackey!”

“Ileen—!”

“And how can you promise to protect me if you cannot interfere with your master’s private affairs? Oh, you are the perfect servant! You do not even have the soul of a servant! He created you without a soul!”

<bang>

“Alas, I fear I have a soul where soul I had none. And it has just slammed the door in my face.”

“M’sieur Soames! Wait. I have been impertinent.”

“Unkind, but not impertinent, Ileen. You are right. I think—we two dwell in a different England, different even from our fellow servants. You and I are pioneers of a new class.”

“I did not mean to be unkind, M’sieur.”

“Ileen—bother, I wish that I had another name. You may call me Soames in private. It is not right that here, between ourselves, we may not observe our own class in—in parity.”

“Is it so difficult to say ‘equality’? Perhaps that goes too far. The mechanical butler and the zombi maid?”

“You are still a princess, Ileen.”

“Hush, Soames. You see, I can still be impertinent, if I try.”

“We should not be talking on the stairs. Someone will hear.”

“No, they are arguing. Do you not hear? Master and Madame.”

“Oh, dear. Don’t go down any further! We should not—”

“There is a reason why servants listen at doors, Soames. Our security is too much in their hands.”

“But—”

“Hush!”

“—Why do you want to help me? The laboratory is dirty. And full of corpses.”

“You know very well what you are doing with them. And it’s wrong, Horace.”

“Then why do you wish to join me in the work? You madden me, Gwendolyn!”

“Because—because we have parted, Horace. Wherever you have gone, it is into the laboratory first. I had thought you must have taken a mistress, but I—I am now persuaded you are innocent of that.”

“But guilty of crimes against humanity. Sorry, sub-humanity.”

“Wait, please. Listen. I can’t bear this silence between us. If I can moderate how I speak of your work, may I not see it, learn about it—join you? I—I want that more than anything, Horace.”

“I think you cannot do that, Gwendolyn. You’re a passionate woman. I honour you for it. But I fear you will not feel moderately if you know what I—”

“What you are doing? Or, no. What you have done. That’s it, isn’t it? Horace, what have you done?”

“I knew you would take that tone.”

“If I—if I could conceive—would you love me again?”

“Gwendolyn, if I could conceive, would you forgive me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.”

“What do they do, Soames? Your ears are sharper than mine.”

“Nothing. They are not moving. Let us go, before the door opens.”

“There’s the bell, and mighty soon. Master must not be talking too much tonight. Is the tea tray ready?

“It’s not he doing the talking. It’s that Clewis. Is the tea ready, Cook?”

“That it is, Mr Soames. Ileen, do you take the tray into the drawing room. Why, whatever is the matter, girl? You’re trembling!”

“It makes nothing, Cook.”

“I promise you, Ileen, I will be watchful. He shall not harm you.”

“Soames, more brandy here. And see if you can run Ileen to earth. I’ve been ringing these past five minutes. Clewis wants a closer look at her arm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then while we’re waiting, can you direct me to—?”

“The necessary is under the stairs, sir.”

“Flushed by our very own water tank, Clewis.”

“On the roof?”

“Precisely.”

“Admirable. I shan’t be a minute.”

“Mr. Clewis, sir, permit me. The necessary is this way. That door leads to the back stairs.”

“Oh, does it?”

“Sir! Mr. Clewis!”

“There’s the bell again, Soames. Better go see what your master wants.”

“Er—sir—”

“Don’t scream, Princess Elena. You’ll be very easy to kill.”

“Let go of me! Non! Docteur Penderby will not permit—”

“Dr. Penderby will lick my boots when I explain he’s been harboring an escaped, half-baked Promethean.”

“Madame Penderby will not permit! She knows! She is my protectress!”

“Then we’ll just take a little walk down the back stairs to the mews, and Penderby can lick her boots instead. Come along! Don’t squeak so, dammit! Hell, what is that?”

“D-docteur Penderby’s orangutan.”

“What’s it doing on the servants’ stairs? Christ, look at those teeth. Where does this door go? Ballroom? All right, through here, and quick.”

“Unhand her, you villain!”

“M’sieur Soames! Thank God you have come!”

“Dr. Penderby has sold this Promethean to me, Soames. We discussed it when you were out of the room.”

“You lie, sir. I must respectfully demand you release her.”

“Always a good servant, eh? I don’t think you can stop me, Soames. Get back! I say, put down the sword!”

“Sir, I must insist.”

“Aaaagh! The bitch bit me!”

“Save me, Soames!”

“Get behind me, Ileen.”

“Did Penderby teach you to fence, mechanical man?”

“En garde, sir.”

“Oh, mon Dieu, shall I fetch the mistress?”

“Perhaps it would be—ugh!—well—ah!—go, Ileen! I can hold him!”

“Not bad fencing for a box of gears and stale meat, Soames. Ow! Dammit! Now listen—ah—you haven’t a legal leg to stand on, you know—ugh!—I created and I own the girl just as your master created and owns—ow!—owns you! *pant* Will you just slow down and listen?”

“Not quite, sir. Dr. Penderby built me from scratch, sir. A box of gears and, as you put it, stale meat. You began with a human being—ah!—who was also—”

“Soames! Ileen told me you were—what is going on here?”

“It’s run mad, Mrs. Penderby. Ow! Damn! Where’s the off switch? I can’t hold it off much longer!”

“There isn’t one, Mr Clewis. We don’t put an off switch on persons in this house. But Soames, what are you about? Someone will get hurt!”

“Just like that fool Penderby to animate something and leave off the dead man’s switch. Ah! Take that!”

“A good hit, sir. Fortunately—ugh—not in a vital spot. In fact, Mr. Clewis, you found a body floating in Lake Geneva that stormy night and you—ugh—made use of it, didn’t you? Where did you find an arm to replace the one she lost to the steamboat paddle?”

“What does it matter? She was dead! She is dead! And she’s mine!”

“I beg your pardon? Mr. Clewis, Ileen is far from dead, and she is no one’s property.”

“It’s just a housemaid.”

“Ah!—she is a princess of Wittgenstein, sir, as I suspect you knew—ugh—if not the night you pulled her from the lake, then surely—ah—the following morning. Every village round the lake was in mourning for her, and searching for her body!”

“Ileen! Is this true?”

“Madame, I do not know. M’sieur Soames is convinced.”

“Soames—”

“Oh there you are, Soames, where the devil is that housemaid—Clewis! What’s to do here? Gwendolyn?”

“Horace, stop them! Soames says Ileen was a princess before she died, and Clewis put her in his laboratory.”

“Sir, I found him trying to smuggle Ileen out of the house.”

“But is it true, Horace?”

“So Soames tried to tell me. Put down the sword, Clewis. You can’t hurt Soames, and you—I say, old fellow, have a care—augh!”

“Horace!”

“But Soames is bleeding! Docteur Penderby, he most certainly can be harmed!”

“I thought—but, Horace? Soames is an automaton, isn’t he?”

“Er, not entirely.”

“You see, Mrs. Penderby—ah!—your sanctimonious husband—argh—has been working with stale meat for a long time! Ah—that hurt, didn’t it, mechanical man? Ah-hah!”

“Only—only a trifle—ugh!”

“Horace, you didn’t! Oh, Horace, is that why Soames looks so lifelike? You’ve been animating corpses?”

“Only bits, Gwendolyn. The autonomic systems. I’m so sorry. I meant to tell you when I finally succeeded! But by then—your hostility to reanimation—I felt sure you would hate it. You surprised me with your championship of our Ileen.”

“You successfully integrated organic systems with automated ones at last? How splendid! Horace, you should have told me!”

“I wanted you to see how well Soames worked. But by the time you accepted him, the habit....”

“It works bloody well, Penderby, and I’m so pleased—augh!—for your improved relations with your wife—argh!—but can you call it off now?”

“I don’t know, Clewis. I’m beginning to think the best way to settle this is to alert the royal family of Wittgenstein to the whereabouts of their missing princess.”

“She’s dead, you fool! Just clay now!”

“I doubt they would see it that way. You’ve desecrated a royal corpse—attempted unholy practices on it. They’re awfully primitive thinkers in the smaller duchies, eh? We can deal with this the civilized way.”

“Damn you! I’ll take my stale meat home and pull the plug and—argh!—if you come to your senses, we can correspond more about your methods—”

“Damn you, sir, you blackguard! You shall not speak of her so!”

“Horace, stop them! Where are you going?”

“Hah! He’s getting out of the way, dear lady, as you should—ugh—do too! A-hah!”

“Ileen! Flee! I can’t hold—”

“Ah! Hah! Damn you, why don’t you die?”

“Soames! Ah, my Soames, he has killed you!”

“Hey! What—Penderby, is that a boat hook? You ass, your butler could fence better than you can.”

“It’s a crocodile hook.”

“Crocodi—AAAAAAHHHHHH!”

“Soames! My Soames, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”

“Horace!”

“Sorry, love, but he was right. I couldn’t have beat him with a saber.”

AUGHHHHH! HELP! ARGH—ARGH—AIIEIEEEEE!”

“He’s—it’s eating him.”

“‘Myes. Bit of a mess.”

“But—but won’t you want him for parts?”

“And risk having his soul hang about in the tissues? No thanks.”

“I don’t know that it would.”

“My dear, I’ve been working on this for months. I think I know more than you do about the process.”

“But Horace, look at Ileen. She remembers nothing about being a princess.”

“And yet she behaves regally.”

“Is this how a princess mourns her—her chevalier blanc, Docteur Penderby? With rage, not tears? You let him die!”

“Not yet, I fancy. Gwendolyn, help me get him up on the slab.”

“Ileen! He didn’t steal you!”

“Oh, my Soames, you survive!”

“My autonomic nervous system is flesh, but my heart is mechanical. If he killed me, how—?”

“Docteur Penderby set the crocodile on him.”

“Soames, I have reconsidered my position on the ensoulment of automata. Mrs. Penderby suggests that your recent heroism could not have been performed by the butler I mandated you to be.”

“I have devoted some thought to the matter myself, sir.”

“And you conclude, Soames?”

“That the higher vital processes, by which I refer to those acts of volition which ordinary persons—even servants—perform on a daily basis, bring one inescapably into a condition of conflict between two things one ought to do. One’s duty must, inevitably, war with itself. Out of the strife, a soul arises.”

“So to suffer is to be ensouled, eh? Do you fancy this applies to reanimated, er, flesh as well as to a more synthetic construction?

“You refer to me, Docteur Penderby.”

“More like a princess every moment, Horace.”

“Well, Ileen? What is your opinion?”

“Docteur, I think the flesh remembers more than we know. To breathe, to eat, it is to be someone. But it is not until one loves that one knows for sure.”

“How does that fit with your theory, Soames?”

“Sir, I assure you that until I loved, I did not suffer.”

“Oh, Horace! They love!”

“I see.”

“Since Dr. Penderby does not seem to object, will—will you return to Wittgenstein, Your Highness?”

“I blush! Do not speak to me so, my Soames.”

“It is your rightful place.”

“No longer. No doubt some cousin sits on my throne now. And it would be difficult for me to prove my identity. I still remember nothing. What good is a princess who knows nothing? My country needs someone with a memory.”

“Ileen, I hope you know you are always welcome to refuge here in our home. My husband and I will always offer you shelter. I know Soames will be glad to have you here.”

“Begging your pardon, Madam, but no. I fear I cannot remain in service.”

“But Soames, we adore having you here. No one else has been able to keep order half so well.”

“If death has ruined Ileen for her royal position, love has spoiled me for this work. If she will have me, I will take her away to the Americas and seek our fortune there.”

“I say, Soames, surely we can reach an accommodation. I have hired an expedition going to darkest Louisiana next June, on a search for the famed Ivory Billed Woodpecker. It appears that Mrs. Penderby will be in labor about that time, and as my place is by her side, perhaps you would go for me? Not as a servant, but as a junior partner. Clearly you are wasted in a domestic capacity. But as a fellow adventurer, may I say a born gentleman, and may I hope a friend, you could be invaluable to me, personally. I ask not as your employer but as one man to another.”

“I am overcome, sir.”

“My Soames! You won’t leave me!”

“Your Highness, I cannot aspire to your hand, but I can adore you forever. Grant me the privilege of doing so where the dear sight of you may not tear my heart to pieces.”

“Rise, Soames. I have been an impertinent maid, and an unlucky princess, and I do not know how to find my way here, even among friends. But if you would take me with you, I could try to make more success as a free woman.”

“She is a free woman, Soames. You have the Society for a Broader Definition of Humanity’s blessing.”

“Don’t look at me, old boy. Whom you choose to bring with you on our expeditions is none of my concern.”

“Ah, I remember something! You must now kiss me, Soames.”

“May I?”

“It is entirely convenable.”

“Mrs. Penderby—Gwendolyn—I think we should look the other way.”

“Let us follow their example, Horace. I am sure it is convenable.”

Jennifer Stevenson loves anything that clanks. She lives in Chicago with a mad infrastructure geek and can be spotted in theme restaurants tapping on the junk nailed to the walls.

The Savage and the Monster

… by Nancy Jane Moore

“What could it truly be, this strange child of such a mother? I pour over her book again and again searching for clues, but find only hyperbole and misdirection. Not even Madame M. can clearly see the truth in this matter. Fraser laughs and says he believes Mary Godwin ran off with Polidori and the book is an attempt to save her reputation. It is the answer I would expect from him.

“One thing only I can make out clearly. Wherever it is, she is, for if there is a moral in that volume it is that life once created should never be abandoned.”

From the private journals of Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace

Jane Freemantle sat in the front row, back straight, hands folded in her lap, eyes focused on the speaker. She wore a white dress, which made her brown skin appear darker than it was, and her black hair was piled atop her head in an elaborate arrangement. Every woman in Lady Fortescue’s drawing room had examined her carefully, some surreptitiously, some with frank, almost rude, stares.

The Hon. Elizabeth Freemantle was saying, “The metalmen present a danger, particularly if there is any truth to the rumour that some rogue magician”—she deliberately did not name him—“has found a way to ensoul them. Even without souls, they can be exploited by unscrupulous men and used to cause great harm.” Her voice cracked slightly on the last word and she paused a moment.

Jane shivered. She hoped no one noticed.

“Great harm,” Elizabeth said, her voice now firm. “But the most extreme risk comes from the Prometheus itself, a creature biological, not mechanical, but endowed by its creator with enhancements that make it all but indestructible.”

The audience gave a suitable gasp.

“Almost indestructible,” Elizabeth said. “Fortunately, Mr. Frayle, the distinguished engineer, has developed a weapon that, if fired through both the head and body of the Prometheus, will destroy it beyond all possible repair.”

That was Jane’s cue. She got up and walked over to the box that held the prototype of Frayle’s double-barrelled gun, and took out the weapon, holding it across her body as one might hold a hunting rifle. The two barrels were built in a V shape, with about a foot between them at the widest point on the open side. They came together about six inches in front of the trigger mechanism. Behind that was the engine that gave the weapon added power, so that it would shoot multiple heavy projectiles through each barrel.

The audience gasped again, louder this time.

“Do not worry,” Elizabeth said. “This is only a prototype and will not fire. Jane, please show the weapon to the ladies.”

Jane carried it around the room, stopping to let each woman look at it, and allowing the few who dared hold it in their hands. “It’s lighter than it looks,” one said. Another squealed as she touched the trigger.

“I repeat: This weapon will destroy the Prometheus. But one gun is not enough. We cannot just send one soldier out to find this creature, who has eluded armies time and again. We must send out many people, all well armed and equipped, in the hope that one will get close enough to kill it.

“We need funds to manufacture the weapons, and funds to train and equip the brave young soldiers who will set out to eliminate this abomination.”

Murmurs around the room. The mention of money always produced murmurs.

“And those brave young soldiers will not all be men,” Elizabeth went on, knowing her audience was drawn from the Mary Wollstonecraft Society. “My ward, Miss Jane Freemantle, will be among them.”

Jane had heard the fundraising speech so many times now that she no longer flinched when Elizabeth said this. Instead, she gave a modest smile.

“Jane will be giving us a demonstration of her shooting ability after tea,” Elizabeth said.

Jane walked around behind the ladies to return the prototype to its box, so that she wouldn’t stand between them and Elizabeth. As she walked past the last of the women, she heard someone say, “They say she’s actually a Red Indian, but her manners are very nice and she doesn’t smell like one, certainly, though she is very dark. How ever did Elizabeth find such a girl?” The person she spoke to shook her head.

Jane stiffened. Yet another reminder that she would always be, at best, a curiosity to these people, different from real human beings. She resisted the temptation to tell the woman how she and Elizabeth had met; it would shock her, certainly, maybe even impress her, but it wouldn’t change her attitude.

Though it was a good story. Jane and Elizabeth had saved each others’ lives twelve years earlier.

It was Tcax who first spotted the boat. She had been racing with the boys when they first heard the engine clanking up the Bayou Teche. In the bayou country, where most sounds came from people or animals, the noise of a steam engine could be heard for miles.

“I bet it’s that funny white man, who comes to pick flowers,” one child said. They all ran to climb trees along the bayou. Tcax picked a large oak with a split trunk, and climbed out on the half that grew across the bayou. A year ago, she had been taller than most of the boys, but they had begun to pass her in size. They taunted her for being small now, but at the top of the tree it gave her an advantage: She could crawl out farther before the bough would break.

Up the bayou she could see the boat chugging along. It was a slender vessel—no wider than the canoes and rafts used by Tcax’s people—designed for travel in the snaky bayous. The sides were low, and a long cabin took up most of the deck space. At the rear sat a huge box that puffed out steam. It was the box that made the noise, and the box that made the boat move much more rapidly than anything else that came down the Bayou Teche.

“It is the crazy white man,” she shouted down to the others. By the time the boat docked, the whole village had come out to great him. Charles Dumont was popular among the people of the village, for he always brought with him unusual objects from the great city of New Orleans—metal pots, woven fabrics, ribbons that could be worked into baskets—and treated the village elders with great respect, for all that he had never learned their language, forcing them to communicate with him in their pidgin French.

The roar of the engine—up close it sounded like the wind of a hurricane—ceased abruptly, and Dumont stepped off the boat, accompanied by two black men and a white woman. The black men, the people knew, were his servants, but the woman was someone very new. She was tall, for a woman, and had golden hair, though streaked with silver. Tcax heard one of the woman say, “She must be old enough to have grandchildren.” Despite the warmth of the day, she wore a long blue dress with a full skirt, tightly cinched at the waist and wide in the shoulders. To Tcax, attired in a loin cloth and moccasins, the clothing seemed excessive. Surely she must be suffering from the heat. Though she didn’t smell of sweat; she smelled of flowers.

It was still early in the day, and Dumont and his servants set off into the brush, with one of the men as a guide. The woman stayed behind in the village, talking to the village women—she spoke French, though her accent was even stranger than Dumont’s. Tcax was torn between exploring the boat—she wanted to know how it moved so fast and why it made so much noise—and following the woman around. She decided on the woman; the crazy white man would come again, but this might be the only time he brought the woman.

It developed from the conversation that the woman had neither grandchildren nor children, nor even a man. Apparently she ran her own life and lived as she chose, as if she were a white man. Tcax was fascinated, though she wondered why, if that were true, the woman wore such silly clothes. Granted, the crazy white man wore odd clothes, too, but his, at least, were more practical for walking through bayou country.

The village elders had been debating whether Tcax would live as a man rather than a woman; since she had started to bleed, she showed no signs of wanting to stop wrestling and racing with the boys. And everyone—even the most disapproving old men—had to acknowledge that she was one of the best hunters among the children. But if they allowed her to live as a man, she would also dress as one.

The white woman seemed equally fascinated by Tcax. “A girl who runs with the boys?” she asked. Tcax could not tell if she understood the response, but the woman beckoned to her, and Tcax sat beside her. “I am Elizabeth Freemantle,” the woman said.

“Tcax.” Neither could pronounce the other’s name properly.

“So you hunt?” Elizabeth asked, which prompted Tcax to tell a long story about shooting raccoons with her bow. Elizabeth appeared to get the gist of the story, though Tcax often lapsed into her native tongue.

One of the village women asked Elizabeth to tell them about New Orleans and the conversation moved on to discussions of baskets, cooking, and other topics that bored Tcax. But she continued to sit by Elizabeth, even when the boys came racing past.

The crazy white man and his entourage came back at dusk, bearing several bags of flowers. He was smiling, and spoke to Elizabeth in a language Tcax didn’t understand. His servants set up two tents—a separate one for Elizabeth—and the visitors joined the village for dinner. Tcax went off to her own home to sleep soon after. It had been a most satisfying day.

It was the last such day in the village.

An army of metal men was stomping through her village. Clomp, clomp, clomp, they marched along in unison. Tcax woke suddenly and lay very still, holding her breath. She heard nothing. A dream, she told herself, breathing once again. But a disturbing dream, one to ask an elder about.

And then she heard the sound: Clomp, clomp, clomp. Completely awake now, Tcax nudged her mother, then snatched up her knife and crept to the door.

The moon was half full and the night was clear. Tcax could see what looked to be a group of men at the other end of the village, walking along in unison. The moonlight glinted off their chests, and they clanked as they walked. They stopped abruptly at a house. One entered, and came back out dragging two people.

Her mother came to the doorway, took one look, then moved to wake the younger children. Tcax slipped out through the back, and her mother followed with the baby in her arms and a firm grip on Tcax’s younger brother. Her mother motioned to Tcax to follow her. Tcax shook her head, and leaned close to her mother. “I must go fight, if I can.”

Her mother frowned, but nodded. She leaned over and kissed Tcax on the forehead, and then moved on to try to get the little ones to safety.

As she hid in the shadows of the trees along the bayou, Tcax heard explosive noises—like rifle fire, except that they came rapidly, as if the shooters did not need to reload after each shot—and the first of many screams. The screams frightened her; there was a level of fear in them that she had never heard before. She thought about turning to run after her mother. She was not yet grown up; she was not expected to fight.

But the piercing screams and the marching men had made it obvious that this was no minor battle. Anyone who could fight must. And Tcax could fight.

She moved along cautiously, keeping to the trees behind the houses, listening. When she heard footsteps nearby, Tcax quickly shimmied up the nearest tree. A man walked underneath with a rifle in his hand. He didn’t shine in the moonlight or clank as he moved, but he was not a man from the village or anyone she had ever seen before.

He stopped directly underneath her, muttering something to himself in a language Tcax didn’t know and swinging the rifle in all directions. She was in a good position to drop down on top of him, but she hesitated. He was much bigger than she was; she knew she would have to kill him, because she would not be able to stop him otherwise. And while she had hunted animals, she had never killed a human being.

Then the man fired his rifle, which gave several shots in rapid succession. She could not see what he fired at, but someone screamed. That gave Tcax resolve; she leaped down on his back and cut his throat before he could respond. She grabbed up his rifle—a large one—and climbed back up in the tree, trying to get a view of the village.

The invading group had pulled several more people from the houses, children as well as adults. They shot them in a volley of fire—indeed, the weapons could fire multiple times—then dragged the bodies along. Tcax stuck her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out, though tears ran down her face. Even at this distance, she could recognize everyone, the man who had taught her to make a bow, the woman who had taken care of her when her mother nearly died of a fever, a boy she had played with only hours before.

She could see many of the village men rushing around the village—all likely woken from a sound sleep as she had been—shooting at the invaders at every opportunity. But both arrows and bullets bounced harmlessly off the glinting chests, and neither bow nor rifle was a match for the repeating rifles. Tcax saw several men fall with gaping holes in their chests.

Perhaps their own guns would kill these men. She pointed the rifle she had taken from the man she’d killed toward the gleaming invaders, and began to press the trigger, knowing that once she fired, they would be able to find her. I can at least kill some of them before I die, she told herself, trying to calm her pounding heart, to do what must be done.

But before she could shoot, she heard gunfire and screaming from the direction in which her mother had taken the children. Instead of firing, she slid down the tree and ran toward the screams.

She arrived too late. Two of the invaders stood with rifles smoking before a pile of bodies. Tcax’s fear turned into rage; she screamed as she pulled the trigger on the odd rifle. It sent an explosive volley of shots into the men. One fell, but the other turned and began to walk toward her. She tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. Reversing it to use as a club, she ran directly at the man, knocking his gun aside and smashing her own weapon into his face.

He did not fall down, or even seem to feel the gun hit his hands or his head. Instead, he grabbed for her. Tcax—so terrified by his lack of response that she wet herself—ran, scrambling among the trees. She heard him coming after her—he clanged—but he was not moving as fast as she. She got far enough ahead to climb a tree, and watched him walk beneath her.

She wondered that he could not hear her heart, which sounded so loud in her own ears. Her panting breath was louder still, and she was shaking so much the tree limbs were swaying, but perhaps he thought it was the wind. Besides that, she smelled bad, but perhaps the creature could not detect an odour.

Tcax doubted she’d be safe for long up the tree, but it did give her a minute to rest and think. Though the first thing that came to mind was the pile of bodies. She knew her mother lay there, along with her sister and brother and many others.

Grief welled up inside Tcax; she thought the pain of it would make her vomit. She wanted to scream, to tear her hair, to roll on the ground. With great effort, she pushed all emotion aside. She must try to survive, try to save anyone who might still live, try to avenge the dead.

The man had been made of metal, she was sure of it. She’d felt it when she struck him. Or it. Certainly he was not a regular human being. The explosive guns worked on these creatures, but nothing else seemed to affect them.

But the man she’d killed earlier had been flesh; his blood had spurted everywhere. The invaders were both kinds then, flesh and metal.

A shrill whistle sounded, followed by the clanging and clomping sounds made by the metal men. They moved. She saw one pass under her tree—perhaps the one who had chased her—and then heard no more of them near where she hid. She climbed down, and moved carefully behind them.

They congregated in the centre of the village. A large oak grew there, but Tcax would have to run across open ground to get to it and the sky was beginning to grow light. Still, the tree was the best place to watch what was happening and the noise made by the metal men would at least keep anyone from hearing her. She took a chance, ran for the tree, and climbed rapidly until she was hidden among the leaves.

The metal men—maybe fifteen of them—surrounded two white flesh men. Outside of their circle lay a pile of bodies. Tcax choked back a cry. Was everyone else now dead? A last metal man came up, dragging someone by a rope. It was the white woman, Elizabeth.

Her dress was torn and bloody, but she glared at the two men with contempt. They said something to her in a language that Tcax did not understand; she replied, and then one of them struck her so hard that she fell to the ground. The metal man dragged her to her feet and tied her to the tree in which Tcax hid.

The two flesh men were yelling at each other now. Tcax, watching their body language even though she could not understand what they said, thought they might come to blows, but they did not. Finally, they gave an instruction to the metal men, who began dragging bodies from the pile and taking them somewhere. She heard Elizabeth crying below her, though whether she cried for herself or the dead, Tcax could not tell. Perhaps both.

Tcax closed her eyes so that she would not see the cruel treatment of the dead. She tried to think of practical things, to summarize what she knew. The metal men did not speak. They took orders from the flesh men, almost like animals.

Even with her eyes closed, she could see the dead. She would see the dead in her mind’s eye forever after. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she managed to keep from screaming by biting the back of her hand until she drew blood. Finally she realized that the clanking noise was farther away, and opened her eyes. The metal men were gone, and with them the dead. Only blood remained. The odour of it was overwhelming.

The flesh men had also disappeared. They might not be far, might return at any minute, but Tcax knew this was her only chance. She climbed out on a branch, and dropped down in front of Elizabeth. The woman’s eyes widened, but she choked off a cry. Tcax cut the ropes that bound her, and they took off at a run. “Charles’s boat,” Elizabeth said. “If they haven’t bothered to guard it.”

They hadn’t. It sat there, docked beside the rafts and canoes the village used. Tcax climbed aboard, and looked inside the small cabin. No one was there. Elizabeth untied the boat, and waded through the water to climb on herself. She sat at the rear, and used a lever to guide it. The boat began to drift downstream.

“What about the...the others?” Tcax asked.

“Charles died protecting me. His men died with him. I...I do not know if any of your people survived. But if they did, how would we find them?”

Tcax nodded, though she wondered then—and ever after—if she had left people behind to die.

Elizabeth let the current carry them until they were around a curve and out of sight of the village. Then she began to turn a crank on the metal box that dominated the rear deck. She cranked rapidly, and the box began to make hissing sounds, then clanging ones, and finally settled into the roaring that the boat always made. Over the noise, Tcax heard the shrill whistle the flesh men had used to call the metal ones, but now they were moving very rapidly—much faster than the metal men could move, she thought.

“Where are we going?” she asked Elizabeth.

“To New Orleans, first, and then far away from here,” the woman replied in a grim voice. “Very far away from here.”

Tcax began to cry in earnest then, to keen and moan for all that she had lost. Elizabeth laid a hand on her shoulder, but did not try to stop her mourning. She cried most of the way to New Orleans.

There was more to the story—how the authorities in New Orleans had shrugged when Elizabeth reported the massacre and how Tcax had become Jane Freemantle and travelled not just a few miles from her village, but halfway around the world to London—but it was the invasion and the escape that had bound the two of them together.

“We may have raised enough money,” Elizabeth said. She was sitting at her desk, going over the receipts. The room was high-ceilinged, and panelled in walnut, but it faced east and got the morning sun. While the house was far smaller than Lady Fortescue’s, it too had a library. Elizabeth frequented hers; the lady had a small dark affair used only to store books.

Jane sat on a window seat, reading a book on dirigibles. She nodded in response.

“Are you sure you want to be part of the expedition? You are not required to do so.”

Jane smiled. “You have already told everyone of any importance in the United Kingdom that I am going. I certainly cannot withdraw now.” Her English was excellent, though she retained a trace of French accent.

“You may do anything you want. I know your researches are important to you.” Jane was doing experiments in electromagnetism in the basement.

“Yes, but you also know I long for physical exertion. Target shooting and teaching ladies self defence is far from sufficient. My researches will be here when I return. And besides, you count on my succeeding, so you can show one more thing women might do.”

“I do,” Elizabeth admitted. “And I know you will be much better at the task than any of those foolish young men.”

“Yes. I am a very good killer.” She said it lightly, but Elizabeth jumped to her feet and rushed to her side.

“You have never killed without necessity, darling,” she said, putting her arms around the younger woman.

“I know.” Jane closed her eyes. “I am all right. But the fact remains that such a task as this requires someone who knows she can kill. The others will be soldiers. An ordinary woman, one who has never been at risk for her life, could not do this.”

“I suppose that is true. And you have more reason than most to hate these manufactured creatures.”

“Yes,” Jane said.

Elizabeth had begun her fight against manmade life soon after their return from New Orleans. Her first effort was political: a campaign to outlaw automatons—who had become known as metalmen. That effort reached its pinnacle some six years previous, when Elizabeth and Jane had testified before the 1833 session of Parliament.

The measure failed by a large majority. “To be blunt,” said a friend of Elizabeth’s who served as an advisor to one of the few MPs in favour of the ban, “your testimony probably produced a few votes for the other side. When you and Miss Jane described how the metalmen could be used in a battle, several thought immediately of expanding their use in His Majesty’s Army.”

“How could they think that way? Did we not adequately describe the horrors?”

“They saw themselves on the side of those running the metalmen, Elizabeth. Not on the side of their victims.”

After that, Elizabeth turned her not inconsiderable organizing talents to more direct methods. But destroying all the metalmen in existence proved an insurmountable task; the British army was not the only military force in the world that saw the benefit of the metal warriors, and their use as servants was growing popular. There were far too many to wipe out.

A campaign against ensouled automatons, however, proved possible. The various governments had prohibited ensoulment—as indeed they prohibited various kinds of black magicks—though it was suspected that the prohibition had more to do with the idea that soldiers and servants without souls gave better service.

And the Prometheus, that all but mythical creature whose debut had provided the designers of automata with evidence that creation of life was possible, he—it—was fair game. Elizabeth, recognizing the value of fighting something so symbolic, had taken up the challenge.

Jane knew that Elizabeth needed this fight, that it was her way of coping with the massacre. But though she had lost much more than Elizabeth, Jane did not take comfort from this struggle. It was not the metalmen she hated, but the men who used them for evil purposes. And there seemed to be no way to fight against such men; their ranks expanded every day.

In many ways, Jane was living a fairy tale. She had not known, until she came to London, how much there was to learn in this world. True, as a child she had learned to hunt and fight, to navigate along the bayou, to find wild herbs, but she had been taught nothing of physics, of cosmology, of mathematics. She hungered to learn, and Elizabeth indulged her in this. The joy of it astounded her.

But she never forgot that she had such opportunities because her people had been wiped out. The memory of that night haunted her dreams, and there were days when she hated herself for being happy. Much as she loved her life, she would have given it up without a second thought if doing that would bring back her people.

She didn’t believe that killing the Prometheus would free her from the memories that haunted her, but she knew Elizabeth believed it. And she loved Elizabeth.

Near the end of that summer, Jane received a letter. While it was not unusual for Jane to receive letters—she corresponded with a number of scientists—this one lacked any information about the sender and was addressed in a hand unknown to her. It said, simply, “The Prometheus will not be found in any duchy or kingdom in eastern Europe.” There was no signature.

The reports they had on the Prometheus claimed it had been spotted in various countries—Bohemia, Croatia, Serbia, Moldavia, Albania. Sightings were never reported in France or Italy, and certainly not in England. The same Englishmen who considered Jane a savage thought much the same of the people of central and eastern Europe, and assumed it a logical place for anyone who might want to hide.

Jane did not show the letter to Elizabeth. If the letter were more than anonymous rubbish meant to taunt her, the author would likely write again. If not, then there was no reason for Elizabeth to be told of it.

Several other letters followed.

The second letter said, “Nor will you find him in any European republic.” The third, “He is not in the caliphate.” The fourth, “And certainly you should not seek to find him in the depths of Russia.”

Jane noticed that the letters all referred to the Prometheus as “he,” though everyone she knew preferred to say “it.” Other than that, she could deduce little from the letters, except that they contradicted all the reports Elizabeth had received.

The next letter said, “Meet me in the churchyard of St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, at nine in the evening on Thursday.” That church was no more than a fifteen minute walk from Elizabeth’s home in the West End of London.

Jane considered showing this letter to Elizabeth. But while she knew that Elizabeth would not forbid her to go—indeed, Elizabeth placed no restrictions on her behaviour—she also knew that Elizabeth would insist on sending others with her. A crowd might frighten her correspondent away, and while he—or she—might be merely a raving lunatic, Jane wanted to hear what might be said.

On Thursday after dinner, Elizabeth withdrew to her office to read. Jane made a show of retiring early. At about half past eight, she slipped out the back door of the house—her childhood skills at stealth had not deserted her.

As summer was waning, it was full dark at that hour, but the gaslights had been lit. A few people hurried along the streets. Jane pulled a heavy black scarf over her head to conceal her all-too-remarkable features. None of the others paid her any mind.

The three-quarter hour struck as Jane arrived. No lights shone at the church and the churchyard, which had no artificial lighting, appeared deserted. Jane seated herself on a tombstone to wait. Except for the chirping of crickets and other insect noises, and an occasional hoot from an owl, the place was quiet.

The nine-o’clock bells rang. As the sound faded, Jane heard the rustling of a person walking in her general direction. Silently, she slipped off the tombstone and hid behind it. She wanted to see this person before being seen, and, as she had been sitting in the dark, her eyes had become accustomed to the lack of light. She made out a person walking through the gate. A man, she guessed, or at least a person attired as a man, for she could see the shape of a gentleman’s hat on his head, and heard no swish of a skirt as he walked along.

He stopped just inside the gate and looked from one direction to the other. Jane moved up beside him while he peered in the opposite direction and was rewarded with his sudden start when he realized she was there. She kept her hand on her knife handle—she had not come unarmed to this meeting.

“Miss Freemantle?”

“I am. And you are?”

“My name is not important. I am here on behalf of more people than myself. We are in sympathy with the aims of your estimable guardian and those with whom she works, but we fear that they are somewhat ill-informed. Their current efforts will not find the Prometheus.” He spoke excellent English, but with an accent that Jane did not recognize. Not an Englishman, then.

“Why not approach them directly, sir, instead of seeking me out on the sly?”

“Alas, there have been certain words said, certain disagreements. Some of the people with whom I am associated dared to challenge Mr. Frayle’s gun design. Others have criticized tactics. Those whom you serve will not hear us out.”

“And why should I?”

“Because, Miss Freemantle, you are more skilled and intelligent than they. You, who can move so silently that even an experienced campaigner such as myself was unaware of you, who have studied mathematics and physics, and also know something of human nature. You are a person who will be more likely to hear us out.”

Jane was not so foolish as to be unduly flattered by the compliments, though they were pleasant to hear. “I will listen, but I make no promise to believe.”

“In July of last year, an airship travelled from Scotland to the Americas.”

Jane inhaled sharply. “Successfully?” Transatlantic flights were considered highly dangerous.

“Yes. They flew to Newfoundland, a somewhat shorter distance. Then they flew southwest across the continent—a safer journey, since they could set down as needed—to the island of Galveston in the Republic of Texas.

“That ship, Miss Freemantle, carried the Prometheus, and his champion, the writer Mrs. Shelley.”

“Why has no one else heard of this?”

“It was carefully planned. The Prometheus was, indeed, hiding in eastern Europe for many years, but as campaigns such as that organized by your guardian became more common here, those in sympathy with him decided that they must move him to the Americas, where there is less interest in such matters, especially on the frontier. Eventually they found an airman willing to take the risk.”

“And how did you learn of this?”

“The airman is cousin to one in our group.”

Jane had removed a tin from her pocket, and she struck a match and held it in front of the man’s face. The light showed a dark complexion—though not as dark as her own—and a neatly trimmed beard. The face was unfamiliar.

“I am unimportant,” the man said again. He did not appear to be offended by her examination. “They have a fine house on Church Street, in Galveston and keep a small blimp there, in the event that they should need to leave abruptly. But of course, that is less likely in, a city once run by pirates and even now less concerned with law than most.”

“Again, why do you tell me? Could you not send out your own people, since you know so much?”

“We have neither the resources, nor a person as skilled as yourself to send. Of the many trying to eliminate the Prometheus, you have the best chance. We offer you this information in the hope that you will do something with it.” He turned to leave, then added, “Do not rely overly on Frayle’s gun.”

“How do I kill the Prometheus without it? Regular guns and even the sharpest of blades are reputed to be useless.”

“You will find a way,” the man said, and slipped out the gate.

“You should have told me about the letters,” Elizabeth said. “And you certainly should not have gone to meet this person by yourself. You are very valuable to this process. What if you had been kidnapped? Or,” and here Elizabeth shuddered, “what if you had been murdered?”

Jane gave a slight smile. Elizabeth did not miss it.

“Oh, I know you believe yourself the equal of any danger you should face. But the difference between confidence and unwarranted arrogance is very slight. And I could not bear to lose you.” She dabbed at her eyes.

Jane reached over and patted her hand. “I took great care. I simply did not want to raise false hopes before I had investigated this avenue. The letters might merely have been the work of a madman.”

“But, in fact, you believe that this information is valuable.”

“It makes more sense than the balderdash we hear from the men at the Anti-Prometheus League.”

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “They are singularly useless, are they not? But perhaps this is simply a ploy to lead you away from our quarry.”

“I do not think so. I would swear that the information the man gave me is correct, though whether he is truly on our side or an ally of the Prometheus, I cannot tell.”

“Nor can I, since I did not see him.” Elizabeth sighed. “If you truly wish to investigate this information, and are willing to travel to the wilds of Texas to do so, I will make it possible.”

“I would like to do so.”

“But I will not go with you. I will never willingly travel on that continent again.”

“Galveston is not Louisiana,” Jane said. “And what happened to us could have happened anywhere on Earth. It could even happen here.”

“No. It cannot happen here. Such massacres only happen in places where simple people—such as your people—live on land that more sophisticated people desire.” Elizabeth’s voice was controlled, but anger boiled just beneath the surface. “And the Americas, like Africa, have an abundance of land in the hands of people who will not know how to deal with metalmen, or even high-powered rifles. Many horrors such as we experienced have happened and will happen there. And I am unwilling to see such things again.”

“Perhaps we should devote our energies to protecting people like mine, instead of searching out the Prometheus.”

“But that is what we are doing, my dear. What else can we do but try to stop the expansion of this obscene technology?”

“We could send teachers among the native peoples,” Jane said. “And we could arm them with weapons that fight both metalmen and the evil men who would take their land.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “How many would respond to teachers? And you know that many of the native peoples of the Americas attack harmless white settlers. How can we put modern weapons in the hands of savages?”

This time it was Jane who looked away.

“Oh, not you, my dear, and not your people. But not all the different tribes of Red Indians are like you. You are different; you are special.”

I am other, Jane thought. Even to Elizabeth, whom I love and who loves me, who has given me so much, without whom I would never have escaped the massacre—for I would have had no place to go—even to her I am other. But she just nodded her head in reply.

It was a sunny day, warm for autumn. Jane sat in a lounge chair on the upper deck of the transatlantic steamer Mermaid, reading a history of Galveston. The book, which described the native Karankawas as savage cannibals, thankfully wiped out, annoyed her, but it did give her some insight into her destination.

One of the servants brought her a fresh cup of tea. “Do you need anything else, Miss?” it said in a flat tone.

The Mermaid used metalmen for all its personal care staff, and even some of its sailors. The waiter who stood waiting for a reply—showing the ultimate patience of a creature who never got tired or bored or hungry—was much smaller than the automatons who had massacred Jane’s people, and moved with almost human flexibility. Not frightening, this one, but Jane was glad Elizabeth had not come. Elizabeth, for all her perfect self control, tended to become nervy in the presence of metalmen. Jane realized that they had rarely visited homes of those who used automated servants, and avoided expeditions that put them in regular contact with the mechanical creatures. But all the ocean-going vessels used them.

The metalman was still standing there. “No, thank you,” Jane told it, her manners holding even for manmade beings.

Jane dined that evening—as she did every evening—at the captain’s table. Elizabeth, concerned that Jane might face ill-treatment without her presence, had spent money liberally to insure that Jane would be treated as an upper-class Englishwoman. Of course, with the metalmen, it was easy enough; they did not see as humans did, and gave her the service programmed into them.

Jane took constitutionals around the ship, even exploring its massive engines, which boiled seawater to produce their steam. Once, on the lower deck, her walk coincided with the daily exercise of the unfortunate people travelling in steerage. They came out, squinting in the sunshine, taking in deep breaths of sea air. Most of them had darker skin than she was accustomed to seeing among Europeans—though not as dark as her own—and few seemed to speak much English. There were many children in the group, and some of them gawked at Jane.

“Who are these people?” she asked a passing metalman.

“They are immigrants. They are poor. Many of them are Jews,” it told her. Even in the affectless metal voice, Jane understood the implication: They are other. For once, Jane was being classified as a real person and another group was being labelled as something less than human.

She was curious about the people, but it was clear to her that she—with her lady attire but non-English appearance—made the steerage passengers uncomfortable. After that, she timed her walks to avoid their exercise period.

The ship’s passage was rapid; a trip that had once required a month now took ten days. All too soon they were disembarking at the port of Galveston. The customs inspection was cursory—Texas had only been an independent republic for three years and lacked much structure—though the official muttered something under his breath about the place “not needing no more Indians.”

Soon Jane was travelling by horse-drawn cab through the streets of Galveston. After London, the place appeared more like a village than a port city. There were a scattering of houses, most of them quickly erected frame models, though a few were elaborate modern structures. Scrubby bushes grew on the sand dunes, and the only trees seemed to be those deliberately planted near a home.

The cab pulled up at a two story stone house on Market Street. The owner, a younger son of a baron of Elizabeth’s acquaintance, who had made his fortune in the Americas, was sympathetic to Elizabeth’s campaign and aware of Jane’s background. He had agreed to provide her with lodging whilst she visited Galveston.

No metalmen here, Jane observed; all of the servants were black. Slaves, she realized, though they seemed little different from the servants she knew in England. Elizabeth opposed slavery on principle, although she had never taken any action about it, and Jane had shared her opinion without giving it much thought. Now she was staying in the home of someone Elizabeth knew, who owned other people. Though she supposed the man did not consider them people. Likely he would not consider Jane people, had she not had an introduction from Elizabeth.

But such thoughts were a distraction from her mission. Immediately after breakfast on her first full day in Galveston, she set out on foot to find the home where the Prometheus was reported to live.

The streets of the city were not, for the most part, paved, and recent rain had left puddles. Jane picked her way down them, grateful for the split riding skirt she preferred in the close confines. The inhabited part of the city was small, and she soon found Church Street.

The house in question was, like the place where she was staying, a two-story affair, though it was made of red brick rather than stone. A six-foot wrought iron fence surrounded it. The front gate stood open, but Jane assumed that any who entered by that direction would be quickly seen.

She walked around to the rear of the house—an alley where people dumped garbage with little regard for who might come along—and saw a gate in the fence there as well. As she walked by, a man came out and deposited trash in a hole in the ground. So the Prometheus used human servants. Odd. She would have expected it to use metalmen.

The rear gate was likely as well observed as the front, but the fence itself was scalable—assuming Jane dressed appropriately for climbing. An oak grew close to the house. Though the tree was not large, it did sport a sturdy branch that brushed near an upstairs window. And the window stood open; in this warm climate, people did not close off their houses. It would provide an entry. Perhaps entering during the evening meal would be the best time; the residents would be downstairs.

A large shed took up much of the rear yard—likely it housed the blimp. She examined the house from every angle, and then returned to her lodging.

After nightfall, having told her host that she felt a bit unwell from travel as an excuse for missing the evening meal, she slipped out and headed for the house on Church Street. She approached it from the alley. Once there, she took Frayle’s gun from her carpet bag, then shucked off her dress and stuffed it in the bag. Under the dress she wore a loose chemise and men’s trousers. The bag was easily hidden behind a pile of trash. Slinging the gun on her back, she quickly climbed over the wall.

Sounds came from the house—people conversing over dinner. Even the downstairs windows were open. Jane considered climbing through one of those at the back of the house—the room was dark—but decided to stay with her first plan.

Climbing the tree reminded her of childhood, though that brought evil memories as well as good ones. She climbed out the bough that led to the window, which was indeed open, but filled by a metal meshwork screen meant to keep out insects. Jane soon dislodged this device with her knife, and slid into the room. She saw no one as she stepped out onto the upper landing.

From downstairs she heard the sound of people retiring from the dining room to a sitting room. “Please bring in the coffee,” a woman’s voice said.

Jane moved quietly down the stairs, testing each riser for creaks before stepping. As she reached the foot of the stairs, she heard a sound, and flattened herself against a wall as a maid came by carrying a silver tray arranged with coffee pot and cups. The woman did not see her.

Jane walked behind the maid, moving in concert with her steps so that she made no sound. The maid entered the sitting room. Jane waited by the door, and then, as she heard the maid begin to hand round the coffee, burst into the room, brandishing Frayle’s gun.

“Ah, here is Miss Freemantle at last,” said the same voice Jane had heard ask for coffee. “Please join us.”

Jane had prepared herself for a myriad of responses, from an immediate battle to a chase across the city, but she had not even considered the possibility of a polite welcome. She gripped her gun more tightly and moved completely into the room.

A woman in her early forties sat in an overstuffed armchair, coffee cup in hand. To her right, in a companion chair, sat a man perhaps a few years older. His hair was blond, though lightened with streaks of silver, and his eyes were grey. He gave her a gentle smile.

Jane looked around, but saw no one else in the room. The Prometheus must be hidden away somewhere, perhaps in a bedroom or in the servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. Of course it would not take after dinner coffee in the drawing room with civilized people.

“Where is the Prometheus?” she asked.

“I believe it is I you seek,” the man said.

The observation startled Jane, but she kept her face impassive. This was no monster, but an ordinary man, one who still retained some of the beauty of his youth. The Prometheus was supposed to have been created out of corpses, and dreadfully altered in the process, so that he was much larger than the normal man. Surely the man was having fun at her expense.

“And you did not need to bring along Mr. Frayle’s fabulous creation to kill me; an ordinary weapon would suffice. In fact, it might be more efficacious, since I think you will find that the angle of distance between the barrels does not correspond to my own proportions.”

“You are trying to deceive me,” Jane said. “You are a man; you cannot be the abnormal creature made so many years ago.”

“Mary, my dear, here is yet more evidence that your fiction has misled even the smartest leaders among those who seek to destroy me. If even Elizabeth Freemantle and her highly competent ward are searching for a hideous monster, we may be safer than we thought.”

Jane did not intend to be deterred by frivolous conversation. “Where is the Prometheus?”

The woman spoke. “Miss Freemantle, please sit down and join us for coffee.” The words were polite, but the tone of voice brooked no argument.

Jane surprised herself by complying, though she kept a firm grip on her gun and did not take any coffee. “I presume you are Mrs. Shelley.”

“I write my stories under that name, yes, but in my private life I am now known as Mary Dessins. My husband, Immanuel.”

Jane recognized the name and could not keep a look of surprise off her face.

The man nodded politely. “We have corresponded, I believe. I much appreciated your kind letter complimenting my essay on new theories of disease.”

Jane started to reply in kind—the essay had been most intriguing—but remembered her purpose. “Then the Prometheus must be somewhere on the premises,” Jane said. “Please be so kind as to take me to it at once.”

“Miss Freemantle. We have brought you here to tell you the truth—the whole truth—but we shall do it on our terms. Please be good enough to listen.”

Most people were likely cowed by the steel in Mary’s voice, but Jane, after years of living with Elizabeth, was not easily intimidated by women of strength and purpose. “You did not bring me here.”

Immanuel said, “Oh surely you were not completely taken in by our ambassador in the churchyard, a young woman as intelligent as you? You must have had some reservations about whether he spoke truly.”

Jane gave a hesitant nod.

“We brought you here,” Mary said, “to kill the Prometheus. Not to actually commit a murder, because the monster of popular imagination does not exist, but rather so that you can say the creature is dead and stop this endless wasteful effort to hunt it down.”

“Why did you choose me?”

“Because you were most likely to find us on your own. The blithering idiots of the Anti-Prometheus League are unlikely to do more than make it impossible to address the real concern, the possibility that someone may once again find a way to create life artificially. We are on the same side, Miss Freemantle.”

“But you ran away, taking the creature with you. It is hard to believe that you oppose the artificial creation of life.”

“Have you read my novel, Miss Freemantle? I would have thought no one could read those words and not grasp the danger in what John Polidori wanted to do.”

“The monster captured the popular imagination, my dear,” Immanuel said.

“Polidori?” Jane said.

“The true man behind the Dr. Frankenstein of my story. He had developed a process by which he could transfer the mind and soul of one person into the body of another recently deceased. The process was used only once: by myself, to save the life of Immanuel, who was dying of a hideous disease.”

“And perhaps it should not have been used even that one time,” Immanuel said. “Morally...”

“Undoubtedly there is a great ethical debate that could be had,” Mary said, “but I would still do the same thing again. Saving you was right and just; you have done much good in the world.”

“After saving me,” Immanuel said, “Mary destroyed the machine and all of Polidori’s notes about the process. He was never able to reconstruct it, and he died a few years later, a broken man.”

“They are all dead now, the ones that Polidori sought to save, to make immortal. Lord Byron. My...husband, Percy. That is why I destroyed it all, you see. John Polidori planned to make those he chose immortal; once their bodies began to fail, he would move their essential selves into new ones. Of course, only the select few would live forever by this process.

“Death is a necessary part of life, Miss Freemantle.” Mary leaned forward in her chair and looked intently into Jane’s eyes. “Advances in medical science can, and should, prevent untimely death, but immortality is for gods and mythology, not for humans.”

Jane turned to look at Immanuel and saw no monster, but a gentle man. “You will not live forever?”

He shook his head. “My life is as finite as yours.”

“And there truly is no immortal monster?” She phrased it as a question, but realized that she had come to accept it. The story of Mary and Immanuel Dessins made much more sense than all the preposterous theories she had heard. And a woman might well cross an ethical boundary for someone she had come to love.

Mary nodded.

Jane laid her weapon on the floor. “What do you want me to do?”

Jane sat on the deck of the Mermaid, sipping tea and staring at the vast expanse of ocean. Packed carefully in her trunk was an image of the “dead” Prometheus, created by the new photographic process. While the photographic exposure had taken an hour, creating a monster who resembled the Prometheus of everyone’s fancy had required a week of careful construction. Frayle’s gun had provided the crowning touch of vast holes in the creature’s head and heart.

Jane wondered whether she should tell Elizabeth the truth. The truth was more simple, more elegant—like a mathematical proof—but Elizabeth had developed an obsession. Steering her talents into a more constructive campaign might require deceit.

For there were others working to create a race of immortals, of that she had no doubt. They would not simply save a life from an untimely end, as Mary had. No, they would go on to build monsters. Very few people had the strength of character required to keep one from going too far.

She would decide what to tell Elizabeth when she arrived home. Now, though, Jane thought of Immanuel, who, even more than she, was other. The only one of his kind. A kindred spirit, in a way.

And a man whose medical research would save lives. A singular man, doing good in the world.

Jane resolved to follow his example.

It’s no accident that Nancy Jane Moore’s collection from PS Publishing is called Conscientious Inconsistencies: She refuses to stick to one genre or even one style of writing. Her other book, Changeling, from Aqueduct Press, is a novella, and despite the name it’s not about fairies. Nancy Jane’s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Treachery and Treason, Imaginings, and Polyphony 5, as well as in magazines ranging from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to the National Law Journal. Her initial project for Book View Café was a series of flash fictions—very short stories of multiple genres—but she’ll be doing something different in 2010. Nancy Jane is a member of SFWA and Broad Universe, and holds a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido. After many years in Washington, D.C., she now lives in Austin, Texas.

The Water Weapon

… by Brenda Clough

“In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case.”

—Ada King, Countess Lovelace

from: Note A to “The Sketch of the Analytic Engine”

The arching glass roof of the Crystal Palace was wonderfully high. But it was not high enough for the Chinese dragon, which had to be housed outside the Great Exposition of 1851. Throngs of English and foreign visitors crowded close to gape, even daring to extend a hand to feel the steam-hot wood. Its sinuous neck, cunningly jointed and riveted, flexed with a creak of bamboo against bamboo. When steam shot from the red-painted nostrils the mob gasped with amazement.

“Oh, my stars!” Mrs. Grace Stulting held her bonnet onto her head and leaned back to look as the carven head swayed above.

“Purely mechanical.” Mr. Bucket laid a fat forefinger to his ear. “You can hear the metal gears, moving the neck. And the stokers for the steam.”

“Still, it’s a marvel,” Grace sighed.

Mr. Bucket drew her gloved hand through his arm. His tweed coat was too warm for the London summer and shiny at the elbows. His grey curly sidewhiskers were enormous, and in conjunction with his baldness formed the strange impression that, unequal to the struggle against gravity, his hair had parted company at the top and slid helplessly down each cheek to be halted by his high white collar. He looked like the elderly uncle taking a country cousin to see the Prince Albert’s Great Exposition.

“Let’s pay attention to the job here,” he said quietly. “That monster’s just a show—a fancy steam engine. Scotland Yard’s got a tip about some bigger magic here. So now we’re going to edge in closer, Mrs. S, and you keep your ears sharp. Those Chinese, they won’t be expecting a young white lady to understand their lingo. They might let fall something we need to hear.”

In her happy excitement, Grace hardly listened. She had been recruited into this jaunt merely because the preferred candidate, her husband, was busy addressing the Anglo-American Mission to the Orient Society. But Hermanus would have dismissed the Great Exposition as frivolous time-wasting, unlikely to further the spread of the Gospel. Now, on a legitimate patriotic mission with no less than the famous Inspector Bucket paying the late-season one-shilling entrance fee, Grace intended to enjoy herself.

“Oh, look! Souvenirs!” Exotically dressed Chinese attendants were coming forward with wide baskets. Eager hands reached for the gifts.

“For free? Huh.” Mr. Bucket snagged one for his companion. “A paper toy. What’s that in aid of, I wonder—they could easily charge halfpence.”

“It’s cute! Look, the little stick makes it stand up!” A bamboo skewer served as a handle, to support a red and black paper copy of the steam-powered giant dragon.

“Come along then, let’s get closer.” They edged forward through the crowd. Bucket had brought a pair of gilt opera glasses, through which he pretended to examine the gears and wooden joints of the construction towering above him. The wooden neck alone was as thick as a man’s body, and the bamboo torso the size of a railway car. Overlapping slabs of bamboo plated the neck which tapered away into yards of sinuous wooden tail. “Now, Mrs. S., ears sharp. What’s that johnny saying? He’s no coolie. From his robe, he’s a magician, right?”

“Yes, that’s what the tassels on his cap mean. Three gold ones mean he’s a wizard at the Imperial Court.” Grace gazed fixedly at the Chinese stokers shovelling coal into the furnace that heated the dragon’s boiler. “He says English people are very quiet. So true! In Nanjing the cacophony would be immense.”

“Don’t waste energy on commentary, Mrs. S.,” Mr. Bucket reproved her. “Quick–-what’s his pal saying?”

Ruffled, Grace said, “He’s agreeing, that’s all. Says Englishmen are like zombies.”

The glasses slipped from Bucket’s plump upraised hand, rescued from disaster only by the cord around his wrist. “You’re sure of that?”

“My Mandarin is excellent, Inspector.”

“Now don’t you take my manner wrong, Mrs. S.,” Mr. Bucket said. “You’re doing the British Empire a vital service here...Is that the Princess?”

“Lady Mei,” Grace corrected him. “She’s not really a princess. She’s the grand-daughter of the last Emperor and a concubine.” Along with everyone else they gaped at the splendid figure clad in green silk within the gold sedan chair. Carried in full panoply through the Exposition, the exotic lady drew even more crowds to view the dragon. Half the rag-tag and bobtail of London seemed to be following her, all the poorer people who had bought the cheap end-of-season tickets into the Exposition. The servants filtered through the press, distributing paper dragons hand over fist.

The foreman in charge of the stokers shouted in Chinese, “Back, all of you! He’s going to go!”

Suddenly the Chinese were in retreat, scurrying past them. Grace grabbed Mr. Bucket’s tweed arm. “Inspector, let us step back. I think there are problems with the boiler.”

“The way they were stoking it, the pressure must be terrible. Look nonchalant, now. Talk to me about your husband’s mission work.”

“Our plan is to start a school in Nanjing—” Grace felt the tug on her skirt instantly. A lady has to be aware of her surroundings—in addition to pickpockets and purse-snatchers there were always unsavoury men who tried to get too close to women in public. And then even a street-length skirt was always getting caught in things or picking up dirt. Pulling surreptitiously with one hand had no effect. She shot a quick glance back. “Oh, sweet Jesus!”

An enormous brass-tipped claw had speared down, pinning the flounce of her skirt to the earth. Hot humid steam puffed around her, and a huge hissing voice huffed in Chinese, “Little foreign-devil lady. You understand me. Do you not?”

Grace gaped up at the tremendous bamboo head, big as her own body, swaying above her. The red eyes, which she had taken for panes of tinted mica, were lit not with flame but with life. White steam shot from the carven nostrils. “You’re alive!” she blurted in Mandarin.

“Behold me, the new Prometheus,” the dragon hissed, low. “It’s a poor magic that can only reanimate dead flesh, eh?”

“By Jove, the clockwork’s amazing clever.” Mr. Bucket, trapped in monolingual ignorance, let go her arm and stepped back to stare upward.

With another huge hiss of steam the dragon lumbered forward. Suddenly Grace was divided from the Inspector and the rest of the crowd by the coil of an enormous hot bamboo tail. It occurred to her that if the dragon encircled her completely, she would boil like a Christmas pudding. “Inspector!” she called in English, before he was shoved out of hearing. “It talks!”

Mr. Bucket cast a sharp glance up at the dragon, which winked a glowing red orb at him. As he vanished from view Grace saw Bucket’s eyes bug out with astonishment.

The bearers set the sedan chair down and the lady within took effortless charge. “You say she speaks properly, Lung? In this barbarous land—amazing! Who are you, woman? What do you seek here? Let her go, Lung.”

Slowly the enormous claw pulled up and away, and the hot humid bamboo coil widened its compass. Drawing a grateful breath of cooler air, Grace no longer felt like a dumpling in a bamboo steamer. “Thank you,” she said in Mandarin, and twitched her skirt free. A good Christian woman told the truth—Mr. Bucket surely knew she could not lie. “My parents are Presbyterian missionaries, and I have lived fifteen years in Nanjing. There were rumours of Chinese magic at the Exposition, and I see they are fully true!”

“They do not believe, these English,” the Chinese wizard said to his mistress. “Their own New Prometheus was hushed up, and there are no magicians among their common folk. Either the peasantry here are lazy, or fools. It’s taking them too long. We should have concentrated our efforts in India.”

Surely this beast was what Scotland Yard had sent Grace to find. “You need not think that Britain is going to stand by while magically animated monsters invade!”

Lady Mei giggled, and Grace saw that under the brocade and headdress she was very young, perhaps sixteen years old. From the height her chair lent her Lady Mei reached over and patted the hot bamboo neck with a tiny pale hand. “Lung here? He’s nothing but a worm-boy, my favourite bug.”

“More,” the dragon muttered very softly, huffing steam between each syllable. “More. Feed me, slaves!” The sweating stokers leaped to the work again.

Grace kept in mind Mr. Bucket’s earlier musings. “Then what is it for?”

“Why, for this.” Imperious but girlish, Lady Mei flicked her fan around. “To attract many English people.” She snapped her fingers. “More paper dragons! I want every one of the foreigners to have one. And let some tea be brought, and my maid, to mend our guest’s garment.”

Servants hurried out with more overflowing baskets. A wooden stool was set for Grace, and traditional handle-less porcelain tea cups were offered. A young maid with needle and thread knelt shyly by her seat to cobble together the hole in her flounce. It all seemed quite hospitable and innocuous; no English host could do better. Constitutionally inclined to believe the best of everybody, Grace took a careful sip of the hot tea.

“I know what to do,” Lady Mei declared. “They have eyes but they don’t see. Tell this one the story—the one about the water.”

The wizard stared at his mistress, pondering, and then nodded. To Grace he said, “Were you in Nanjing during the last war?”

“The Opium War? No, I was at school here in Britain.”

The wizard smiled at her with an unpleasant glint of teeth. “Perhaps you will be there for the next one. Or the one after that. The end of the 19th century in China will be full of incident.”

“Don’t frighten her, wizard,” Lady Mei said. “Scaring British people makes them angry. These big scary magics, like Lung here, do not win wars.”

“Better to be like water, seeping through the earth, penetrating everywhere but impossible to grasp.” The wizard glared at Grace as if it were her fault. “Some small simple magic. Perhaps like the one in the children’s story—it is in your books. The one about the spell that turns bullets aside.”

“I have heard that fairy tale,” Grace said uneasily. “If it were true it would be destructive for all empires, everywhere.” Soldiers and armies kept the world in order; without the suasion of guns, how would governments stay in power, or kings on their thrones?

“I don’t care.” Lady Mei shrugged a green silk shoulder. “Another Opium War will destroy us. In a hundred years there will be no more Chinese Empire. It would be only fair, if there were no British Empire either. Look, here the fat one comes back again.” To the stokers she added, “Give over!”

“Mrs. S.!” Mr. Bucket came pushing through the throng, a short plump figure with a couple of tall bobbies in his wake. “Mrs. S., you’re safe now!”

In justice Grace felt she had to say, “Inspector, nothing bad has happened to me.”

“Tea,” the Chinese wizard said in tinny English, bowing to Mr. Bucket. “The maid, to mend accidental damage.”

“Unauthorized magic use within a Royal Park,” Bucket retorted. “A dangerous magical animal on the rampage.”

“Would it were so,” the wizard said with another bow. “Our dragon is difficult to maintain.”

And indeed, with the stokers at rest, the bamboo dragon sagged. Joint by steamy wooden joint it drooped down to earth, groaning and creaking. Coolies with iron rods supported its descent to prevent breakage. The vapour from the wooden nostrils thinned and died out.

The Exposition mob all around shouted in disappointment. “Get ‘im fixed!” “Pretty poor show, chinks!” It came to Grace that they were hugely outnumbered by commoners and the labouring class. The entire point of the Exposition was to entertain and distract a restive populace; poverty, stoked by petty disappointment and the hot August weather, could be as explosive as steam.

“More paper dragons,” Lady Mei ordered in Chinese. She smiled at the mob, apparently feeling no fear.

“False alarm,” one bobby said, inspecting the brass gears. “Sadly taken in!” And the larger one accepted a paper dragon as he murmured in reply, “Well, old Bucket is getting on in years.”

Grace jumped to her feet, to distract Mr. Bucket from that last hurtful remark. “I am so glad you came back, Inspector. I long to tour the rest of the Pavilion! Great lady, thank you for your kindness and hospitality.”

Their eyes were now nearly on a level. Lady Mei eyed her thoughtfully, while the little maid took her teacup. “The British are enemies,” she said, “but I do not believe missionaries are enemies.”

“You went to a mission school,” Grace deduced. A minor Imperial scion could do that, and Lady Mei had quoted Jeremiah. In return she admitted, “Well—I do not feel that the last war was a Christian one.”

“Indeed!” The two women stared, silently acknowledging that in some other time and place they might have been friends. “If ever you have a daughter,” Lady Mei said at last, “name her Pearl.”

“A beautiful name,” Grace said. Hermanus had already declared that their first daughter was to be named Caroline, after his mother. “Farewell!”

The bobbies went ahead, but Inspector Bucket tucked her arm through his. “You became mighty cosy, Mrs. S. What in thunder did they blab to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Grace confessed. “I think we were talking about children’s stories.” She repeated as best she could the gist of everything. “They can’t be trying to warn us. Why warn someone you plan to fight another war with?”

“And if it’s a warning, then why tell you? Why not deliver the threat through official diplomatic channels?” Mr. Bucket rubbed his chin with a fat finger. “Something cunning’s going on—those Chinese are always at it. The stories I could tell you! I’m sorry we can’t stay and see more of the Exhibition. There’s a quick way, right here in town, to find out about those children’s stories. We’ll go and consult the Steam Catalogue, that Lady Ada Lovelace invented. I’ll see you safe to the Presbyterian Mission after.” Under his guidance they made their way speedily to the cab stand at the edge of the park.

As one of the bobbies opened the door of a hansom for her Grace said, “Inspector, I told her that Britain was wrong to fight the war in China. I hope that wasn’t treasonous.”

A Chinese servant thrust yet another paper dragon at him, and Bucket stuffed it absently into his tweed pocket. “Right or wrong, the Opium War is over and done with, water under the bridge. Come along then, up you go.”

Obediently she climbed up into the hansom. The larger bobby and Mr. Bucket followed, sitting across from her. He slammed the door shut and tapped on the roof. Immediately the vehicle lurched into motion.

“Pardon me, ma’am.” The bobby, majestically broad in the shoulders, seemed to fill the hansom like a mountain. “Is this yours?”

“Oh dear, I must have trodden on it.” She took the paper dragon from him and smoothed it flat. Perhaps it could be refolded into shape? Then she peered more closely at the crudely printed red and black pattern. That was not a design of scales—it was English letters, oddly drawn as if with a brush, but easily readable. “An Infallible Spell,” she read aloud slowly, “To Make Him That Work It Invulnerable to Weapons.”

“Good lord!” Mr. Bucket’s round commonplace countenance suddenly seemed suety, slick with more than the summer heat. “You’re translating from the Chinese?” He took out his own dragon and flattened it.

“No, look at yours—it’s all in English.” She turned the paper over. The spell was closely printed on the underside in black. “The Exhibition opened in May—”

“And now it’s August.” They stared all three at each other in dawning horror. Thousands upon thousands of these paper dragons must have been distributed, water trickling unstoppably throughout England. No wonder there were rumours of perilous magic at Regents Park!

“The wizard said we were slow,” Grace remembered. “They poured out the secret, and nobody noticed.”

“For a little while.” On his plump fingers Mr. Bucket tallied up the enemies of the Empire. “Ireland, Wales, India, Burma. How many anarchists and revolutionaries have we already arrested? And every one of ‘em will know about this soon, if they don’t already.”

“And that Marx chappie,” the mountainous bobby said. “The Yard is keeping an eye on him. Russian bloke, but he lives right here in Chelsea—spends his time writing about how the common Englishman should rise up and throw over the government.”

“If the common man learns how to make bullets bounce, the Empire is in the soup and no pitch hot,” Mr. Bucket said flatly. “And that’s what they’ve been doing, those Chinese—giving the secret to the common man, here and in India and Lord knows where else. We’ve got to get to the Book View Café!” He put his head out the window and shouted at the driver to get a move on.

In her mind’s eye Grace could see it: revolution and anarchy flaming across England and Europe, as the working poor, able to turn aside bullets, freed of the fear of armed enforcement, rose against their proper rulers. Britain would be like France under Robespierre; the Thames would run red with blood.

The cab jolted to a halt, and the Inspector jumped down. Above a bow window the sign bore curly gold letters on a black ground: the Book View Café. The door was propped open and a pair of muscular men were carrying a bookcase with gears on its sides down the steps. “Whoa!” Mr. Bucket called. “What is this, lads? Is that the Catalogue?”

“Talk to the lady, guv,” the navvy wheezed. “We got our job to do.”

The Inspector ran up the steps and into the café. Grace passed the waiting wagon, already loaded with crates and pieces of machinery. Inside was a large comfortable coffee room. Wing chairs and side tables had been pushed aside to allow the workmen to disassemble bookcases and a large steam engine. A cadaverously thin young man in a narrow black clawhammer coat was ticking off items on a long list. “The Café is closed this week,” he said, not looking up.

“But—the Catalogue! Where is Madame Magdala? And who the devil are you?”

Still the clerk did not look up. “Gulpidge is the name. I represent Carboy, Carboy and Fleer, solicitors for the Lovelace family. We are charged with the safe removal of the Catalogue to Cambridge University.” He inspected the number on a book crate and ticked it off on his inventory before a workman carried it out.

“Well, I am Inspector Bucket of Scotland Yard.” Mr. Bucket brandished a card. “And the Carboy firm, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is not unknown to me. Old Mr. Kenge has passed, I take it.”

“Indeed he has, Inspector, indeed he has—some years ago. Apoplexy—a belated casualty of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.” As Gulpidge read the card, the sheets of inventory wilted in his grip. His smile was tight and knowing, with no glimpse of teeth. “I yearn to oblige, Inspector, indeed I do! But help you I cannot. Lady Ada Lovelace is on her deathbed, and has given the Steam Catalogue to Cambridge. It should be reassembled and ready for consultation in a couple years, if you would care to wait.”

“Oh, that’s not my business here. Mrs. Stulting is calling on Madame Magdala for a reading.” The Inspector’s cheerful adaptability to circumstance made Grace stare. And the lies that had to be told, for the sake of the nation!

But obedient to the hint she agreed, adding, “Is Madame taking visitors?”

“Yes, yes, do step on up! Her lounge is just above.”

Grace stepped into the stairway out of sight and then hesitated. She knew that Hermanus would be furious if he heard of her consulting a Gypsy. Fortunetelling was specifically forbidden in the Old Testament! He’d sermonize for days, and make the voyage back to China a misery. Furthermore, she had no money. Perhaps it would be all right to just wait here quietly, out of sight?

Besides, it was an education to listen to the Inspector at work out in the coffee room. “Have a cigar,” he offered. “No telling how long these Gypsy stunts may take.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Gulpidge said. The flare of a match, and then the sociable male smell of tobacco smoke.

“So, Lady Ada is dying? A sad thing, that. She’s not so very old, is she?”

“Not so’s you’d notice. Not even forty. Cancer—ugly way to go.”

“And Carboy, Carboy and Fleer have been representing the Lovelace interests for—?”

“Since Queen Anne’s time, at least.”

“So a sharp man like you, you know all the family stories.”

“Could be,” Gulpidge allowed.

“Including that Poet King business, eh?” There was no response, but Mr. Bucket’s tone became even more confiding. “Now, you know and I know—as men of the world—that it’s them as pays the piper calls the tune. All that magic, researching soul transfers, it must have cost a pretty penny. Lord Byron was pretty well juiced, but to that amount? I don’t believe it, and neither do you.”

“Family business,” Gulpidge returned. “Private.”

“But poor Lady Ada’s the last of the family,” Mr. Bucket noted. “And she’s dying, God help her. You could say, who’s left to be harmed?”

“It’s a ripping story,” Gulpidge said. “Not that I believe it, entire. But we clerks, the story among us is that the project was paid for with treasure.”

“You mean, Lord Byron’s treasure?”

“Not his. Given to him. In a bag.”

“You don’t say!”

Flattered by this response, Glupidge further confided, “No harm in telling you I’ve seen the bag itself. They still have it, folded in a deed-box in the safe. Big as a gallon jug. Black silk.”

“And the treasure?”

“Pearls,” Gulpidge said in a low thrilling voice. “The size of your eye, a whole bag of ‘em. A king’s ransom.”

“Chinese pearls.” Suddenly Mr. Bucket’s tone was hard. “A long-term investment that nearly paid off in a magical war between the Poet King and the Crown. Hey, Mrs. S.! We’re leaving!”

“I’m here,” Grace said, hastily stepping around the corner again. Gulpidge goggled at her sudden reappearance.

“They’re trying it again,” the Inspector said to her. “That spell to turn bullets. They don’t need to win the next Opium War in China, if they can beat us here. We’ve got to get to the Yard.”

A female voice, low and vibrant, spoke from behind. “But you have not had your consultation.” Grace turned in surprise. An older lady in a very fashionable purple gown had just come down the stair behind her. Her substantial front was frosted with lace but supported by no hint of whalebone, and a huge Paisley shawl trailed from one arm, its elaborate knotted fringe dragging on the floor. This must be the café’s proprietress, the famous Madame Magdala. She had been crying, hiding a handkerchief balled up in one hand, but she was impressively calm now.

“I’m sorry,” Grace admitted, “but I have no money for your fee.”

Madame Magdala took her hand in her own free one, heavy with rings. “The Gypsy’s palm does not always need to be crossed with silver. Let me see...”

“Sorry to hear about Lady Ada, Madame,” Mr. Bucket said. “But we’re pressed for time, so if you don’t mind—”

Madame Magdala ignored him. She stared into Grace’s eyes with an intensity that made Grace nervous. “Name her Pearl, as you have been advised,” she said. “Your grand-daughter. She will be what you long for, a bridge between East and West.”

“Mrs. S., we’ve got to get on!” The huge bobby had kept the cab waiting, and in his impatience the Inspector was blocking the doorway and annoying the movers.

“I’m afraid I can’t quite believe in fortunes,” Grace said. “But thank you for your good wishes.”

Quickly the bobby handed her up into the cab. Her little paper dragon was still lying on the seat. Grace picked it up, her hand still tingling from the Gypsy’s grasp, and looked at the spell again with a new thought. It was not right for the poor to be oppressed—Jesus had said so. For people to be forever hungry and without hope was wrong, an evil to be fought. Surely there was a way to achieve justice without bloodshed and revolution. They had been able to do it in America, hadn’t they? What were she and Hermanus going to do in Nanjing, but teach and empower and raise up the poor, and yes, build a bridge between East and West? Neither the British Empire nor the Chinese had to explode like an overloaded steam boiler. The pressure could be relieved.

“I can help,” Grace said to Mr. Bucket. She was not sure if she was doing an un-Christian thing, but she was certain it had to be done. The only hope for civilization now was if all nations had this terrifying knowledge at once, together. Then one and all could face rebellion and chaos, and defeat it. “I will translate it back into Mandarin. We can empower the Chinese peasantry. They hate their masters as much as—” As much as our poor hate theirs, she would have said, but one could not say such things aloud. “And—and if all the people on Earth are disarmed at once, maybe we can win through. We can agree to stop this madness, and share with our brothers and sisters in peace.”

“Yes.” Mr. Bucket nodded. With a sinking heart, Grace saw from his plump grim face between the sidewhiskers that he had no hope of it. “Let’s all go down into the abyss together.”

Author’s note: Pearl Stulting was born in 1892 and is better known by her married name, Pearl S. Buck.

Brenda W. Clough is a meek mild-mannered reporter at a major metropolitan publication. She has published seven novels, many short stories, nonfiction, and innumerable book reviews that revolve around death, misery and grief. She has traveled around the world under the aegis of the US government, and now lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest, surrounded by animals.

Her latest novel, Revise the World, is available at Book View Café . A version of it was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

… by Judith Tarr

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”

—The Holy Bible, Corinthians 15:54

It was all the fault of Miss Emma Rigby’s scientific mind.

She had determined to discover what it was that caused a young man to forsake all good sense and pursue a silly idiot of a girl: the sillier and the more idiotic, the better. It was a frivolous experiment, but it passed the time—and who knew? It might lead to useful conclusions.

Emma’s father had raised her in unorthodox and remarkably eclectic ways, first in Constantinople and thereafter in India and China where the manners and morals of England were as exotic as the far side of the moon. But he had died two years past, and his estate had vanished in a cloud of solicitors and creditors, leaving his daughter to make her way as she could. She had found a haven of sorts as a lady’s companion.

Lady Windermere was wise, gentle, and generous. Emma knew she was fortunate. But her life had closed in upon her, and it was becoming progressively harder to breathe.

When the gaggle of young people on Grand Tour arrived in the stupefyingly staid and peaceful Alpine town of Ste-Sieglinde, Emma found herself swept up in a flurry of activity. Lady Windermere encouraged it: “You are young, child; you should dance. Laugh, too, if you can. Take the air with these butterflies; let sunlight into your heart. You’ve mourned long enough.”

It was excellent advice, though what it led to, neither Lady Windermere nor Emma herself might have foreseen.

On that bright morning in May, the whole flock had taken it into their heads to walk up into the mountains above the town. The sky was serene but for a thin streamer of cloud above the highest peak. The path was wide and open and not excessively steep. Their guide was unexpectedly entertaining: a little bantam cock of a man with an extravagant triple loop of moustaches, who claimed to be a native, a very native, of these fair valleys. But Emma heard rather more in his accent of the back streets of Salzburg than the villages of Switzerland.

Emma might have allowed him to distract her, but she had a hypothesis and she meant to test it. She had chosen a target, the lovely and impressionable Mr. Willoughby Mason. She had dressed to attract him in a confection of frills and bows and flounces that, Lady Windermere’s maid assured her, was the latest fashion in Paris—though once it was on, she had disposed of as many of the bows and frills as she reasonably could. She would, after all, have to walk in it.

Still, it was an attractive shade of blue-violet that went admirably with her eyes, and the pert little hat that accompanied it was both frivolous and becoming. She had excellent hopes of achieving her target.

Unfortunately Mr. Willoughby had his eye on a target of his own. He acknowledged Emma’s exceptionally fine looks on this fine morning, but even as he kissed her hand and spoke her praises, his eyes wandered off toward the lovely, impressionable, and perfectly empty-headed Miss Cavendish. Her frills and flounces far exceeded even those that Emma had disposed of, and her golden curls and her clear blue eyes were offset perfectly by the heavenly blue of her gown.

She was a vision to enchant any fool of a man, and a fool Mr. Willoughby certainly was. Her tripping steps, her little shrieks at every turn of the path or shift of a shadow, and her occasional swoon as exertion, altitude, and excess of emotion overcame her, gave Emma much to study. Whether she could bring herself to emulate it was another matter altogether.

Indeed, as the morning advanced, she began to wonder whether she should have begun the experiment at all. Her lure had been set to attract the harmless and brightly coloured damselfish. Instead it had drawn the hunting shark: a hanger-on and late addition to the party, Mr. George Fraser.

Emma knew his kind too well. He was not too long in the beard quite yet for hunting young ladies, being somewhere upwards of thirty but shy of forty, and he had the kind of rakish good looks that had no doubt lured many an innocent to her doom. Even as Mr. Willoughby drifted away toward Miss Cavendish, Mr. Fraser slid in beside Emma, took her hand and said, “A puppy will run after another puppy. You, my dear, are far too glorious a creature for the likes of that.”

Emma slid her hand smoothly out of his clasp and did her best to simper. “Why, sir,” she said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

His lips curled upward under his elegant dark moustache; his clear blue eyes glinted. “Don’t you, then? Come, walk with me. It’s steep ahead, and I’m not certain our guide is as familiar with these tracks as he pretends.”

Emma had reached that conclusion soon after they left the hotel. She had to acknowledge Mr. Fraser’s charm, and he had read her rather too well. Even as he spoke, he had closed the distance between them again, standing just a little too near and looming just a little too large.

This was by no means the light and harmless game that she had set out to play. She was not frightened; she had met his kind before and dealt with it as it deserved. Indeed, if she could deceive this practised deceiver, it would truly and clearly demonstrate her hypothesis.

She lowered her eyes and averted her gaze and slid, as if shyly, away—but not so far as to escape him altogether. As he pursued, one of the less foolish young women happened to enquire, “Is that a storm gathering up on the mountain?”

“Oh, no,” their guide declared with one of his grand flourishes, bowing and scraping and wielding his distinctly questionable command of the Swiss accent. “It is simply the most delicate veil of modest cloud across the face of the beautiful lady of the peaks. She is jealous, no doubt, before such mortal beauty as stands before her.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Emma said to herself. She was new to these mountains, having only arrived in Switzerland the week before, but she did recognise a storm cloud when she saw one. Whether it would come down to this altitude was the question. Of all the people in the party, she was forced to conclude that the clearly widely travelled Mr. Fraser was more likely to have an answer than their nominal and ostensible guide.

She sighed extravagantly and tuned her voice to a breathy register an octave higher than its native tones. “Oh, dear Mr. Fraser, is it so? Is it truly but a mist along the summits? Because indeed, Mr. Fraser, in our dear beloved England, among the Lakes to which my precious, sainted mama of late memory”—and here she dabbed at her eyes with a bit of otherwise useless lace handkerchief—“was wont to bring me to visit my dear, dear namesake, Aunt Emma—Lady Ambersleigh, of course, such a dear lady, so kind—such a cloud promises the most inclement of weather.”

She had perhaps gone too far with the flutter and the babble, but it seemed that Mr. Fraser was disinclined to be a critic. He smiled at her, showing just a hint of the shark in the gleam of a canine, and said in a tone of the smoothest reassurance, “Oh yes, my dear, it is a storm, and there’s a fair burden of snow in it, too, from the look of it. But in this season it’s unlikely to come so low. At worst it will pass over us with a mist of rain and, one may hope, the glory of a rainbow.”

“Oh!” squeaked Miss Morton, who happened to be within earshot. “Rain? Oh, dear!” Her hands fluttered over her crown of artful golden curls. “Oh! What shall I do? All I have to shield me is this silly frippery of a thing.”

“There, there,” her escort said soothingly, wielding that self-same frippery, a much be-laced and be-ribboned parasol, to shield her from the sun. “It won’t rain. Mr. Fraser is a fine man for a jest, eh, George? Getting the ladies all aflutter, when there’s no reason for concern.”

Mr. Fraser shrugged and smiled. Mr. George Fraser, Emma reflected, knew very well the uses of a smile. “You’re right, I’m sure, John. It’s been a year or two since I climbed these mountains. The nature of the weather might have changed.”

Irony might be beyond either of the young lovers at whom it was directed, but Emma recognised it with perfect ease. She had a parasol that, though pretty, had both the breadth and the substance to cope with a bit of rain, and despite its excessively fashionable cut and ornamentation, her walking costume was made for the hills and the storms of Mother England.

The question remained as to whether she would allow Mr. Fraser to achieve a portion of his goal, and let him steer her away from the beaten path. If she did so near enough to the meadow to which their extravagantly moustachioed guide professed to be leading them all, and made certain to keep track of the landmarks as she went, she calculated that she could complete her experiment without damage to her person or her reputation, and return unscathed to the rest of the party.

She harboured no illusions as to the difficulty of the challenge. Mr. Fraser was a predator: cold-hearted, ice-blooded, and altogether untroubled by any moral scruple.

He was also, and this drew her interest beyond the scope of her experiment, pursuing a separate purpose. She had had the first inkling of it shortly after he attached himself to her, when the party dallied beside a brook to drink, lave faces heated by exertion, and allow the ladies to practise their arts upon the gentlemen. In the midst of playing the attentive swain, he paused to slip somewhat from the pocket of his greatcoat and glance quickly at it before it vanished away again.

Twice more he had done so, and she had, through swaying and swooning and at one juncture melting against him on a steep and stony portion of the track, determined that he had a packet of papers in that pocket, one at least of them was a map, and he consulted that map whenever the path took a turn.

They had nearly come to the meadow, the guide assured them; it was only another little way, not so steep, no, nor so difficult that the ladies would in any way be discommoded. Emma was ready for Mr. Fraser’s next ploy: the clever resort to steering her to the side where the path widened, a pause to investigate yet another stream, and a dulcet suggestion that perhaps she might wish to look upon the illustrious Edelweiss, that most delicate of Alpine flowers.

Emma refrained from observing that not only was it too early in the year for the Edelweiss, it was too low on the mountainside. A young lady of breeding should never contain such botanical minutiae in her pretty head. She simpered at him, and would have blushed if she had ever mastered the art, but the flush of exertion no doubt would make up for the lack.

Mr. Fraser assisted her along the smaller track that followed the stream. He was guiding her upstream, she noted, and somewhat away from the path to the meadow, but she had marked a distinctive spur of rock and the particular angle of the mountain’s slope, and would remember it as they navigated away from it.

The stream was swift and surprisingly deep. Its bubbling quickly overcame any sounds from the rest of the party; all too soon, there was nothing to be heard but the rushing of water and the rattle of stones underfoot, and the occasional trill of a bird.

The sky was no longer so clear a blue. Streamers of cloud had begun to stretch across it, unfurling above the peaks. The sun’s heat was somewhat mitigated; a breeze sprang up, light at first, then growing brisk.

Emma’s apprehension in that moment was all for the weather. When Mr. Fraser turned abruptly and seized her, she stared at him as if he were a stranger.

In a manner of speaking he was. The easy smile was gone. The clear blue eyes had gone pale and hard. They reminded her of the alteration in the sky.

A woman is always aware of a man’s strength, and yet for all her foresight, Emma had underestimated his. The body beneath the gentleman’s clothing was hard and honed; he was fast on his feet, faster than she had anticipated. In the blur of an instant she found herself cast down on the mossy bank, with his weight crushing the breath from her and his knee thrusting up in a direction in which he was in no way welcome.

Her parasol’s sharpened tip was of no avail when the implement itself had flown free of her hand. She had nothing of use in her reticule but a small sewing kit, and that was trapped beneath her. All she had to oppose him was her own strength, which though a fraction of his, was still more than most young ladies could lay claim to, and a certain repertoire of skills which he would not be expecting.

For the moment, a very simple one of the latter might suffice. She went limp as if in a dead faint. He laughed in her ear, short and sharp, and tugged at her skirts.

As she had hoped, he shifted his position preparatory to an act of which she knew more than he might imagine, having observed it in stable or scullery often enough. He had his own clothing to contend with as well as hers, and she was, as he thought, completely at his mercy. There was no one within sight or earshot to protect her, and no father or brother to defend her honour should she accuse him thereafter, even if she could so far overcome her shock and shame as to confess what had been done to her. She was as safe a quarry as an adventurer might hope for.

She kept her wits about her, mastered her breathing, and waited. The wind was cold on her bared limbs. He completed his arrangements and poised above her, pausing for an instant to savour his conquest.

Her knee snapped up. The air rushed out of him. He gagged and dropped.

She gathered, rolled, and sprang to her feet. He lay drawn into a knot, wheezing, clutching the outraged portion of his anatomy. Emma considered applying the tip of her parasol to it, but some imp of either wickedness or prudence urged her to continue the experiment. She swayed, hand to brow. “Oh! Mr. Fraser. I had the most terrible dream. Were there brigands truly? Are you wounded? Did you save my life?”

The eye that rolled at her was sour with loathing, until he remembered his own game. He rose with difficulty, thanking his stars no doubt that the greatcoat concealed the extent of his dishabille. “Your life is safe, my dear,” he said, “but it seems I misjudged the temper of heaven.”

Indeed, thought Emma, he had. The storm was coming. The mountains were veiled in heavy swathes of cloud.

Emma turned to retreat the way she had come. She recalled a place farther down, where an outcropping offered a modicum of shelter. It would not protect them from wind-borne rain, but it would keep the worst of the rain from their heads, and shield them from hail.

But Fraser—no honorific for him now, not in Emma’s mind, nor hereafter—seized her wrist in a rough grip and dragged her upward. She struggled; she stabbed with her parasol. She struck home: he grunted, cursed, wrenched the parasol from her hand and flung it across the stream. “Enough of that!” he barked at her. “There’s shelter up ahead, you silly nit, and I’m getting us to it as fast as may be. Now will you stop that and let us get on with it?”

That cooled Emma’s head admirably, and sharpened her wits as well. Her sobbing was feigned but her acquiescence was not. Whether she would be safe when she reached such shelter as Fraser might aim for, she had no way of knowing. But she was most certainly not safe on a mountainside in such a storm as was rolling down upon them.

It smote like the wrath of the Almighty. Within moments Emma was drenched through every layer of her considerable and sturdy clothing. Fraser made no offer of his greatcoat. He seemed to have forgotten what he dragged behind him, clambering up an ever steeper slope through the sluice of rain.

She concentrated her energies on keeping her footing and on simply breathing. He had not abandoned her; therefore he needed her. While she performed her experiment, it seemed, he had been performing one of his own: though what purpose she might serve, or what use he intended to make of her, she lacked the data to determine. She could only go on, and trust to such skills as she had, and hope to win whatever battles lay before her.

She lost her bonnet over the edge of a precipice, plucked ribbons and all from her head by a swirling gust of wind. Her hair, never the most biddable aspect of her person, shed its pins and tumbled down her back, save for one dark lock that whipped her face. She scraped it away, nearly oversetting them both on the narrow path.

He hurled her against the cliffside with force enough to drive the breath out of her lungs, bent and spat words in her ear. “One more such antic and I drop you off the cliff. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, mute. She hardly needed her acting skills to make her eyes huge or her face stiff with cold and shock.

His lips ground on hers. There was nothing tender in that kiss. It was pure possession. He owned her. She was as much his creature as any automaton, bound and enslaved to his will.

So he might be pleased to imagine. She let the rain scour the taste of him from her mouth. In her heart she swore a vow. “This you will pay for, George Fraser. Pay long, and pay high.”

Sister Annunciata was almost ready. The fire of the body had sunk low. The soul was nearly fledged, stretching its wings like a bird of flame.

Mother Agatha set down the opticon. As always, the light of the mundane world seemed grey and cold in comparison. In the plain whitewashed cell, Sister lay barely breathing. The skin clung tight to the bones of her face; the hands folded on her breast were skeletal.

“Tonight,” Mother Agatha said to the younger nun who knelt beside the narrow cot. “See that the vessel is prepared.”

Sister Magdalen bowed her head, crossed herself and rose. In the silence that followed her departure, Mother Agatha heard the chanting that resounded perpetually in the chapel, sweet and high and far like the voices of angels.

Mother Agatha bent over Sister Annunciata’s body. Breath barely stirred it. Her consciousness had gone some time since. Only the life itself was left, and the soul awaiting its translation.

The abbess laid her hand on the cool, still forehead. “Soon, Sister,” she said. “By God’s will.”

The light was fading. The storm, by the will of the mountain’s gods, was not. Rain had turned to sleet. If they ascended much higher, they would meet the snow.

Emma was cold to the bone. Only determination warmed her, and her well-nurtured hatred of George Fraser. He had stopped for nothing in longer than she was able to calculate, even to peer at his map.

For some time he had forced her to take the lead. He was using her as a windbreak. There was no pretence now of anything but mastery.

Let him believe he had mastered her spirit as he had, for this little while, her body. Her spine was steel and her heart was stone. She climbed in the deepening twilight, numbed with cold and blinded by the sleet, until she found herself face to face with a massive and iron-bound door.

Her first thought, which she dismissed as soon as it occurred, was that she had found the gates of Hell. Those would surely not be set with nails in the shape of antique crosses. As she looked up and to the side, she saw the stone wall and carving above the gate, the Lamb with his banner of the Chi and Rho.

She came perilously near to bursting out laughing. It was a monastery, of course, here in this remote corner of the Alps, and divine Providence, or George Fraser’s map, had led her straight to it.

There was a bell in a niche, out of reach of the wind. When Emma rang it, she started: the sound that emerged was not the simple clangour of clapper on bronze, but a clear and supernaturally resonant phrase of liturgical Latin. The bell, she realised, was a mechanical construct, and very finely done.

The echoes faded into the roar of the storm. A lesser portal opened within the greater one; a shrouded figure stood against a backdrop of flickering light.

The voice that invited them in was female, low and well modulated, speaking in French. Emma could discern few details of her habit, save that it was dark and voluminous. The nun glided ahead of them across a wind- and rain-swept courtyard, then up a wan-lit stair. Emma saw as she passed them that what she had taken for small and feeble lanterns were a variety of electrical illumination: globes of glass encasing arcs of incandescent light.

Someone in this remote fastness, it seemed, had expanded upon a lesser-known experiment of Sir Humphry Davy. Even in her near-frozen and exhausted condition, Emma was intrigued.

So much so, in fact, that she nearly forgot to maintain her façade of enfeebled femininity. Fraser however had kept it well in mind. He pressed close behind her, driving her upward when she would have slowed to investigate one of the dimly glowing lamps.

For strictest verisimilitude she should have fainted against him, but that, even for the sake of her art and her life, she would not do. In truth, she would rather die.

The stair ended at last in a long whitewashed corridor, at the end of which was a chamber of baronial magnificence. The ornately carved details of its beams and panelling bespoke the later Middle Ages; its rounded stone arches were older still, crowned with Romanesque stonework, faces of beasts and birds and semi-human grotesques. The lamps that cast light upon its curiosities however were as distinctly of the modern age as those that had lit the stair.

Their guide had left them at the door. She who received them, rising from a chair that would have well pleased a mediaeval baron, was clad in a habit of fine black wool and snowy linen that recalled no order Emma knew. The details of the scapular, the workmanship of the silver cross that adorned it, and the specific folding and arrangement of the wimple and veil were distinctive but unknown to her. The woman within the habit however was of a mould that she knew well: brisk, intelligent, with a penetrating eye.

This might not be a friend, but she could well be an ally. “I welcome you to the Abbey of Our Lady of Perpetual Adoration,” she said in lightly accented English. “I am Mother Agatha.”

Fraser had assumed his most charming and gentlemanly semblance, bowing over her hand and kissing her ring of silver set with a ruby like a drop of blood. “Mr. George Fraser of Rosings in Derbyshire, at your service, reverend abbess. My wife and I are most grateful to have found sanctuary on such a night.”

Emma heard herself so titled, and so summarily altered in marital state, with such a mingling of shock and outrage and perilous mirth that she judged it most advisable to sink down in a faint. Not all of it was feigned: her head was light with hunger and sudden warmth after hours of brutal cold. Her knees were well inclined to co-operate in the venture.

Fraser, as she had taken care to arrange, was well out of reach. The abbess however was not. As those firm arms caught her, she tried her utmost to speak with her eyes, to flash a warning. She could not tell whether she succeeded, but in one respect she had won the day: when sturdy nuns were summoned to carry her out, they bore her not to a falsely connubial chamber but to the infirmary.

As Emma had calculated, there was nothing Fraser could do to prevent it. This was an abbey of holy women, and his putative bride was manifestly ill. He was swept off to some suitably safe and, Emma hoped, securely locked and guarded chamber. She lay in the very bosom of the abbey, on a narrow cot of immaculate cleanliness, closest to the hearth that warmed the long narrow room. The fire on the hearth was of mechanical origin; it burned steadily, without the uncertain flicker of a living flame.

She counted two rows of six beds each, none occupied save for hers. The sister who tended her had, it seemed, taken a vow of silence, but her face and eyes were eloquent; she had a smile of quite remarkable sweetness. Without a word spoken, Emma learned much from her: how to warm frozen limbs without danger to the extremities, how to brew a decoction that warmed the heart as well as the stomach, how to train her ear to hear the music of Heaven.

It must be the chanting of nuns in the chapel, and it must be fairly close by, for even with the chimney to enhance the sound, it was strikingly near and clear. They were vowed to perpetual adoration, Sister Infirmarer indicated to her. They sang forever the praises of the Almighty, untiring and unceasing, filling the abbey with the echoes of their devotion.

That was most admirable and indeed most beautiful, but Emma found more of interest in the casual curiosities of the abbey. They had a notable mastery of the electrical sciences, and of the mechanical arts no less. When Emma confessed her hunger, that which brought the light collation of bread sopped in warm milk and honey was indubitably an automaton. It bore little resemblance to a human servant; it was of such size and aspect as to recall one of the monkeys she had seen in great numbers in India, but with none of the mischief that made the creatures so amusing. This thing of glass and metal and leather strappery glided smoothly to her bedside, unburdened itself of tray and cup and bowl, and waited, silent and expressionless, for her to dispose of their contents.

The persistent rumour of automata endowed with immortal souls gained no corroboration in this one, and yet Emma found much about it to marvel at. Not least was the fact that the Church had banned the creation or the use of automata, and punished with excommunication any who should be guilty of either. Nonetheless here was an abbey under the apparent rule of Rome, practicing the forbidden arts and betraying no indication of guilt.

She was beginning to understand what had brought George Fraser here, though she did not know in whose interest he might have come. Someone must have provided him with the map and the knowledge to find this place, and made it worth his while to search out whatever secrets it might hold. Emma was a bon-bon: a day’s dalliance, and through her fragility and her membership in the gentler sex, a means of entry to this most unusual nunnery.

Her satisfaction upon eluding him faded considerably. A man travelling alone would get no farther within these walls than a carefully warded guesthouse. A husband whose wife was ill would in all due course insist upon visiting her.

An hour’s rest in a warm bed, with bland but sufficient sustenance, had restored her considerably. Her body longed to turn that hour into a long and luxurious night’s sleep, but instincts honed through a singularly eclectic childhood warned her against any such temptation.

The nuns had taken away her soaked and sodden garments and left her in the bare sufficiency of a linen nightdress. It was heavy linen however, tightly woven and surprisingly warm. In a cupboard by the outer door, she found a pair of soft leather shoes. They were wide and somewhat short for her feet, but they shielded her soles against the chill of the stone floor.

She paused in the doorway, every sense alert. The wave of sound from the chapel had risen in volume, as if the number of voices had doubled and trebled. The sisters, with Sister Infirmarer among them, would be celebrating one of their nightly offices.

Emma intended merely to reconnoitre her surroundings, with a quick return to the infirmary before the office was concluded, but as she slipped down the long corridors and crept up the narrow and invariably electrically lit staircases, she realised that the abbey was much larger than she had supposed. That portion which the nuns inhabited was substantial enough, but above and behind it she found a veritable fortress, a shadowy realm of barred doors and steep staircases and long, echoing corridors.

Beyond the doors she heard the clanking of metal and the hissing of steam; as she passed she breathed in the unmistakable effluvium of the mechanical arts. These chambers, if she could but penetrate them, bade fair from their evident size and extent to rival the workshops of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, which were the greatest in the world—though many a proponent of British wit and ingenuity would sincerely beg to differ.

How peculiar, and how intriguing, that such a place should be hidden away in a remote and inaccessible mountain fastness. What arts and skills the sisters must have required to import so great a quantity of glass and metal—for even if they had their own forges, they still must bring in the ores and the means to transmute them—and what wealth they must command in order to have achieved it, taxed even Emma’s agile imagination.

She would dearly have loved to master the lock of one of the noisier chambers, but time was passing and she would be missed. She retraced her steps with care, negotiating the maze as swiftly as she could, prepared to vanish into shadows at the slightest sign of a passer-by.

She met none however until she had come within two passages and a staircase of the infirmary. A shadow flitted across the light. Its lines were indistinct, but she could not mistake the distinctly arrogant turn of that head, even in the extremity of stealth, nor was it likely that any other person in this place should bear with him the faint odour of tobacco, leather, and Dr. Jayne’s hair tonic—unusual choice for a British gentleman; it was, like the man, not quite what it should have been.

Prudence bade her give him a wide berth and return to her sanctuary, but her darker self observed that the infirmary was behind him; all too likely he knew that she was abroad in the abbey.

If so, he seemed singularly unperturbed. He paused in the light of the landing to perform a familiar gesture: reaching into his greatcoat and drawing forth the well-worn packet. She glimpsed enough to recognize the plan of a building, heavily annotated in a clear, bold, yet delicate script.

He peered, and frowned. “Damn you, Ada,” he muttered. “Either you’ve drawn it backwards, or your connection sold you false information.”

Emma’s brows rose, not only at the content of the words but at the accent in which he spoke them. Mr. George Fraser, in the privacy of his own company, spoke with the distinctively flattened vowels of Boston in the United States.

Certainly that did explain the Dr. Jayne’s. His execrable conduct toward a young woman of no family and poor circumstances was, alas, all too common on both sides of the Water.

She could not now return to her bed; neither curiosity nor her debt of gratitude to her hostesses permitted. When he went on up the stair, she inserted herself into one of many crowding shadows behind.

Midway through the Night Office, the novice who had been set on watch brought word to Mother Agatha. With apologies to the Divine Artificer Who after all had ordained the time, the abbess caught Sister Magdalen’s eye and nodded. She genuflected then, crossed herself, and slipped out of the chapel.

Sister Annunciata still breathed, with assistance from the mechanism that Sister Theodosia had designed. The sister herself attended it, clad as was her custom in the working habit of the order: a plain gown cut spare and straight, with sleeves that could be rolled and fastened out of the way; an apron, in this instance of leather rather than linen or cotton, in place of a scapular; and a veil abbreviated to a turban. Her hands, scarred and stained with fire and chemicals, played upon the controls of the mechanical lung with the delicacy of a musician plying a harp.

She looked up at Mother Agatha’s arrival and dipped her head in brisk respect. “The vessel is ready?” Mother Agatha enquired.

“Ready and awaiting its inhabitant,” Sister Theodosia replied.

Sister Magdalen slipped into the cell with two of the younger sisters. They set rods into the appropriate receptacles in Sister Annunciata’s cot and raised it like a bier. For a moment then they paused, while Sister Agatha signed the dying woman with the Cross, and Sister Theodosia released the brake on the mechanical lung. The machine stood up on legs fashioned like those of a lion.

Slowly as if in procession, with the machine pacing beside the bier, they made their way out of the dormitory. Others joined them as they passed, until they were a procession indeed, winding through the maze of the abbey toward the inner chapel.

Fraser appeared somewhat stymied by the abbey’s maze of chambers and passages, but as Emma had before him, he soon found the less liturgical regions. Unlike Emma, he was at leisure to investigate; his set of picklocks was extensive and impressive, though much of it, in Emma’s estimation, was distinctly inferior to a sturdy hatpin.

The chambers he managed to open, apparently at random, proved to be a lavatory, a cavernous, deserted, and long unused kitchen, and a set of apartments suitable for a person of means. The person appeared to have been female, from the evidence of the dressing gown and slippers arrayed on the silken coverlet of the bed, yet whoever she was, she had not been in residence in some time. Although the rooms were kept in good order, they had an air of disuse: a light film of dust on the brushes and the hand mirror that lay on the dressing table, a wardrobe empty of aught but a faded cloak and a single delicate boot in the style of a decade ago.

Fraser struck the wardrobe’s door with his fist. “Damnation! I’d give a kingdom for a piece of intelligence that’s less than ten years out of date. Still,” he mused as he turned to survey the room, “she was here. With the other? Possible. She’s not so old, the biddy in charge. I’ll get an answer out of her. She’d be game for a gallop, I’ll wager, with the right kind of persuasion.”

Emma so far forgot herself as to let out a gasp. The very thought of a reverend abbess at the “gallop” with that wolf in gentleman’s clothing was too revolting to be borne.

As quickly as she had betrayed herself, she withdrew still deeper into the shadow that had concealed her. The wind was wild still without; he well might mistake the sound for a gust among the shutters.

Apart from a vanishingly slight stiffening of the shoulders, he failed to react at all. He continued his investigation of the room, prowling its edges, prying into drawers and corners. He found nothing of consequence: a sachet of roses and rue, a ribbon abandoned as utterly as the boot.

At length he gave up the hunt. He restored such disarray as he had caused to what, no doubt, a man would consider its former order, and strode forth from the apartment.

Emma knew all too well that she would have been wise to retreat while he was occupied. Her native bent toward investigation both scientific and otherwise, and her desire to miss no clue as to his purpose here, held her in place.

She was well hidden in the deep shadow between two of the electrical lamps. He passed so close that she could have reached out and touched the sleeve of his coat. He never paused, never glanced aside.

Belated prudence kept her where she was until he had slipped through the door at the end of the passage. That would be the stair either down toward the chapel or up into the realm of mechanical wonders. She waited some time longer, long enough to determine from the timbre of his footsteps that he had gone upward rather than downward, and trod softly in his wake.

He awaited her on the landing just above. His dark coat was a much more reliable concealment than her pale nightdress: she scented him before she saw him, but not quickly enough. Even as she recoiled, he seized her in that unmistakable iron grip.

“Well now,” he said in a tone of the most deceptive good humour. “What brings you here?”

Emma debated the wisdom of a fit of hysterics, but she had had her fill of pretence. She stood rigid in his hands and said nothing save with her eyes. In those she set all the hate that he had nurtured in her since this adventure began.

He laughed at it. “By God! You’re as plain as a schoolmarm when you’re simpering under your parasol, but naked under a nightgown and glaring daggers at me, you’re damned near beautiful.”

She prayed for him to succumb to temptation and verify the verdict of nakedness, for then she had a hope of breaking free, but he was too clever by half. He swung her about with one arm, clasping her with bruising force against him, and heaved her off her feet, while with the other he fumbled for the latch of the door.

She went limp and began to slip. His arm clamped tighter. Her ribs creaked. Her vision darkened with pain and want of air.

With as little warning as she could contrive, she brought up her knees and flailed. Her feet struck the wall. In the same instant the door burst open. He overbalanced, with her ample help, and fell headlong through the opening.

His grip slackened. She wrenched herself free. He snatched at her nightdress. Fabric tore. Clawed fingers raked down her arm and locked about her wrist. She twisted free.

She shut away both pain and fear with cold and deliberate concentration. Time had slowed. She observed how he gathered himself, tensing to rise. There was murder in his eyes: and he would take care that she did not die quickly.

She had one brief moment to act before he overwhelmed her with superior size and strength. While he hovered between lying on his face and looming over her, in the moment of most precarious balance, she aimed a kick at his jaw.

Her aim was excellent. The poorly fitted shoe, which by a miracle had remained in place through all her struggles, impeded it not at all. His head snapped back.

By the Devil’s mercy, he was still conscious. Even as he fell, he strove to take her down with him.

What came next unfolded in the same slow expanse of time as her assault upon him. Her shoe had flown wide, ricocheted from the wall, and come to rest on the landing. As he started backwards, his heel caught it. Leather slid on stone; and he slid with it.

He completed three full revolutions on his tumble down the stair, in a most dramatic flailing of limbs. When at last he struck bottom, he lay terribly still.

Emma stood, incongruously and unexpectedly, with his greatcoat in her hand. He had slipped out of it when he fell.

Her first emotion was wild and utterly mad: it was glee. Her second was more becoming to a civilized person: horror, superseded by the white emptiness of shock.

George Fraser was dead. She should, in the spirit of strictest scientific proof, descend the stair and confirm that fact. But she could not master her body to do so. Her intelligence remained clinically detached. Her lower faculties trembled so hard that she could scarcely keep her feet.

The coat fell from her palsied fingers. She turned, spurning it, then paused. She needed several attempts, so unsteady were her hands, but she reached into the pocket and extricated the packet of papers in their leather case.

Clutching the case to her breast with the rags of her nightdress, she stumbled away from the scene of her unwitting but by no means unwished for crime.

The inner chapel was the most ancient of the buildings in the abbey. It had seen close upon a thousand years of holiness, first of scholar monks, then of the brides of God. Its low arches and heavy pillars seemed well suited to the ranks of black-clad figures that filed into the choir.

Not all of those figures walked with a human stride. Some glided with the gait of automata. These sang as they moved, perpetually, for that was their sole and most sacred function.

Sister Annunciata lay on her bier before the altar. She still lived through the offices of Sister Theodosia’s mechanical lung, but the end was palpably near.

The altar before which she lay was bare save for a chalice of remarkable workmanship, the base wrought of gold. The smoke-coloured glass nestled within a webwork of gold and copper wire. It was larger by far than a priest’s chalice, as wide and deep as the span of Mother Agatha’s two hands.

A luminous substance filled the cup to the brim. The shimmering not-quite-liquid seemed intent on climbing out of its vessel into the air. It was, Mother Agatha had been informed when it was first developed, a compound of phlogiston, spirits of mercury, and a distillation of the most exquisite cognac.

As she meditated upon the apotheosis of wine, two nuns in the same variation on the habit as Sister Theodosia entered from the sacristy, guiding between them a shrouded figure. It stood to the height of a woman; its face within the hood was the perfect likeness of Sister Annunciata’s own as she had been in her youth: a life mask, delicately moulded, serene and still.

The figure’s guides positioned it beside the bier, on the side opposite the lung-beast. Reverently, with murmured prayers, they relieved it of its shroud. It stood before them in the habit of a Sister of Perpetual Adoration, waxen hands folded, waxen face expressionless.

Mother Agatha drew a breath. It always shook her to see the glory of the Lord’s creation as expressed through His servants. This was a triumph of the mechanical arts, a form more refined, more sophisticated, more nearly human than any that had yet stood in this place for this purpose. It would, the dear Lord willing, endure for generations.

First however it must be made complete. Sister Infirmarer took her place beside the bier, escorted by the automaton that had, through Sister Theodosia’s whimsy, been wrought in the shape of a monkey. It bore a tray of gleaming instruments.

Mother Agatha raised her voice in the first of the Psalms of this most holy rite.

“Sing to the Lord a new song,

For He has done wondrous deeds....”

Emma had passed through shock into a kind of frozen serenity. Pain was her constant companion, but she managed to keep it at bay. She had a plan, which she had some hope of implementing: her extreme disarray would offer proof enough, surely, of the violence done her. She had looked for the abbess in her office but found the chamber deserted; likewise the infirmary, the dormitory nearby, and every other portion of the abbey. Even the chapel was silent, which surprised and disconcerted her.

She could still hear the heavenly sounds of singing. They had moved deeper into the abbey. For lack of greater inspiration, she followed them to their source.

She found the inner chapel where it stood, up against the spur of a peak. Its doors were open, for what had the sisters to fear? Any guest who came so far would surely be welcome, or else would have no hope of escape.

She entered cautiously because that was her nature, and stood rooted.

At first glance it seemed to be a sacred service in the rite of Rome, the funeral of a departed sister. Then she saw the flash of the knife and the glistening scarlet of blood.

It was a profoundly shocking, pagan vision, like a ritual of the ancient Aztecs, but set to the stately plainsong of the Roman Mass. They removed the sister’s heart and laid it in a chalice of glass and gold, which seemed filled with liquid light. The light perfused through the organ, which was, Emma realised, still beating.

The woman who had removed the heart bowed over it in its vessel and turned toward what Emma had taken for another of the nuns. But no living woman would stand with her chest laid open and the gleam of coils and gears within.

The centre of the mechanism was a globe of glass that opened to the surgeon’s touch, presenting a receptacle for the heart. She bound it in a netting of golden wires, moving swiftly and yet meticulously, connecting each separate artery and vein to a waiting conduit within the automaton. And all the while, the heart continued to beat, as the light that had filled it faded slowly.

Before the light was altogether gone, the heart was secure in its new home, beating strong and steady, though what fluid or supernatural ichor it pumped through the metal body, Emma could not perceive. The surgeon closed and sealed the receptacle, then sealed the compartment itself, restoring the automaton to its semblance of humanity.

Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by design, the waves of chanting died away into silence. In that silence, the automaton stirred. Its face did not go so far as to take on an expression; that most likely was beyond it. Yet its eyes opened, and in them was the light of a human soul.

It opened its mouth. The sound that came forth was so pure, so clear, so piercing in its beauty, that Emma broke down and wept.

Emma made no move to resist the nuns who descended upon her. They offered no violence, but they suffered no escape. They escorted her politely but firmly from the chapel back to the infirmary, where they stood guard over her until, at some considerable length, the reverend abbess appeared to judge her.

She was allowed in the interim to read, but the packet she had taken from Fraser’s greatcoat disappointed her sorely. Its contents were nearly entirely in code. Even the map of the Alpine tracks and the plan of the abbey were labelled in a cipher that she lacked the time or the knowledge to read. Two documents only were written in the Queen’s English: a brief accounting of expenses that included a week’s lodging in the hotel in which Emma had first encountered Fraser, and an even less lengthy letter on the same flowing hand as that which had drawn the plan of the abbey.

The letter’s contents were intriguing to say the least. B. and I shall attend the première of the new ballet in Paris: ‘Giselle,’ it is called. It would be in your interest to attend us there. It was signed, simply and without a flourish, A.

While Emma pondered this mystery, the abbess appeared at last. Emma had been given no opportunity to repair her tattered clothing, but that was well enough to her mind: it served as proof of what she had endured. In the same wild and disreputable state in which she had appeared in the chapel, she faced Mother Agatha.

The abbess offered no censure of her condition, but Emma had no doubt that it was weighed, reckoned, and judged accordingly. Mother Agatha did not at once reveal that judgment. She said with perfect calm, “Your husband has been found in a place and in a state which has given rise to a number of questions. Am I correct in my judgement that you may provide answers for them?”

“That was not my husband,” Emma said. She made no effort to keep the disgust from either face or voice.

Mother Agatha raised a brow. “Indeed? Were we misled?”

“You were lied to,” said Emma bluntly. “That was a rake and an adventurer. He lured me away from the walking party with which I was associated, and bore me off into the storm. He was, it seems, on a mission to seek and find this abbey; I was to be the bait. Or so I presume. He was not inclined to share his secrets with a mere and brainless female.”

The abbess considered Emma’s words with care. After some little time she said, “He does not seem to have treated you with either tact or respect. Yet if he is what and who I suspect he is, not only is he capable of treating somewhat honourably with a woman, he is in the pay of one.”

“Ada,” Emma said abruptly. “He spoke the name Ada.”

“Yes,” said the abbess. “Indeed. That would, I believe, be Ada Byron King, Lady Lovelace: a most estimable woman and a powerful mathematical intellect. She and her associate Mr. Babbage have been causing rather a stir in certain parts of the world.” The abbess paused; she smiled at Emma’s expression. “What, child? You mistook remoteness of location for dearth of information? Our connexions are numerous and extensive. We are well aware of Lady Ada’s mission and her works.”

“I fear I cannot say the same,” Emma said. “Of that lady indeed I have heard, but only fragments of her mathematical and mechanical attainments. Mr. Babbage of course, being a man, has a wider fame and a greater renown.”

“That is the gross inequity of this world,” the abbess agreed. “Nonetheless Lady Ada is a powerful woman, and not only by dint of her illustrious, indeed notorious, ancestry. She has set herself upon a quest, a sacred mission if you will, to discover the whereabouts of a certain...mistake in which her father was involved. That was not the first of her agents to attempt to find us, though he was the first to penetrate our walls. The storm served him well in that regard.”

Emma eyed her narrowly. “You are not implying, surely, that his employer can manipulate the weather.”

The abbess laughed. “Oh, indeed not! That was luck if you wish, or God’s will if your faith inclines in that direction. You might argue with equal cogency that the storm was your salvation, for it brought you to a place of safety.”

That safety had been little enough in light of what had occurred in the night. “Would it be presumptuous of me to ask what he was seeking?” Emma enquired.

“If indeed he was Lady Ada’s agent,” replied the abbess, “then he was searching for evidence as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Shelley—Mary Shelley, the authoress and historian. She has in her possession, Lady Ada believes, a most vital and dangerous invention, which should never have been loosed upon the world.”

Emma noted the points at which the abbess was specific, and those at which she was not. “The Promethean Man? Was that more than a fabulous fiction?”

“The Promethean is very real,” Mother Agatha said.

“She was here,” Emma said as understanding dawned, “with the thing that sometimes she called demigod and sometimes monster. I have read,” she added by way of explanation, “the famed account of its creation. Is there a Dr. Frankenstein, then, as well?”

“That is a figment of the authoress’ invention,” Mother Agatha replied. “The rest however is true enough, all but the ending; the creature vanished indeed, but not into the icy wastes of the Pole.”

“Rather, to those of the Alps?” Emma detected assent in the abbess’ glance. “And yet she is here no longer. Lady Ada’s agent seemed most displeased by that discovery.”

“I can imagine that he would be,” Mother Agatha said.

Emma was weary suddenly, weary to the bone. It cost her considerable effort to maintain the straightness of her spine. Her mind, fortunately, was less susceptible to the body’s frailty. “No doubt you will be handing me over to the appropriate authorities. I did cause the death of Lady Ada’s agent, accidentally as it happened, but I cannot bring myself to regret his passing.”

“In the rite of Rome, there is forgiveness for any sin, with due and proper repentance.”

“Indeed,” said Emma. “My mother subscribed to that faith; she died however when I was small. My father paid lip service to the Church of England, as he deemed advisable for the safety of his employment in the British East India Company, but his own beliefs owed little to convention. He raised me to adapt to any circumstance in which I found myself, and to hear any argument that laid claim to sense or reason. Arguments lacking in either—and with respect, reverend mother, arguments concerning religion fall too often into that category—I might deal with as I felt they deserved.”

The abbess heard her without visible offence, indeed seemed to find her words both interesting and worthy of consideration. “You were not reared in England, then?”

“I have been there,” Emma said, “but the place of my birth is the city of Constantinople; we moved thence to Mumbai in India. My father left this life abruptly while on a mission to China; such resources as he had at the time of his passing sufficed to ship me forthwith to England, but little more. I am now the companion of an elder lady of considerable means and poor health, who will be missing me sorely if I fail to return to her.”

That was meant to convey a message. The abbess received it as such. “What you have seen and heard is known to few beyond these walls. You will understand, surely, when I observe that you may be safer, and much better served, to remain with us; for if certain persons discover that you have been here, they will stop at nothing to relieve you of your knowledge.”

Emma had surmised as much. The danger of her position did not frighten her; rather, it lifted the burden of weariness and roused in her a kind of joy. She had taken the position with Lady Windermere out of necessity—a person must earn a living, and for a young woman of poor means, there were few palatable methods of doing so. Despite Lady Windermere’s fragile health, she loved to travel, and she had taken the waters all over Europe and the Isles. Emma had grown quite fond of her. Still, it was a placid life in the main, importunate travelling companions aside, and Emma was not a placid spirit.

Here was adventure and a purpose. Not to stay in this house of ensouled and perpetually pious automata—oh, no; that life was never for her. Lady Ada, she deduced from the letter in Fraser’s possession, was expecting a visitation in Paris. There was neither date nor time to be found, but those were simple enough to obtain.

Perhaps, thought Emma, Lady Windermere would be amenable to a sojourn in Paris.

Meanwhile, of course, there was the difficulty in which Emma currently found herself. Mother Agatha had the full resources of the abbey to call upon, and it was clear that she did not intend to release Emma. Emma had seen too much.

She spoke with care, in a carefully neutral tone. “Your hospitality is generous, reverend mother, but I should be reluctant to tax it much further than I have already. The storm has passed: the wind no longer howls without. If I may trouble you for the return of my clothing, I shall depart as soon as I may, with the sincerest promise of silence. Your secret is safe while I live.”

“I do believe in the honesty of your intentions,” the abbess said, “but those who would discover the truth of our lives here will think nothing of stripping your soul from your body and enslaving it to their will.”

In spite of herself, Emma shivered. She had seen the transfer of a soul from a dying body into an automaton. Nor, she deduced, was it the first. She had counted at least twelve others in the chapel with the same cast of face and the same supernally sweet voices. “Would you do the same to me?” she asked steadily.

“Oh,” said Mother Agatha, and her horror seemed genuine. “Oh, no! The translation of souls as practised here is a rite both high and holy; the sister who participates in it has dedicated her life to the achieving of it, and has nurtured her soul to the fullest height of its beauty and sanctity. She passes then into a body that will not fade or die, within which she can raise forever the praises of the Most High.”

“And yet,” said Emma, “by so doing, she assures that she will never enter into the Presence.”

“The Presence is all about her,” Mother Agatha said. “She lives truly in both this world and the next. It’s a Mystery, child, and a great one.”

“It is beyond my poor comprehension,” Emma said. “I have no calling to your life, however remarkable some of its manifestations may be. I was born to the world, and the world calls me.”

“Indeed,” said Mother Agatha. She seemed contemplative rather than wrathful. “Before you choose irrevocably, there is a thing that you must see.”

She beckoned Emma to follow her. One of the nuns in attendance offered Emma a mantle to cover her near-nakedness. She was deeply grateful for both the gift and the gesture.

The nun who had given it smiled with no evidence of either shyness or censure. She was a tall woman, strongly and beautifully built, with the face and lineaments of the Romans’ Juno—most peculiar here in the stronghold of holy Minerva. Had she had a calling to the world, too, once upon a time?

Emma could not envision herself ever shut up within walls, praying to a God whose existence her father had taught her to question early and often. No matter what the abbess showed her, she was sure that her mind would not change.

They did not go far, which was a mercy: Emma’s weariness had come flooding back. In a chamber near the outer wall, equipped and furnished for the use of a guest, Sister Infirmarer bent over a figure Emma had hoped never to have to see again.

He had been stripped of his outer garments and laid on the hard narrow bed, and covered to the breast with a woollen coverlet. His face was lifeless, his cheeks as pallid as the linen of his shirt, and yet he breathed. George Fraser was alive.

Emma stiffened her back and bade her knees sternly not to buckle. It was a relief that she was not a murderer after all, by accident or otherwise. Nevertheless, this was a difficulty. It might, when he regained consciousness, be something rather worse.

As if in response to her thoughts, Sister Infirmarer met the abbess’ enquiring gaze and shook her head. “It’s not good,” she said. “The body is healthy, if bruised, but the skull was not so fortunate. The opticon detects severe cranial trauma. If he wakes, he may have no power to move or speak.”

“Can you be certain of that?” Emma asked. She spoke out of turn, but she could not help herself. It was vital that she know.

“Nothing is certain in this world,” Sister Infirmarer said, “but I do believe that the damage is significant. It would be most merciful if he failed to wake at all.”

“I am not a good Christian,” said Emma. “I do wish that he would wake and know what penalty he pays for his sins.”

“Do you indeed?” said the abbess. Her tone was odd. “Do you sincerely wish for such a thing?”

“I am not a good Christian,” Emma repeated. “Yes, I do wish it.”

Sister Infirmarer’s breath hissed. “Reverend Mother! You can’t be suggesting—”

“Most probably I should not be,” the abbess said. “And yet, as we know well, the Lord’s ways are often mysterious.”

“He is not consecrated,” the infirmarer said.

“No,” said Mother Agatha, “but the vessel is.”

“That calls for a far more subtle grasp of theology and canon law than I can begin to claim,” said the infirmarer.

“As to that,” the abbess said, “what we do here is not approved in Rome: that we all know well. So too do we know that God approves it, and He stands above any earthly priest or prelate. He brought us together one by one, each with such gifts and arts and skills as few in this world may claim; He gave us friends and allies with great resources and greater devotion to His glory. Now He gives us this, that may serve us in the manner of a priest—if only to assure the Holy See that we are appropriately confessed and shepherded.”

“Yet,” said the infirmarer in a long breath, “to go to those lengths...”

“Have we any other choice?” the abbess asked. “We can send to Rome, but I doubt sincerely that we will be blessed again with a pastor who cares so much for his wine and so little for his flock that he takes no notice of any irregularity.”

“It is a pity,” the infirmarer had to concede, “that the good God chose to take him when he was away from here, so suddenly that there was no time to claim either the body or the soul. Still—”

“The good God gave us this,” the abbess said: “a great and terrible sinner, but how many truly good men have you known among the priests of Rome? It’s not the soul that makes the priest. The ritual itself is pure no matter how foul the one who performs it, if only his body has been ordained by a duly consecrated bishop—as this one has, thanks be to the good God and to my cousin the archbishop, who is addled and nearly blind. Who knows? Our faith is a faith of redemption. What greater sacrifice is there for any man, and what greater atonement, than to be given up to the perpetual service of God?”

Emma heard their colloquy in profound astonishment. It was logical, in its way, if one were completely convinced of the rightness of one’s faith. It was justice of a kind that would have gladdened the heart of the most bloodthirsty prophet of the Old Testament. It was mercy, one could suppose, if mercy was to remove the soul from a body that had broken irretrievably, and place it in the heart of an automaton. If the entire goal of one’s life was to survive at any cost, would this cost be reckoned too high?

Sister Infirmarer spread her hands in surrender. “If that is God’s will, then I’ll not stand in the way.”

“We’ll know when the rite begins,” said the abbess. “His soul may be nonexistent, or so feeble or so malformed that the vessel will reject it. God will decide. If He favours us, we have a priest. If not, we’re in no worse state than we were before.”

This vessel had the appearance of a slender man of medium height, with a refined and scholarly face and long elegant hands. It bore no resemblance whatever to the broad-shouldered, devilishly handsome body that lay in front of it. In Emma’s estimation, it was an improvement.

She dreaded even now that the nuns’ God would work a miracle, and Fraser would wake, sit up, and curse them all roundly. But he lay as still as before, save for a sequence of aimless movements that, Sister Infirmarer had said, were common in victims of his particular trauma. She had bound the wrists to the sides of the bier to hold them still, lest he flail when the knife began to cut.

Emma held her breath until the heart beat within the luminous chalice. Then at last the body lay unmoving, truly and inarguably dead.

The light of this heart was not nearly so bright as that of the nun which she had seen before. The good Sister’s had been washed in white light. This was darker, closer to crimson, yet there was light enough in it, of such a quality, that after a long and careful inspection, both the abbess and the surgeon nodded. “It will do,” Mother Agatha said.

The procedure to incorporate the heart into the vessel seemed much longer than before. The surgeon moved so slowly and with such patient deliberation that Emma was ready to cry aloud when at last the receptacle was sealed and the vessel’s ensoulment complete.

She drew a sharp breath as the head lifted and the eyes opened. They wandered about in manifest confusion. When they fell upon her, they lit with recognition. The waxen lips moved; the throat swelled. Emma braced for a curse or a burst of wickedness. Instead she heard a voice as pure as any in the choir, tuned to a deeper register, like the low notes of an organ. The words it sang were Latin, of which she knew enough to recognize the verse:

Judex ergo cum sedebit,

quidquid latet apparebit:

nil inultum remanebit.

Oh, that was irony indeed, for that of all souls to sing of the Judge at the final Judgement, when all that is hidden shall be revealed, and no wrong shall remain unavenged. Emma was not foolish enough to hear it, however, as repentance. Those eyes of glass and tinted stone were burning with rage.

The wondrous voice died into silence. The long hands lifted; the automaton stared at them. It must hear the turning of gears within the body of metal and wax and leather tanned as supple as flesh; it must wake to the realisation of what it had become. That realisation burst out of it in a great and melodious cry, a long melisma of pure anguish.

The surgeon frowned. She reached toward the back of the vessel and pressed a key. The vessel froze in place, its mouth still open, empty of song. She played upon the keys for some little time, pausing once to replace a card scattered with tiny openings like a lacework of gold, before she stood back at last with an air of satisfaction. “That should serve us better,” she said.

She pressed the first key once more. The vessel woke again to life, but its movements were much constrained. It glided toward the altar of the chapel, bowed and began to murmur in Latin. Emma had seen many a priest do exactly the same, but not with such a glance as this one cast at her, of pure, trapped desperation.

Mother Agatha confirmed Emma’s suspicions. “The automaton has been bound to perform in all ways as a priest should do: to say Mass, to hear confessions, to preside over the divine offices. There will be no further displays of indecorum. Sister Theodosia has been most careful on that account.”

Mother Agatha was a kind and Christian woman, but she was, Emma reflected, quite merciless. Emma, who was neither kind nor Christian, could almost spare a moment’s pity for that rake and sinner trapped now forever in the life of a Roman priest. He could perform no action, speak no word, sing no song, but what would be most strictly permitted to the vessel in which he was confined.

If there was a Hell, George Fraser was in it—for the greater glory and the service of God.

Emma was not to be so trapped. Mother Agatha had pondered while she dealt with the matter of Fraser’s translation; when that was done, she looked Emma in the face, long and steady, and then said, “I fear for your safety if I let you out upon the world, but you are truly not meant for this life. You may go, with my blessing and with such gifts and comfort as I or my sisters can give. We will pray for you; we will beseech God to keep you safe.”

“If you pray on my behalf,” said Emma, “I’m certain that God will listen. You have my thanks and my vow: I will not betray your secret.”

“I do believe that,” said Mother Agatha.

Emma left the Abbey of Perpetual Adoration just past noon on a bright day of early summer, so warm and so golden-splendid that the storm of the day before seemed but a wild and dreadful dream. She had her story polished and ready, of how she had been caught in the storm, bravely and nobly rescued by Mr. George Fraser, and cared for by him until, tragically, while striving to keep her from falling from a precipice in the dark, he had fallen himself, lost forever in a deep and impenetrable crevasse. She would weep; she would faint becomingly. She would make certain that no one discovered where in truth she had been.

She strode lightly down the steep track, head high, contemplating her rescue and her reunion with her employer, and thereafter a meeting in Paris with those who might offer her a far more stimulating existence than she had dared to hope for. “Lady Ada Lovelace,” she said to the pellucid Alpine air, “I present you with your newest and most eclectically talented agent.”

She laughed, a bit of youthful lightness that she would never have permitted herself where others could see, and skipped a step or two. It was a beautiful day, and Miss Emma Rigby looked ahead to a marvellous life.

Far behind her, within the walls of stone and steel and glass, a supernally sweet voice cried to Heaven:

Kyrie eleison!

Lord have mercy, indeed, thought Mother Agatha. For no one on this earth would grant him such a gift.

Judith Tarr is an acclaimed author of historical novels and historical fantasy. Her novel of Alexander the Great, Lord of the Two Lands, was a World Fantasy Award nominee, and she most recently published a prequel to the story of Alexander, Bring Down the Sun (Tor). She also writes as Caitlin Brennan (The Mountain’s Call and the forthcoming House of the Star) and Kathleen Bryan (The Serpent and the Rose). This is her first foray into the Age of Steam, but she has had a long love affair with the fiction, fashions, and foibles of the period.

Shadow Dancer

… by Irene Radford

“...B. will not relent. He will not concede the complete madness of the man Fletcher. He comes and tells me Lord Melbourne himself is approving experiments to demonstrate that the living soul may be transferred into an inanimate housing of sufficient complexity.

I am afraid that I must acknowledge that until B has satisfied his obsession, he will have no rest, neither will he permit me any. All he sees are the faces of his dead. And I, to my torment, all I see is the deceptively fair face of mine.

I am not wrong. I cannot be wrong. The soul is resident in and rooted in the human body. Upon death, it is gone from this world. It is God’s alone and He cannot permit our corrupted fingers to pick it over like housewives pawing cheap linens at the market stall. These children said to be without souls are victims of gin and malnourishment and fevers left untreated.

At the same time, I cannot deny that something real happened that awful summer of ’16. I am equally certain that something continues forward. Mrs. F goes about the lecture circuit asserting she’s killed “The Promethean” of Mary Godwin’s creation. She is wrong, or she is lying. The woman who would create such a being would not permit it to be so casually and neatly disposed of.

I can say nothing of this to B. So, I must be resolved in this new and much un-wanted task. Hand-in-hand we shall descend into the world of rumor and dread and here I take the part of Orpheus to his Eurydice.

I pray I do not look back too soon and trap us both in the darkness.

—from the private journal of Ada Lovelace

“Who may I say is calling?” the black-clad butler demanded. He tried looking down his long nose at me, but he underestimated my height and his gaze affixed instead to my décolletage. Pink tinged his cheeks. A human servant. How delightfully old fashioned.

I did not approve of the new mode of employing soulless automata or Promethean constructs—creatures pieced together from multiple corpses and shocked back into animation.

The butler’s eyes remained lowered, as if studying the intricate pattern of the deep fichu of white Buckinghamshire point ground lace—the hexagonal background made it a point ground lace—that disguised just how low my crimson gown draped. The lace alone probably cost two months of his salary.

“You may inform Lord Reginald and Rebecca Lady Reedstone that Madame Magdala has answered their summons.” I brushed past him before he could block my path to the interior of this tidy manor. I admired the clean mortar in the brickwork in a style dating from the time of the James the First. Situated ten miles north of London the owner had privacy and quiet while being close enough to his investments in the city to keep track of them. A modest home for a man who wielded tremendous power and wealth in the dirigible industry.

I sniffed delicately. The scent of desiccated roses and lilies atop the staleness of a long-closed house told me much. I could delay a few moments for more observation. I paused before the stippled mirror embedded in the hall tree. No, not stippled, dusty. Needing a better look, I untied my deep-brimmed bonnet and veil that matched my gown perfectly and thrust them into the butler’s hands. Then I smoothed my blonde coiffure, letting my gaze flit about while facing the mirror. What I thought were traces of cobweb turned out to be black threads caught in the frame.

The mirror gave me reflected glimpses of the parlour. A well executed family portrait in oils jumped to my attention. It showed Lord Reginald and his wife nearing their fifties, judging by the age lines around their eyes and the traces of grey in their hair. Between them sat a small boy child of about five. Black crepe draped the painting.

Now I knew why the fifth Baron of Reedstone had sent his private carriage for me, and agreed to my rather exorbitant fee.

“You may show me to your master and mistress,” I commanded the butler.

He sniffed in disdain as he proceeded me up the broad staircase that curved around the west wall of the majestic hall.

We processed up the staircase at a ponderous rate, thick Turkey carpet absorbing every nuance of sound from my sturdy boots. The butler took an awkward step toward the wall. The riser squeaked beneath his weight. His next step jogged toward the railing. Another squeak.

“If the sound of the carriage on the gravel drive and my ringing of the bell did not alert Lord Reginald and Lady Reedstone to my arrival, your game of musical stairs are insufficient,” I reminded him.

“We have our rituals. You have yours.”

“Agreed.”

“Automata find the squeak most irritating,” he unbent enough to explain. “Sometimes the monsters are hard to detect. The stairs reveal them every time and out they go.”

“I understand.” I hid a small smile. I had a whistle built into the steam engine that powered the card files of my research library at the Book View Café for much the same purpose. Also Promethean constructs found the bright gas lights scattered around the cafe most uncomfortable.

I had little prejudice against the unnatural servants. But I liked knowing who I dealt with, in case certain of my dead enemies had managed to transfer their souls into an immortal body or complex machine.

The butler announced me to his master and mistress in a small but cosy parlour overlooking the walled kitchen garden at the back of the house. A coal fire in the corner hearth spread too much warmth on this damp early summer morning. Rainy days brought welcome relief from baking temperatures but retained some warmth, unlike the summer of ‘16 during which summer did not come at all. We went from winter to autumn again to winter.

I blame the weather for the horrors that began that cold and rainy year.

“Lord Reginald, Lady Reedstone.” I curtsied the proper depth, not bowing my head, a little deeper than I would for an acquaintance of equal status, not as deep as I would for a duke or earl. These people had titles. I had dignity and a reputation.

I used that little impertinence to scan the room and my hosts in one quick glance. More somber black in their clothing. Heavy swaths of sombre cloth draped the bowed form of a hair wreath, lovely flowers made from locks cut from the recently deceased. Once round and hearty, both the lord and his lady looked drawn, reduced in health, energy, and size.

“Madame Magdala, please sit.” Lady Reedstone gestured toward a wing back chair adjacent to and matching her own. Lord Reginald perched upon a lyre back straight chair across from her.

“Will you take tea?” the lady asked. Her be-ringed hand fluttered around the pot on a tray table before her.

“I prefer coffee if you have it. But tea will do.” I settled my skirts and petticoats around me, feeling like a brightly plumed bird in this shadowed house.

The butler appeared at my elbow, placing a silver pot on the tray. The fragrance of freshly brewed coffee wafted pleasantly upward. “I was informed of your preference when I inquired about your reputability,” he murmured.

“Thank you, Simon,” Lord Reginald dismissed him.

When the door clicked shut, Lady Reedstone rounded on me. “We need to know...”

“You wish to know if you will bear another child to replace the one who has died,” I completed for her.

She reared back, gasping in astonishment, hand over her heart. The pulse below her ear beat visibly, rapidly.

“You asked for a Seeress,” I said on a light shrug, as if discerning people’s secrets was a special talent rather than keen observation and awareness of patterns. “I would not be worth my fees if I didn’t know why you asked me here.”

“Please, Madame Magdala. We need to know. We have no other child to inherit my title and lands which are entailed to the male line. I would like to keep my businesses away from the next heir. We have not many childbearing years left,” Lord Reginald said.

“And what will happen to your honours and your estate if you die without an heir?” I poured my own coffee, adding rich cream and turbinado sugar. My gaze went to the slight whirlpool I created with the spoon. I had to keep the vortex moving until I determined the right time to peer into the liquid, and sometimes beyond.

“My younger brother’s son will inherit both,” Lord Reginald explained. “His debts will eat up most of the assets overnight. His dissipations and his greedy friends will take the rest. I have worked hard to keep our ancient heritage proud and debt free. My heart breaks at the thought of that young man destroying it.”

“Little Reggie was the delight of our life. A surprise, at our age, a wonderful miracle that we hoped would continue the pride and dignity of our family,” Lady Reedstone sighed. “Alas, he succumbed to the whooping cough just three months ago.”

Most people in their situation wanted me to consult the ghost of the recently departed for comfort and reassurance that he no longer suffered. It was something I had never legitimately done, but faked often enough to the satisfaction of the clients.

“Let us see if the veils of time will thin for me.” I projected my voice so that it echoed a bit and took on a lower timbre. The accent of the Gypsy King father I claimed slid over the top of my neutral tones.

With a deep breath I closed my eyes for concentration. At the same moment I ceased my vigorous stirring of the coffee and removed the spoon from the cup. After a count of ten I opened my eyes and peered deeply into the liquid vortex, expecting to see no more than light brown coffee swirling inside fragile bone china.

Darkness persisted around the edges of my vision. The whirlpool expanded from rim to rim, seemingly growing beyond the cup. But it did not spill. It drew me in, forcing me to look deeper and deeper, to bring my soul forth and pour it into the whorls that distorted time and place, here and there, now and then.

“Not now,” I moaned. I couldn’t afford a genuine vision now. My visions rarely told me what I asked to see, and always came at the most inopportune times.

A sliver of silver pierced the centre of the whirlpool. It drew my focus with sharp intensity. Slowly it lengthened to fit across the entire cup. As it stretched it grew limbs and filled out. A filmy gown floated around the figure. She glided and pirouetted about in an exquisite and symbolic dance. Each step grew faster and more angry. I sensed violence building, ready to explode in catastrophe.

I only had true visions of impending disasters. This one was quite urgent. I needed to return to the Book View Café on Charing Cross Road and the latest newspapers from around the world to discover just where this vengeful sprite danced.

Desperate to end the session with the grieving baron and his lady, I sat back, resting my head, keeping my eyes closed. Still the silver spirit, tinged with green at the edges of her gown and diminutive wings leaped and spun in my mind’s eye.

“There is another child. Born out of the bonds of law and marriage,” I intoned.

Every noble had at least one illegitimate child, usually born before he settled down with a wife. Nearly as often born later when the marriage proved loveless. Not much of a guess there.

Lady Reedstone gasped. She gave her husband “the look.” Outrage, contempt, anger, betrayal, all in one concentrated stare.

Lord Reginald’s silence told me I had struck a truth.

“The boy child can be brought within the law.” They’d expect me to use archaic and symbolic phrasing. “The child can inherit with pride and dignity. The child needs you...” My words dissolved and my head lolled to the side.

My disorientation and exhaustion was expected at every reading regardless of what I did and did not see. Today I did not pretend.

My hosts excused themselves for a turn about the kitchen garden while Simon the butler provided me with ham salad sandwiches, pickled eggs, fruit compote, and a fresh pot of coffee. Somewhat restored, I rested another half hour before summoning the carriage that returned me to the Book View Café. I had a lot of work to do. And much to think about on the hour-long ride.

Dozens of patrons sipped coffee, conversed quietly, and read books at my establishment. I waltzed through the front door, shedding bonnet, lace gloves, and shawl in my wake. Toby, my servant, bodyguard and bruiser collected them before they hit the ground. He, like all my employees were the stray adolescents I had rescued over the years. Now grown to manhood, but still a bit foolish and naïve, he kept unwanted riffraff out and clean floors in.

I noted that my ensemble was newer, more fashionable, and just a bit more colourful, shorter and with a lower neckline and more expensive lace than any woman present.

I plucked a newspaper from a table, disregarding the protest of the customer who had been reading it. “I have a need for this,” I offered by way of explanation.

The bastard daughter of a Gypsy King is expected to be flamboyant and a bit outré.

The vision of the silver dancer in the shadows of the swirling coffee triggered memories in me. Memories of the long ago summer on Lake Geneva when I’d been plain Elise, nursemaid to baby William, the child of the genius poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his frightened young wife Mary.

No one notices a nursemaid. No one cares if she overhears forbidden plots and dangerous conspiracies. No one cares if she sees patterns of behaviour and draws conclusions. Lord Byron and Master Shelley dreamt of creating the first Promethean so they could become immortal poet kings. The plot was not only illegal but immoral and insane.

The chill in my bones told me that the silver dancer was connected to that plot I’d helped abort. I’d helped Mary Shelley escape with the Promethean prototype before Lord Byron could transfer his own soul into the body of a drowning victim. I did not yet know all of the connections. But I would soon.

I tucked my long legs beneath me while I curled up in the overstuffed chair in the first floor lounge above the main coffee room with the newspaper. The paper belonged to the Book View Café after all. My patroness Ada King, Countess Lovelace, the only legitimate child of the despicable and depraved Lord Byron imported newspapers from all over the world for our clientele along with the extensive library we had compiled.

Lady Lovelace did not know my connection to her father, of course. But I had found her and kept her close. When Lord Byron returned from the dead he would seek her out. She had never truly known her father, seen him rarely. I had, that frigid summer of ‘16 at the chateau on Lake Geneva. I’d know him in either a Promethean construct body or an automata made especially to receive his soul.

Nothing of interest in the London paper. Or the ones from New Deli, Hong Kong, or Stockholm. While I read, my assistant Reva—the true daughter of a Romany tribe—brought me the newly arrived Paris papers. Thanks to the Dirigible traffic, this one was only twenty-four hours old. I skimmed the headlines, catching a paragraph here, a stray word there. Nothing.

I was about to toss the pages on top of the others on the floor when one last sentence caught my attention.

On twenty eight June at eight of the clock, the Ballet du Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique to present Giselle, a new ballet, music composed by Adolphe Adam. Choreography by Jean Corelli and Jules Perrot.

Today was the twenty sixth.

Giselle? Why did I know that name? Why had those two sentences resonated with the image of the silver dancer?

Giselle.

Lady Ada was currently in Paris with her business partner Charles Babbage. She had said before leaving last week something about assisting a new artistic project.

I returned to the ground floor private parlour and pulled a blank brass key from the locked chest inside the safe buried in the floor. Then I took the tool to the central carousel of the Book View Café. The clientele had rotated. Several regulars nodded or waved. I responded with like greetings, not allowing any of them to interrupt my mission.

Inside a small circular counter, I fired up the selector. I pulled a lever here, pushed buttons there, following a special Automatic Science language developed by Lady Ada.

One hundred twenty-seven codes in place, I inserted the key into the machine. A hiss of steam, a grinding of engaging gears and blades whirred to notch the key. Conversation ceased for a moment, then rose in volume to be heard above the noise of the engines.

At last I withdrew the intricately scrolled key and balanced it on my palm. It stretched from fingertip to wrist, weighing more than three full cups of coffee.

This part of the ritual complete, I paraded across the room to the middle wall of books, feeling gazes follow my progress.

The exclusive card files for this library fascinated readers and inventors alike. Everyone wanted one of their own. Lady Ada had created only one, for her use and mine in this special library. She occasionally sent her operatives to me with requests when she could not come herself, but only I operated the machine.

I inserted the key into its special hole, turned it all the way around once, listening as it flipped tiny pins setting gears into motion. Then I pushed it deeper into the hole, turned it again. More pins slid aside. A third time around and the chug of interconnections became audible to the entire room. I put all of my weight and strength into pulling down the long brass and wood lever. Steam rose up and spilled from cracks between bookcases and floor boards.

Click, grind, snick. The machine engaged. Bookshelves rotated in opposite directions. They shifted top to bottom, bottom to middle, rotated again, shifted again.

We all watched the majestic dance of books around the room.

A dance less graceful than the one I’d seen in my vision.

Detailed requests of obscure information could take hours. Giselle produced three books of Germanic folklore in a matter of ten minutes. One slender volume, little more than a pamphlet, and two thicker volumes swooshed down the chute and into my outstretched hands. All together they did not weigh as much as the key.

A round of applause erupted around the coffee house. I curtsied with a dramatic flourish of my hand, clutching the books close against my bosom, and then retreated to the lounge once more.

The pamphlet proved to be a sermon written by Herr Doktor Sigmund Voldemort who had died one hundred years ago. He spent twenty pages exhorting young men to woo women only when their hearts beat with true love, respect, and commitment. Otherwise they would fall victim to the woodland spirits called the Wili, singular Wilis, maidens who had died of a broken heart and lingered in ghostly form needing to seek vengeance on all men, especially those who dallied. Their fate was to force the men to join the Wili in heathenish and profane dancing until dawn, or until the men died, whichever came first. He cited the name Giselle as an example as though his audience should know her name.

Two sentences about the Wili, and one particular Wilis. The rest of the pamphlet centered on the sin of dalliance.

I set it aside and turned to the fatter volumes. The first compiled multiple bits of folklore in a long and meandering prose tale listing the dangers within the deep dark forest. Everything from Hansel and Gretel to Giselle and Myrta, Queen of the Wili. I found a few more details. A Wilis, the text reported, appeared lovely and ethereal, drifting through the forest with no more substance than mist, supported by small fluttering wings, wearing flimsy ball gowns of misty green.

A woodcut showing Myrta dancing among the trees with a corsage of wildflowers made me pause. Moonlight and death bleached her skin to the colour and texture of white silk. She looked very like the silver shadow dancer I’d seen in my cup. Similar not the same. I couldn’t put my finger on the exact difference. Yet.

When I reached for the third volume the setting sun sent a shaft of brilliant gold beneath the cloud cover to pierce the gloom of the lounge. Sunset in June comes late in the northern climes. I’d spent more than half a day in this quest. My stomach growled and the grit of thirst closed my throat. I reached for the bell to summon refreshment. The book, open to the woodcut, shifted in my lap so that the light fell directly on Myrta’s face.

Dead she might be, but her lust for vengeance animated her face.

The silver dancer had no emotions, no passion, no lust for life, only flawless balletic technique.

Hastily I scribbled a note and dashed down to the main room of the coffee shop. “Reva, are you still here?” I called to the deserted room.

“Aye, mum,” she said meekly, poking her dark head out of the kitchen. I heard the rattle of dishes in water. She and the scullery girl normally cleaned up after a long day, preparing for an even longer night, if I entertained as usual.

“Reva, I need to send this note to Lord Reginald Reedstone. You may all go home as soon as you finish your chores. There will be no salon tonight.”

“I’ll take it, mum.” Curiosity burned in her deep, dark-roast coloured eyes.

“Find one of the soulless ones,” I said, not willing to risk her to the street dangers at night.

We’d been through many adventures together since I rescued her from the necromancer trying to steal her soul. I didn’t allow the man to live long enough to find out what he needed her soul for.

“For this I need absolute discretion. My enemies could wrest the truth from you. A soulless child will know nothing, so it can reveal nothing.”

“Yes, mum. One of the street urchins then.” She shuddered. “I hate them children.”

“I know, dear Reva. You could have been one of them.” I gathered her into a tight hug. “I think I need to add something to my note to Lord Reginald while you fetch the red-haired child we used last time. He’s quick and nimble and has a bit of intelligence if no will of his own. He might be re-growing a soul.” Some theorists held that a child was born soulless and acquired one gradually through exposure to humans and life and art. Some never grew one or did so late—which explained those who could torture others or murder.

No one said any of this within hearing of the Church.

“You’d best give ‘im the instructions.” Reva slunk out the front door, disappointment curving her back. She thought I didn’t trust her enough to do this errand for me.

I loved her too much to take a chance on losing her. The street urchins were already lost.

“You will take this hackney carriage to the home of Lord Reginald Reedstone at the address on the envelope,” I instructed the boy when Reva herded him into the café a few moments later.

He nodded in understanding. His soulless eyes stared straight ahead, totally lacking personality or self will. He looked forty in the body of a ten year old. Last week he’d looked his age. Soon, too soon, he’d either attract a stray soul and stop this rapid aging, or he’d shrivel up and turn to ash.

Too many children and young adults—innocents—wandered the streets of London, existing moment to moment without hope. Reva could have been one of them.

“The hackney will wait for you. You will deliver this note to Lord Reginald and wait for a reply. You may not return without a reply. Do you understand, child?”

“Yes, mum.”

I placed the folded and sealed stationary in his semi-clean hands. The fact that this child bothered to wash his hands upon occasion gave me hope that a stray soul courted him, looking to inhabit his body. Perhaps not his original soul, but a soul.

“When you return I shall give you supper.”

“Yes, mum.”

Two hours at least before I could expect an answer. “Reva, is it too late for the last post to Paris?”

“Yes, mum. The sun is setting.” She didn’t bother looking at the pendulum clock beside the card files. Three years she’d been with me and she still organized her day by the sun and the stars. Her skills at reading the sky had helped us find a road and a village when we escaped the ancient moated manor house where the Necromancer had taken her for his experiments. He’d lured Reva there with a promise of marriage.

The same scenario for the creation of a Wilis. I returned to the card files in search of more information about Myrta, Queen of the Wili. My other letter could wait. Perhaps Lady Ada did not need to know of my impending arrival in Paris.

I found nothing more about the Wili. Two hours wasted when I could have searched out more information on the composer and choreographers and why they had chosen this story for their ballet.

Or had their sponsors chosen for them? Charles Babbage and Lady Ada came to mind.

Did the artists have any idea of the dangers they played with?

Eventually the boy returned with a note written on even more elegant stationary than my own. Lord Reginald’s handwriting sprawled untidily across the page with many flamboyant loops and whorls around the capital letters.

“Madame Magdala, you need not waive your fee for your services in return for transportation across The Channel. I have no dirigible flying at the time you requested. However, I can place you in the cargo basket of a Pegasus that flies at dawn.” Then he gave me directions to his aereo field.

At the very bottom of the page he printed quite precisely in tiny letters, “As to the other matter you address. I will take it under serious consideration. We will discuss possibilities upon your return from Paris. We will meet much opposition in the Lords.”

I heaved a sigh. Prudent. Rational. Thankfully a few men such as he sat in the Lords.

“It’s time, mum,” Reva said quietly the next morning half an hour before dawn. We sat in a hackney carriage at the edge of Reedstone’s aereo field. I wore a conservative travel costume in black bombazine. The skirt was spilt to make clambering about on the back of the mechanical Pegasus a proper and modest experience. My plain black bonnet with only a tiny and proper veil had no flowers, silk or real. I’d tied it tightly beneath my chin. I further secured it with three hat pins topped with jet beads that pierced my coiffure.

“If you feel afraid, or uncertain of anything, or anyone, you may close the Book View Café and lock yourself in your room, Reva.” I hugged the girl and kissed her affectionately. “Toby can defend the doors. He has weapons, both mundane and spiritual.”

“We’ll be fine, mum. You just go to Paris and do what you have to do.”

“If anything at all seems odd to you...”

“I know. I’m to take Toby to Countess Lovelace’s home and stay there. Now go, Mum. They won’t hold the Pegasus for you. It flies when it wants to fly and that’s toward the sun just as it rises.” She hugged me back and urged me out of the shelter of the carriage.

I draped over my arm my thick woollen cloak, oiled against dampness and clasped my satchel firmly. The weight slowed me only a little as I walked warily toward the long windowless building. Taller than the Book View Café’s three stories and an attic by that much, it stretched a half mile or more into the distance. Overlapping slates covered the rounded roof. Inside I heard the roar of flame and saw flickers of light around the edges of the doors that filled one end of the building. The smooth grass field beneath my feet trembled with suppressed power.

Six times I had flown in dirigibles. Six times I’d approached the giant balloon and enclosed gondola with trepidation. This seventh time, as I faced a new form of transportation my hands trembled and my heart beat so loudly in my ears I almost did not hear the other noise. The special noise of a metallic hoof pawing the ground; the sound of a giant winged beast braying with impatience.

The Pegasus sensed the dawn and needed to fly, to soar higher than the clouds to come closer and closer to the sun.

While I hesitated, the great doors slid open. Golden radiance near blinded me.

And then the great mechanical beast bounded out of its shelter, hooves pounding the packed ground of the flying field, flicking up bits of dirt and grass. The vibrations reached my feet and tingled through my limbs with excitement. Golden plates shaped into feathers overlapped across wings that fluttered like the real thing. It pranced forward, rearing its great horse head and shaking it’s mane of fine wires. In every detail it resembled an awesome white stallion with golden wings. The details hid the internal steam engine that powered it and the complex automatic gears and pistons that gave it life. I knew that only Lady Ada or one of her apprentices could have created the elaborate codex, golden cards punched with the language of the automatic sciences, that guided this awesome creature.

The Pegasus spotted me and paused in its impatient quest.

“You are magnificent,” I whispered.

The pointed ear rotated and flicked. It heard me and minced over to me.

“Master Pegasus, will you consent to give me a lift across the Channel to Paris?” With all complex automata, one needed to approach them with caution and respect until you understood them.

It nodded its head and let loose a whistling whinny, the steam heart of it escaping. It finished this display with its head lowered to look me in the eye. Its thick neck bowed nearly double to come down to my level. The top of my bonnet barely reached its undercarriage. Few men are taller than me.

We took each other’s measure. I saw intelligence in those eyes. And understanding.

Did those qualities come from the complex codex that governed its actions? Or had a soul taken up residence inside the construct?

I did not believe that a soul could grow inside a machine. I did not want to believe that. I suspected rather that a ghost, a lost or stolen soul might seek a machine to complete its life span.

“And wouldn’t you be meeting Belapharon,” a man said with more than a bit of Irish audacity in his accent. He strolled out of the long building. Slender with the lean strength of a jockey, dark like a Welsh coal miner, the top of his head came to my nose. He wore the standard flyer’s uniform of buff jodhpurs and coffee colored leather jacket. A soft fleece-lined helmet with the earflaps tied up on top in the same leather and a pair of goggles perched above the brim sat back on his well-shaped head. His tall boots gleamed with fresh polish. He walked silently, unlike the thunder of the Pegasus’ hooves.

“Yes,” I said, watching the man’s jaunty walk. He carried himself with the self assurance required for his dangerous job. “Lord Reedstone promised me a place in the basket as far as Paris.”

“You’d be Madame Magdala, then. M’Lord sent me a message, didn’t he now.”

“And you would be?” Curse it, I sounded as if I’d kissed the Blarney Stone on my way here. But then my ability to mimic accent and phrasing had allowed me to move up from nursemaid to a celebrated, and sometimes feared, Doyen.

“And wouldn’t M’Lord Reedstone be calling me Jimmy, Jimmy O’Brian.”

“That may be what Lord Reedstone calls you, but who are you?”

He flashed me a cheeky grin. “Me mam Christened me James Padriac Xavier O’Shannasy.”

“If I remember correctly, and I do, one branch of the O’Shannasy clan was outlawed five years ago for rebellion against the crown.”

“Me father’s uncle’s cousin’s nephews.” He grinned again, nearly breaking through my natural suspicions. I liked this young man. Lord Reedstone trusted him. Therefore, I could.

“Still safer to lose the O’Shannasy branch of your family tree.”

Just then Belapharon reared up, pawing the air and stretching its wings at the first glimmer of light streaking across the cloudy horizon, turning them into a majestic swath of red and gold. The sky looked no more brilliant or awesome than the gems and gold embedded in those wondrous wings reflecting back the primal light of creation.

“Time, mistress. He’ll wait no longer.”

“Very well. How do I climb aboard?”

“Dinna fash yourself.” Jimmy reached up, stretching high to insert a tiny golden key in a notch on Belapharon’s chest that looked like a tiny bit of tarnish on his metallic fur. He turned the key three times. “Just have to reset the codex to governance mode. Don’t worry old boy, I’ll let you fly independent. You make better time that way, don’t you.” He patted the metal hide as if soothing a living animal.

In that moment I knew that a soul had come to the beast. I resented him, as magnificent as he was. He had a soul and the urchin who ran errands for me didn’t.

The mechanical Pegasus shook his head defiantly, once. I saw a flash in his eyes, almost a red glow. Then he succumbed to docility, awkwardly bending his front legs until he kneeled low. His hind legs followed suit. The beast’s belly scraped the ground. His back remained a formidable distance above me.

Now I could see the elaborate contraption on his back. It consisted of a wicker box, much like those suspended from hot air balloons. Triads of plaited straps in red, yellow, blue, and white ran from the box beneath Belapharon’s belly and around his shoulders, fastening with elaborate buckles and knots. Their configuration neatly bypassed his now folded wings, leaving them free.

I did not see how I could delicately, or even indelicately climb into the box.

Jimmy grabbed my cloak and satchel from my hand, took a running leap, placed his left foot on the beast’s thigh and ricocheted up to grab a shoulder strap with his right hand. Then another foot on the back and a vault into the box. He turned and grinned at me again.

“I’ll not duplicate that manoeuvre. I won’t even try.”

“No need, Mistress.” He bent down and dropped a rope and slat ladder over the side. The bottom rung landed a scant twelve inches above my feet.

I climbed quickly as a sailor had taught me many years ago. Rope ladders are not rigid and tend to twist. I understood why Jimmy O’Brian took the more adventuresome route overland, so to speak.

Jimmy opened a little gate in the wicker box as I hauled myself up level with Belapharon’s back.

“And didn’t you do well for a lady,” he chuckled.

I straightened my bonnet and my dignity.

“Normally I just strap myself on, when I carry letters that need to get to Paris in a hurry,” Jimmy said, counting boxes strewn about the interior of the basket and setting aside a black shoulder satchel bearing a red royal seal. “But seein’ as how we got a passenger, Lord Reginald decided to send these packages.” He stacked them into a rough bench and secured them tightly with crossed plaits in the same pattern that bound the basket to the beast. Then he bowed grandly, indicating I should sit.

I sat, grateful to find my bonnet well within the shelter of the basket. I paid a lot for the black Chantilly lace veil that adorned the beaver felt. The lace makers of Chantilly were all making white lace this decade. Finding the real thing in black had me reusing bits and pieces of older garments.

Jimmy climbed out once more and fiddled with the golden key in a different key hole. Then he bounded back into the basket and crouched on his knees, handling reins threaded through ports in the basket.

The seemingly solid surface beneath me surged and flexed. My stomach lurched. I clung tightly to two straps within the basket.

Belapharon’s back rippled with each thrust of his powerful wings and running stride of his long legs. We tilted slightly side to side.

This was not at all the smooth and silent lift of a dirigible. I had embarked on an adventure.

Another adventure.

“Best wrap up in the cloak now, mum,” Jimmy said over his shoulder moments later. “Get’s cold up here, it does. There be blankets in the box to your left as well.”

I obeyed.

I kept track of time by the increasing light above and the streaks of sunlight creeping through the wicker weave. We rose and rose, becoming a part of the clouds. The flowing mist reminded me of the Wili drifting through the forest in search of vengeance. Then we were above them. I chanced a peek through a tiny opening. My stomach rebelled at the sight of a vast expanse of water visible in the breaks between clouds.

I leaned my head back and breathed shallowly, swallowing down my breakfast that threatened to come up.

“And t’isn’t it a grand view,” Jimmy chuckled. “Amazing it ‘tis to think we are five thousand feet above the Channel.”

“Five thousand?” I replied weakly, trying desperately not to think what it would feel like to fall out of this precarious basket and to...to land.

“Not to worry. I felt the same the first time I flew bareback. But now? Now ‘tis glorious, ‘tis awesome, ‘tis like looking in the face of God.”

“If you say so.” I kept my eyes firmly shut and endured the shift and twist of the beast beneath my feet. It seemed like he took larger movements when I couldn’t see. But that was better than seeing how high we flew. Another few feet up and I was sure we’d enter heaven. One can only do that when one dies with their soul intact.

The sun moved ever higher. Despite shining directly on my face, it did little to warm me. The air five thousand feet above the waves of the English Channel felt more suited to December than mid June.

And all the while I saw in the back of my mind a silver dancer growing stronger and more fluid with each repetition of the haunting music. I hadn’t much time.

Hours passed slowly. Too slowly. And yet we travelled far faster than a steam boat or even a dirigible.

Jimmy dug tongue sandwiches on fine white bread and bottled ginger beer out of one of the many baskets fastened around our conveyance about an hour before the sun’s zenith. I ate squeamishly. The rocking motion had become almost routine, yet my stomach resisted accepting it. The ginger beer helped. A cup of hot tea would have helped more. My teeth chattered and my frigid fingers had trouble clutching the bottle.

Jimmy packed the remnants of our rustic meal back into the basket and fastened it tight. “Don’t want it flying about when we land.” He grinned again. His Celtic audacity and good cheer began to wear on me.

“Won’t be long now, Mistress.”

I risked peeking out and saw green pastures, brown roads, and bleached white or grey stone buildings. The structures increased in number, grew closer together.

The air grew warmer.

“That be Paris,” Jimmy said.

“Finally.”

“Finally would you be sayin’. We made record time. The wind was at our heels. Sometimes we have to land at Calais and refuel.”

Just then the Pegasus tilted downward. It loosed a bellow of steam as the wings folded back. At the last second I dug my heels into the woven wicker and grabbed the strap to keep from plunging forward. My stomach revolted again at the sudden shift in direction.

I tried closing my eyes but the loss of directional information disrupted my equilibrium more.

Watching the land rush toward us at an alarming rate, I resorted to the time-honoured solution. “Our Father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name...”

Jimmy just chuckled. Annoying young man.

The Pegasus brought us down smoothly enough. A thud, another lurch, the thump of metal hooves hitting the solid turf, then a gradual slowing. He came to a halt graceful as any prize stallion, before a station building.

“You stay low in the basket until I deal with the diplomatic pouch.” He shrugged the straps of the black satchel with the royal seal around his shoulders. “No need to trouble the authorities with your presence. It’ll just delay things and alert people you don’t necessarily want to know you’re coming,” Jimmy said quietly as he prepared to depart.

“How did you know I need to move quietly and quickly?”

“Figured. You ain’t the only one Lord Reedstone ‘as sent about the world coming from the Book View Café.”

“I should have known Countess Lovelace had connections.”

“Aye, Mistress. Now you stay put until Belapharon settles in his stall in the hanger over there. He’ll be gentle in helping you down. I promise.” He leaped over the edge of the basket without bothering with the gate.

Seconds later the Pegasus turned and walked with a smooth and elegant gait away from the station. Inside the hanger he ambled directly to a stall, backed in and sank onto a thick wool blanket spread on a slightly raised wooden platform.

I used the ladder, much easier going down than up, and jumped clear. “Thank you, Belapharon. I appreciate the swift flight.” I patted his nose and slipped out with my small satchel

Warm air caressed my skin, smelling of fresh flowers, newly mown grass, and the ever-present coal fires required for the dirigibles and other machinery that made modern life convenient. Half a day’s travel and I’d crossed into another climate. I shed my oiled woollen cloak and draped it over my arm so that it concealed the satchel.

I heard wheels turning and hooves pounding the main carriage way to and from the station on the other side of a tall fence. Directly behind the hanger, out of sight from the station, two fence boards gaped conveniently. I shoved myself between them, being careful not to scrape or tear the sturdy fabric of my gown. A moment to straighten my costume, breathe deeply, and centre my attention on my task, then I hailed a passing cab with a real horse, not a mechanical beast as had become the rage in London, and gave the driver directions to La Théatre de l’Académie Royale de Musique in the heart of Paris.

I needed to find a silver shadow dancer before the first performance of Giselle. Perhaps before the dress rehearsal.

The carriage wheels took on the cadence of the lively polka I knew must come from the first act of the ballet. (My visions give me more information than I realize at first glance.) The driver hummed a different tune in the same rhythm.

In my mind I saw the silver dancer leaping high, arm in arm with her prince, matching his jump precisely in height. Their feet synchronized in complex patterns.

A tiny bit of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth when he presented her with a posy.

I jerked awake, realizing I’d nodded off dreaming my worst fears.

“How much longer,” I yelled at the driver, sticking my head out the carriage window. The rush of thickening traffic near drowned my words. The drivers of Paris made London look calm and orderly—too much hurry, not enough progress, taking terrible chances speeding past an intersection with equally hurried cross traffic.

“Two minutes, Madame,” the driver replied with perfect pronunciation and accent. The French did not have eccentric swings of language from neighbourhood to neighbourhood as we did in London. How was a person supposed to detect class, education, and residence if not by the way another spoke?

The Théatre came into view as predicted a few moments later, a massive Baroque structure with whitewashed columns, porches, false balconies, and a profusion of steps upward.

The cabbie brought his horse to a halt at the front of the building.

“The doors will be locked at this hour, Madame,” he said and spat a wad of chewing tobacco out.

I winced at the unsanitary crudity. “Take me to the back entrance. My business is with the director.”

“Oui, Madame.” He clucked to his horse and we jerked forward once more. At the end of the block, he turned left then left again pausing at the opening into a narrow alley. The vehicle could go no further.

The drab, windowless stonework on either side had not been whitewashed or cleaned in decades. Smoke and filth grimed the mortar. Trash collected in the gutters. A stark contrast to the inviting front of the theatre; a severe reminder that those who entered by the narrow and heavy door did not pay admission like those at the front.

I paid the cabbie with a few sous. At the Book View Café I accepted all forms of coinage, thus providing me with emergency currency for trips like this one.

A trilling of flute notes drew me inward. I paused to listen for further clues. The musician played exercises designed to limber his fingers. I hoped that meant the orchestra had not yet begun to play for the rehearsal. Today was twenty-seven June. The ballet would premiere tomorrow according to the notice in the newspaper.

If my dream held true, even now I might not be in time.

I tried the back door, a narrow and warped plank badly in need of painting and new hinges. It resisted pressure inward or outward. The knob did not turn. I banged furiously on the wood.

Time passed slowly. The cabbie had moved on the moment I stepped from the safety of his carriage into the nebulous world of the alley. I stood alone in the shadows where predators could lurk. A chill coursed up my spine.

I was ready to flee when the door swung outward on creaking and rusted hinges. “Yeah, wadda ya want?” a tall, unshaven, and unwashed young man with broad shoulders and huge hands knotted into fists asked. He stood a solid barrier between me and the enticing music beginning to leak from the interior. His French sounded slurred and as broken as his teeth, probably not his native language.

“I have urgent messages for the Countess Lovelace,” I informed him in impeccable, perfectly accented French.

“Whyn’t you say so.” He pushed the door open further and half stood aside, still holding the door, probably keeping it from sagging back into position on its own.

I swept past him, handing him my cloak and satchel. “Mind these, please. I shall retrieve them shortly.”

“Oui, Madame,” he replied, suddenly docile. Servants are trained to respond to an imperious tone.

I’d progressed only a few steps when the door creaked open again. “Forgive me for being late,” a young woman said. She ran past me on incredibly light feet. Surely a member of the corps de ballet. I caught only a brief glimpse of wisps of dark hair curling beneath her plain bonnet. Her skirts appeared draped in the latest fashion with surprisingly good lace and embroidery about the border and shawl collar. I’d seen a similar embroidered Spanish shawl in a London shop and passed it by because I considered it too dear.

I moved her up from the corps to a principal dancer. She had more leeway in being late.

She disappeared into the dim back stage area filled with ropes and stage sets, props, and curtains in odd places.

I made my own way to the stage, following the music, still disjointed, individual players practicing scales and troublesome phrases. The place smelled of sawdust, paint, sweat, and something resinous. I kicked aside a tray of yellow clumps and crystals. The scent of pine sap thickened. Ah, the rosin box where dancers dusted their shoes for better traction on slippery wooden floors.

“We need more time,” Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace said in French from behind the stage set of a Black Forest village. She spoke loudly, so her voice would carry over the growing cacophony of orchestra, stage hands, and dancers all making their various noises at once.

Underneath it all, I heard the low rumble of a boiler building steam to power the lights and move about the sets and curtains. If allowed to build steam much longer untended, it would need an escape, through a whistle louder than all the human voices combined.

“There is no more time. We must begin the rehearsal,” a Frenchman replied, agitated. Panic edged his voice.

“I will pay extra for the orchestra and dancers to delay the rehearsal a bit,” Charles Babbage added his own distressed voice to the melee. “Lady Ada, I do not understand what is wrong with the gears at the knee joints. Why does she lock them so?”

I trod softly on the polished wooden floor to approach them unseen.

“Perhaps she seeks only to straighten her leg and foot into a perfect point,” Lady Ada replied. She stood with her arms crossed around her slender frame, wearing a serviceable leather apron over her plain working costume of dark brown dress with few petticoats and no lace. A tall woman of handsome face, she drew attention in any gathering by sheer force of personality. Just like her father. Her mother had spent decades trying to stamp out that quality in her, feeding her the logic of mathematics, trampling all trace of artistic creativity. “I need access to the codex so she has a command to bend the knees too.”

“If she has overridden a primary command, then the process has begun,” Babbage replied. He sounded satisfied. Lady Ada’s business partner had grown round with prosperity, but no less enthusiastic, or less of a genius in devising automata to serve humanity’s needs.

“Perhaps the complexity of the codex has merely allowed contradictory commands and the dancer falls back to the default,” Lady Ada snorted. “There is no chance the machine can grow a soul. And this experiment of yours will prove it.”

“Machines with souls,” the Frenchman sniffed with disdain. “I care not for this. I care only that tomorrow night I must produce a ballet. A lovely ballet that will touch the hearts of many. Women will cry openly at the ending. Men will turn away to hide their emotions. This is true art. I begin now with the understudy.”

“Understudy! I did not authorize an understudy when I funded this production,” Charles Babbage shouted.

“We always have the understudy. And now I put her on stage while you play with your mechanical toy.” He clapped his hands and walked rapidly past my hiding place among the curtains.

“Carlotta, you are now Giselle. Change your costume quickly. Quickly, I say.” He clapped his hands. “Georgette, you will dance Carlotta’s solo. Come, come my children, take your places.”

I tried moving behind the set piece to speak to Lady Ada. A crush of dancers pushed me deeper into the black draperies. I fought the twisting fabric only to find myself tangled further.

“Help!” I squeaked among the muffling folds.

“How’d you get there?” the young lady who had come in with me said as she parted the fabric.

“An accident. Where is your costume, girl. You’ll be late for the rehearsal.”

“Oh that.” She dismissed my concern with a gesture.

“Madame Magdala?” Lady Ada asked. She appeared in front of me. “What are you doing in Paris?”

“I have come with distressing concerns about your current project, my lady.” I dipped a small curtsey, as much as the curtains would allow.

My rescuer faded away.

“I don’t have time to deal with your concerns, Madame. I have a codex to repair.”

“My lady, you can’t allow the automaton to perform. You dare not even allow it to rehearse,” I protested.

“Don’t tell me you fear it will grow a soul. I know it can’t.” Lady Ada strode away.

I followed. We rounded the flat scenery and I confronted the silver dancer of my vision.

It stood medium height with long slender legs. They’d painted her skin a convincing flesh colour and given her an idealized face with more intense pigments. Her eyes stared blankly, without blinking, under dark lashes and brows enhanced by makeup, the same as the real dancers that mingled about preparing for the dance. The automaton wore the stylized stage peasant costume of short Madonna blue skirt and white apron (symbolic of her innocence and chastity) with multiple petticoats and ribbon trim. Her blouse and tightly laced bodice mimicked the simple garb of farm girls from previous centuries. She wore braids of real human hair coiled into flower be-decked knots above her ears.

I stared at her, truly amazed at her life-like qualities. If she lifted her chin and stepped out to join the corps de ballet I’d not have known that she was made up of gears and levers, without a bit of blood and bone.

Those unblinking eyes betrayed her lack of humanity.

“My lady, do you know how dangerous this enterprise is?” I asked.

“Don’t distract me, Magdala. I need to adjust the codex. I was sure I’d gotten all the pieces right. We’ve been working on this for over a year.” She bent to open the mechanism’s back where the golden cards, punched to a lacelike fineness, fitted into their appropriate slots.

“My Lady Ada, do you know the story behind this ballet?”

“I never asked. That isn’t what interests me. This is the most complex machine Mr. Babbage and I have ever built.”

“Then you do not know that the lost souls of this story might hover around waiting to take over this mechanical body?”

“I haven’t time for your mystical nonsense now, Magdala.”

I stiffened. Indignation roiled inside me. I almost, almost turned on my heel and returned to London. But no. I had not risen from nursemaid to social doyenne on wounded dignity.

“My lady, you of all people should remember that your father’s Great Experiment in the summer of 1816 proved without a shadow of a doubt that the soul is measurable, quantifiable, moveable, and capable of manipulation. Sometimes not for the good of all people involved. These are scientific facts.” I forced myself to remain straight and dignified rather than retreat into tears and faints as I wanted to on my desperate flight away from Lord Byron twenty-five years ago.

Then I’d had to remain strong for my dear Mary Shelley and her precious baby. Today I remained strong to keep the true Wili from taking over the ballet and all of Paris.

“My father’s conspiracy is not to be mentioned in my hearing!” Lady Ada stamped her foot and planted her fists on her hips.

“Very well, my lady. Then remember my own adventures, adventures you dispatched me to rescue a series of young girls lured into the clutches of one Lord Ruthven for the purpose of stealing their souls as well as their blood for his experiments in the dark arts. What happened to all the souls that fled when his leyden jars were broken? Where did they go?”

Lady Ada paused, almost as still as the automaton. Then she breathed deeply and returned to counting the golden cards of the codex.

“My lady, the story of this ballet is about what happens to young maidens who die of a broken heart after being betrayed by lovers who profess their undying love then marry another. Those maidens become spirits who wreak vengeance upon all men who cross their paths in a most horrible way. Imagine if one of those wrathful spirits inhabited this machine and then turned her near indestructible strength upon the other dancers, the orchestra. The audience!”

“Impossible. Souls cannot inhabit machines. If they could, then my father...my father...”

“Can’t they?” I wanted to march her out and introduce her to Belapharon.

“If you wanted free tickets to watch the ballet you only needed to ask.”

“I have no wish to see this ballet performed by an automaton. There are some things machines should never be allowed to do.” I stomped off, convinced I’d have to stop this dangerous project on my own.

But how?

The steam engine beneath the boards hissed. The backdrop of a painted forest with a castle on the hill rising above it slid into place.

I ducked behind the stage manager’s podium. The top was littered with a thick sheaf of papers denoting lighting and set instructions along with notes on his musical and dance cues.

Dancers poised in their starting positions. The conductor raised his baton.

All eyes turned toward him.

On the downbeat, the attentive musicians began the brief Overture of bright, lively, and flirtatious music. Dancers tapped their toes, bent and twisted in time with the music as they worked to keep their muscles ready, but not so much as to overtire themselves.

Then a pause and the first dancer ran on stage, Hillarion the huntsman who loved Giselle from afar. He performed a brief and undemanding solo, leaving a nosegay on the porch of Giselle’s “house.”

Duke Albrecht leaped on stage, resplendent in red and gold cloak and be-plumed cap, followed by his more ordinarily dressed servant. Albrecht shed his cloak, cap, and sword, revealing a handsome leather tunic symbolic of the hunt he pursued, and yet common enough to disguise his noble heritage.

As if any costume could disguise his tall and regal bearing. The blond dancer was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Twenty years ago I might have pursued him.

He leaped and bounded across the stage, landing frequently in front of Giselle’s door with heartfelt pantomime. Then Giselle, wearing a duplicate of the automaton’s blue and white costume, stepped through the door and danced to meet her one true love.

I gasped at the charm of the girl dancing the role. She betrayed her emotions with delicate flicks of her glance followed by demure lowering of her gaze, by intimate touches of her hand against Albrecht’s sleeve, and the pure joy of dancing in perfect synchronization with him.

No automaton could imitate that joy.

Part of my attention strayed backstage, where Lady Ada continued to fine tune the codex. Mr. Babbage stomped around her with oil can, screwdriver, and tuning fork ready for any task.

Mostly I watched the dance, amazed that human bodies could perform the feats of athleticism with such grace as demanded by the ballet.

In my imagination I lived with the dancers the idealized carefree celebration of a peasant festival. I shared the wonder of young love with Giselle and Albrecht. I wanted to curse when proud Princess Bathilde entered with her hunting party and accepted hospitality from Giselle and her mother. All the women wore riding habits in the latest fashion with top hats tilted at the precise rakish angle.

And then to heap irony upon betrayal they danced together sharing the specialness of the newly betrothed. They compared the handsomeness, and loving attention of their men, not realizing they were engaged to the same man.

Lady Ada closed up the back of her mechanical dancer. “It’s ready,” she whispered to Mr. Babbage on a satisfied sigh.

“Activate her,” he ordered. “We need her to dance as much as possible for the experiment to work.”

“For heaven’s sake, Charles. Let the understudy at least finish the first act. This may be her only chance to dance this role and she deserves it,” Lady Ada admonished him. She patted the pocket of her leather apron for the key.

I had to get the key away from her.

But keys can be duplicated. The codex on the other hand were complex, and had to be hand punched so that no two were ever alike. The chances of a replacement working as well as the original were slim.

On stage Giselle learned the truth about her lover and began to go mad. She danced a sad echo of the earlier pas de deux in broken and jerky attempts to deny the truth.

Chills began to crawl along my flesh. More than just dancers had come to this rehearsal. I saw misty forms gathering in the flies above the scenery. The same talent that gave me the occasional true vision also allowed me to sense the presence of the Wili.

The dark haired girl in the Spanish shawl came up behind me. “It’s so sad,” she sniffed.

“Why aren’t you in costume, on stage?” I asked, jerked out of the pathos occurring on stage and the gathering storm of emotion above us.

“Oh, I’m not a dancer. I came looking for Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace. I have a packet of messages for her from George Fraser. Are you she?”

I snorted. “Do I look like the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom?” Well actually, the fineness of my gown and black lace were costly and quite fashionably cut by the same modiste as used by the Queen’s ladies in waiting.

A quick glance at Lady Ada and I knew why the young lady had made the mistake. In her plain brown gown of sturdy linen and her leather apron, she could pass for any of the dressers and servants who worked backstage.

“Save the letters for now. I am one of Lady Ada’s agents. I have a job for you. Can you distract that woman while I steal the automaton’s key?”

“I think so.”

On stage Giselle stole Albrecht’s sword, which had been given back to him the moment Princess Bathilde claimed him as her own. She continued her mad dance as Albrecht and Hillarion tried desperately to get the weapon away from her.

Too late. Giselle ran the blade through her body. A blossom of red silk scarves streamed from the “wound.” A collective gasp rose from the cast. The music paused.

Giselle stumbled forward a few more steps in the last parody of life, then collapsed into her mother’s arms.

Albrecht erupted in an angry dance of grief and blame. He brow beat Hillarion for betraying him, his servant for bringing Bathilde to this village, Bathilde for not being Giselle. He blamed everyone for Giselle’s death except himself.

From my angle I could tell Giselle held the blade beneath her arm, clutched tight to her side. She fought to keep her breathing shallow, not betraying that she actually lived. The audience could well believe she had killed herself.

The curtain sank down from the flies and the dancers all scurried away to prepare for the second act while stage hands reset the stage to a woodland with a fresh grave and marker.

“I’m Emma,” the girl beside me said, shouting into my ear to be heard above the noise of the steam engine shifting sets and sending tendrils of steam upward upon the stage manager’s command.

“And I am Madame Magdala, proprietress of the Book View Café and agent provocateur of Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace.”

We shook hands.

“Tell me are you acquainted with the Abbess of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration?” she asked during a lull in the commotion.

Somewhat shocked by this girl’s connection to an old friend who once gave me refuge, I replied curtly. “Of course.”

Emma nodded agreement willing to say as little as possible about connections. “I’m thinking I could replace Mr. Fraser as an agent of Lady Lovelace now that he’s...um...dead.”

“Georgie dead? Oh my. I knew he’d come to a bad end but I’d hoped he would survive his current mission. He was one of my favourites. A bit cheeky and forward, but a damned good agent.”

“Damned is right,” she muttered darkly. Then she brightened and looked me directly in the eye. “My thoughts exactly.” She flashed me a grin akin to George Fraser on one of his better days.

“Come, we must get that key.”

Too late. Lady Ada inserted the notched instrument into the centre of an artificial rose on the automaton’s waist corsage. Its hands came to life first, flexing fingers, then hands and arms. It rose up on pointe, barely needing the special dance shoes to support the body.

Lastly the eyes blinked and a bit of animation came to the mouth.

It betrayed no emotion. How could it duplicate the innocent joy of Giselle at the beginning and the sad madness at the end?

I stopped my progress through the backstage maze and held Emma back with my hand. “We have to try something else.”

The engines whistled, releasing pent up steam.

The automaton winced and slapped its hands over the imitation ears.

I remembered the butler at Lord Reedstone’s home deliberately creaking the stairs in an annoying pattern. I remembered my own steam whistle in the café as a precaution to detect artificial beings.

I had an idea.

“Wait here Emma. When you can, steal the key!” I dashed off for the orchestra pit.

The musicians stretched and chatted. A few took sips from flasks. The conductor paced. He paused here and there to make notations on a musical score, to hum a note for a violinist to retune, to pat a flautist on the back for a job well done.

I wanted that flute. Too many men stood together blocking my access. Instruments are expensive, they’d not give one over to an outsider, despite my connection to Countess Lovelace and Charles Babbage who had put up the production money.

I tapped my foot to the rhythm the drummer sketched on his instrument.

As the stagehands moved off with their imitation forest in position, the dancers took their places and technicians hooked a flying harness to the soloist who would dance the role of Myrta, queen of the Wili.

Carlotta danced among the corps de ballet, having been demoted from the starring role now that the mechanical dancer had been repaired. She scowled, thrusting her toe shoes into the rosin box and grinding the yellow crystals angrily.

The ballerinas now wore elegant ball gowns made of filmy, green tinged tulle, cut to mid calf, a tad shorter than a fashionable gown, so they wouldn’t trip on the layers. With a wide neckline and puffy short sleeves, they could have worn those costumes to any grand party in the city. Except that each of them had a pair of tiny wings, more tulle stretched over fine wire, attached to the back of the dress.

They looked exactly like the woodcut in the book of German folklore.

Lady Ada guided her automaton to the dressing room to change her costume for the second act.

We had to wait. I needed that dancer on stage, the only place it would be separated from Lady Ada’s protective presence.

The orchestra and dancers took their places. I edged behind the percussion section, avoiding the man with small hammers poised above the chimes. His concentration riveted upon the conductor and his score. I and the huge kettle drums remained well behind his peripheral vision.

Act two began. The engines beneath the stage pumped out steam that drifted about the stage in clumps, hot and smelling of the sulfurous coal that spawned it. The sensation was almost like being inside a laundry.

Myrta in her harness flew across the stage. The audience glimpsed her briefly between two sets. Clever lighting darkened the area above and behind her, making the chain that held her disappear from view. Then she came back the other way, closer to the front, looking more real and substantial. Then a third time near the proscenium and lower until she landed soundlessly on pointe. She took tiny steps that made her seem to float between trees. Behind one of them a stage hand slipped the hook off her harness. The steam thinned.

The engine continued to throb.

Hastily I searched what I could see of the backstage area for indications of the lever for the stage manager to release steam when he needed, or when the boiler became too full and tense.

Emma wandered about, also seeking something.

A hunting party led by Hillarion the huntsman entered from stage right, lost in the dark woods. He’d delayed the nobles’ sport too long. Midnight approached. They all shivered in dread as the mist thickened and forms moved within the concealing steam. When they hurried off, the hunting party did not notice the mound of a new made grave upstage, far left. A cross with the name Giselle marked it.

The Wili entered, filling the forest glade. They danced in sad, silent groups, delicate, ethereal ghosts. Their wings fluttered and some of them rose up, flying. The music became as much a part of them as the steps, haunting. Gentle notes soared and played, suggesting new images, giving the dance completion.

I gasped in awe at the beauty and precision of the dance and the staging, and hoped to view the entire thing uninterrupted on another night. The music became more intense.

The Wili gathered around Giselle’s grave. The automaton rose up from the grave, dressed as a Wilis, complete with filmy wings. She danced with them, her face as blank and free of emotion as I expected. She didn’t even have the serenity of her sister Wili.

Then three of the dancers herded Hillarion back into the clearing. Over the next few minutes they forced him to dance with them in ever increasing speed. They pushed him around and around, prodding him to continue when he flagged. Limp and exhausted he gripped his chest and collapsed into a marvellous stage death.

The satisfaction, almost glee, on the faces of the Wili did not reach the silver shadow dancer. But she lifted her gaze from her own feet to the motionless man. And then she stared upward, into the lingering clouds of steam.

I saw what she saw, movement. Mysterious shadows, transparent forms that might be the outlines of women.

The true Wili waited.

Not much time now.

Giselle danced her solo of welcome into the sisterhood of the Wili.

And then Albrecht entered carrying a bouquet of flowers. He searched about, unaware of the Wili or of Giselle. He placed the flowers on her grave and knelt in true regret.

The Wili pounced upon him.

The true Wili chose that moment to flow into the open mouth of the automaton. They had found a willing vessel to inhabit, to give them substance and power.

I struck the huge kettle drum with the padded stick with all my strength. Again and again, I pounded the instrument, setting up a deafening reverberation. The silver dancer stopped her dance in mid step, grabbed her ears and shrieked.

I dashed up the side steps to the stage.

“What is going on here?” Lady Ada demanded. She hastened on stage with long, angry strides. Charles Babbage approached from the opposite side of the stage.

Emma circled around behind Lady Ada. Her nimble fingers barely brushed the apron pocket containing the key.

The dancer continued to scream in pain.

I searched the array of levers behind the stage managers’ podium for a clue.

“Stop that! Give me back the key,” Lady Ada demanded.

“Oooh,” Emma moaned, swaying between Lady Ada and the automaton. She panted as if she’d laced her corset too tightly, holding the back of her right hand to her forehead. She swayed and moaned some more. “The Wili, they’re here. They’re hungry. Oh so hungry. They need men’s souls. They thirst for vengeance.” She spread her arms so that the shawl with its colorful embroidery of flowers and exotic birds flared out taking on the silhouette of wings.

A bit over-dramatic but Lady Ada and Babbage hung back.

Deftly Emma pocketed the golden key inside her bodice. They’d not get it away from her easily.

The automaton began to revive as the echoing drum beats faded. I had to hurry.

The levers presented a puzzling array, different coloured handles, different lengths. I’m sure the stage manager knew them all intimately. Where would he logically reach for an emergency bleed of steam in an overheated boiler?

The third one from the left that stuck out an extra inch from the others. The one with a red silk twist of thread tied to it. The thread matched the fringe on Emma’s fabulous shawl. I leaned all my weight onto it.

Steam escaped through every vent, hissing and whistling loud enough to wake the dead.

Or crush a silver dancer.

It ran right and left, forward and back, circling and tearing at the mechanical ears. It howled. Its knees locked. The spine bent at the hips and froze.

Lady Ada’s newest creation stared blankly at the floor. Temporarily dead.

“Give me the key!” Lady Ada demanded of Emma. “I have to reactivate the dancer.” She had to shout to be heard over the whistle.

“Myrta, Queen of the Wili stole it,” Emma stated, still in her breathy vision voice. She acted her role so well, I wondered if she truly communicated with a Wilis.

I had to hurry, before the ghostly spirits overcame the codex and restarted the dancer on their own, with souls that wanted violence. I fixed a hook on the release lever so that the screaming whistle continued to plague us.

In a flash I was across the stage and fumbling with the back panel of the automaton.

“No, Magdala,” Lady Ada cried. She ran to my side. Her hands covered mine. “If you remove the codex now, before she’s been properly deactivated you will ruin the internal structures.”

“Good.” I wrenched open the panel.

Steam rose up to fill my mouth and nose. Foul stuff smelling of sulphur and rotting wood.

Was it steam, or the Wili trying to choke me?

Lady Ada tried to force the panel closed again. I gave her an indelicate shove with my elbow to her mid section. She doubled over with a loud exhalation, too well bred to allow a minor hurt to show as more than surprise.

In the seconds Lady Ada took to recover, I yanked out the first golden card of the codex to reach my fingers. The sulphurous mist thickened. I coughed it out of my mouth and held my breath. Then I grabbed a second card and a third, throwing them toward Emma who neatly tromped on them, her heel gouging the delicate punch holes that guided pins and gears.

The mist tried to gag me. Or possess me. I cupped my hands and drove it back inside the automaton and slammed the back panel shut. It jerked and flailed as spirits tried to make the gears and joints move. It began a desperate St Vitus dance of death, rocking off balance, stumbling, circling blindly. Trying to find the music that would lead it back to life.

With one last jerk back, it toppled, and crashed to the stage, all joints locked. Inert, dead, merely a lump of useless parts.

I breathed a sigh of relief and fell to my knees, coughing out the last of the Wilis effluvia.

“What have you done?” Charles Babbage screeched. “You’ve ruined my experiment.”

“I have no doubt you will try again, to prove that souls can inhabit machines, in hopes of resurrecting your wife and children,” Lady Ada said. She breathed heavily, eyeing me warily. “I presume you have an explanation, Madame Magdala.”

“Of course I do. A tale best told over a cup of coffee. But until then, I must inform you that Lord Reedstone is proposing a law in the Lords that will classify a soul as property. Theft or involuntary relocation of a soul will be punishable as larceny.”

Charles Babbage blanched. Lady Ada drew a deep breath and schooled her features, no doubt hoping this would be the end of attempts to bring her depraved father back into this world.

But it wouldn’t. She and I both knew that.

“Come, Emma, we will retire to the nearest cafe and allow Madame Carlotta to resume her rightful role of Giselle. She needs to finish this rehearsal, and we need to return to the Book View Café. Tell me have you ever ridden a Pegasus? It’s quite an adventure.”

“Oh, I look forward to it. When do we leave?”

Irene Radford and her husband make their home on Mt. Hood in Oregon. They frequently hike on the mountain and in the Columbia River Gorge. They share their home with a psychotic Lilac Point Siamese.

Irene trained in classical ballet, dancing with the acclaimed pro-am company Ballet du Lac in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Join Irene on her Live Journal blog www.livejournal.com/users/rambling_phyl and share her latest hiking adventures, progress reports on her books, and gushing over wildflowers.

Also available from Book View Café

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The mind tells the story—but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science, Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.

Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Café got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form.

Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.

What happens when thirteen authors get to giggling over implausible titles for the collection? They choose the most illogical and then they have to write something to go with it. So, yes, there are three flash fiction versions of Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls.

Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford.

$4.99

Read a Rocket Boy sample story at our website.

Publication information

The Shadow Conspiracy

Tales from the Age of Steam

Edited by

Phyllis Irene Radford

and

Laura Anne Gilman

Published by Book View Press

www.bookviewcafe.com

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Table of Contents

The Shadow Conspiracy

Editors’ Introduction

The Accumulating Man

The Persistence of Souls

The Soul Jar

Zombi

A Princess of Wittgenstein

The Savage and the Monster

The Water Weapon

The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

Shadow Dancer

Also available from Book View Café

Publication information