by Jean Rabe
She ran to the door and called for one of the messenger boys to gather his counterparts and report back as soon as he could. Ten minutes later, there were ten boys waiting outside the office, and twice that in family members who had already headed for the mines when the alarm had sounded.
When Trevor finally transmitted again, she could almost feel the tremble in his hand from the way the gauge quivered as it dipped and dropped as he pulsed the names. Six. Only six, including Trevor, were still alive. As the names came in, she wrote each one on a separate piece of paper and waved for one of the boys at the door to come forward and take it. By the time the last had been given out, the wife of the first miner named had arrived, physically supported on the arms of Father, who was pale and disheveled and who seemed to have aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes.
Genevieve explained in simple, stark terms to the frightened woman that her husband, Daniel, was alive, but not for long. They should say their goodbyes. She would transmit the words to the mine and Trevor would transmit back the words of her husband from the other end.
The woman started to wail and cry. Father moved to comfort her, but Genevieve cut him off. “There’s no time for that, you understand. There’s no time. Mourn him when he’s dead. Cherish him while he still lives. Tell him you love him while you still can be heard.”
The woman nodded dully and composed herself enough for a brief farewell. Each of the other four women did the same in turn. The conversations were heart-wrenching, though unsurprisingly simple and similar to one another.
When the goodbyes of the women were finished, the vicar came in and Genevieve dutifully transmitted the words the Church required to see to the care of the doomed men’s souls, along with a few private words from the vicar to Trevor about how the investment in his education had been paid back a thousand-fold.
And then it was Genevieve’s turn to speak with Trevor. She asked the vicar to wait outside and sent Father to deal further with the grieving widows-to-be and shut the door.
“Alone,” she pulsed.
“How I wish that word could be ‘together,’” he replied.
“We have been. We will be. We are.”
“From afar,” came Trevor’s shaky reply. “Same country, same town, same office, yet always and only from afar. I have spent hours coding I wish I had spent cuddling.”
She wished the same, but now was not the time for recriminations. She had to remain strong. “No regrets. Sight, sound, touch. Merely signals our brains interpret to convey reality. We have made our own signals, our own reality. We have known love, even if we have never spoken it aloud.”
His pulsed reply came quickly, as if afraid there was no time for even a few brief dots and dashes. “I do love you. I have loved you since we first met. Know that. Remember that.”
“I always will.”
She received no reply for more than a minute and she feared time had run out, but finally an increasingly shaky signal returned. “Daniel has gone unconscious. Pressure, CO2. Not long now.”
“I will always be here,” she answered.
“I’ve nowhere to go,” he pulsed.
She looked up at Father’s desk and the mine plans and the business ledgers and all the mundane trappings of life, suddenly hating what progress and business and commerce had done to Trevor, to her, to them. “I’m sorry Father sent you into the mines,” she signaled.
“I’m not,” he replied. “I never could have told you I loved you except online.”
“I know.”
“One last thing.”
Her throat caught. “Anything.”
“Marry me.”
She was so adept at coding that her hands reacted at the speed of thought. “Marry you?”
“I know you are educated, rational, scientific. So am I. But I was also raised in an Anglican orphanage and I believe there is nothing irrational about forever. And if there is any chance at a forever with you, I will do anything in my limited time and power to assure it.”
“So will I.” She smiled at him through her tears, though she knew he could not see. She let her hands try to convey her mood, her love through a quick dance of dots and dashes. “Yes.”
Genevieve rushed to the door and called for the vicar, asking him to marry them as quickly as possible. She could see the hesitation in his eyes, hear the theological wheels turning in his mind as he considered the implications.
There was no time for this. She would transmit her own words of marriage regardless of what the vicar said if he did not respond. “Now,” she pressed. “Don’t desert him in his last moments.”
The ancient Anglican nodded and came inside. For a few moments the regulators pulsed and the gauges twitched and dipped.
“I do,” she said.
“I do,” he replied.
“Husband and wife,” said the vicar, who then retreated discreetly out of the office.
“Alone,” he coded. “Everyone else has fallen.”
“Together,” she replied. “Forever.”
“Now what?” he signaled back, the letters coming more slowly as dots and dashes became longer and more irregular.
“We consummate the marriage,” she pulsed, “as best we can, in our own signals.”
“My invention was never meant for that,” he answered, the last words almost indecipherable.
“I can see the possibilities, though,” she pulsed. “Just lie back and watch the dial on the gauge and I’ll do the best to bring you heaven until the real thing arrives.”
He did.
She did.
And they were together. Hot and steamy.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Jean Rabe is the author of more than two dozen fantasy and adventures novels and more short stories than she cares to count. She relishes editing anthologies . . . this is her seventeenth . . . almost as much as she likes tugging on old socks with her dogs (and she likes that a lot). She resides in Wisconsin, where the winters are too long, the summers are too short, and the football and steampunk are just right.
Martin H. Greenberg is the CEP of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and non-fiction in the world, with over 2,250 published books that have been translated into thirty-three languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented four Lifetime Achievement Awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres—the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Solstice Award in science fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery—the only person in publishing history to have received all four awards.
Also Available from DAW Books:
Boondocks Fantasy, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg Urban fantasy is popular, but what if you took that modern fantasy and moved it to the “sticks,” with no big city in sight? Trailer parks, fishing shacks, sleepy little towns, or specks on the map so small that if you blink while driving through you’ll miss them. Vampires, wizards, aliens, and elves might be tired of all that urban sprawl and prefer a spot in the country—someplace where they can truly be themselves without worrying about what the neighbors think! With stories by tale-spinners such as Gene Wolfe, Timothy Zahn, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Anton Strout, Linda P. Baker and others.
Zombiesque ,edited by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett, and Martin H. Greenberg
Zombies have long stalked and staggered through the darkest depths of human imagination, pandering to our fears about death and what lies beyond. But must zombies always be just shambling, brain-obsessed ghouls? If zombies actually maintained some level of personality and intelligence, what would they want more than anything? Could zombies integrate themselves into society? Could society accept zombies? What if a zombie fell in love? These are just some of the questions explored in original stories by Seanan McGuire, Nancy A. Collins, Tim Waggoner, Richard Lee Byers, Jim C. Hines, Jean Rabe, and Del Stone Jr. with others. Here’s your chance to take a walk on the undead side in these unforgettable tales told
from a zombie’s point of view.
Steampunk’d, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg
Science fiction is the literature of what if, and steampunk takes the what if along a particular time stream. What if steam power was the prime force in the Victorian era? How would that era change, and how would it change the future? From a Franco-British race for Kentucky coal to one woman’s determination to let no man come between her and her inventions . . . from “machine whisperers” to a Thomas Edison experiment gone awry, here are fourteen original tales of what might have been had steam powered the world in an earlier age, from Michael A. Stackpole, Donald J., Bingle, Robert Vardeman, Paul Genesse, Jody Lynn Nye, and others.
After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar, edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray
The first bar, created by the Sumerians after they were given the gift of beer by the gods, was known as the Ur-Bar. Although it has since been destroyed, its spirit lives on. In each age there is one bar that captures the essence of the original Ur-Bar, where drinks are mixed with magic and served with a side of destiny and intrigue. Now some of today’s most inventive scriveners, such as Benjamin Tate, Kari Sperring, Anton Strout, and Avery Shade, among others, have decided to belly up to the Ur-Bar and tell their own tall tales—from an alewife’s attempt to transfer the gods’ curse to Gilgamesh, to Odin’s decision to introduce Vikings to the Ur-Bar . . . from the Holy Roman Emperor’s barroom bargain, to a demon hunter who may just have met his match in the ultimate magic bar, to a bouncer who discovers you should never let anyone in after hours in a world terrorized by zombies. . . .