Pa’s eyes grew round. The lines in his face smoothed out as Plaquette spun her story. A cruel prince. A fearsome army. A lieutenant with a conscience.
It would have to be Msieur.
That ended up being a good night. Pa fell back to sleep, his face more peaceful than she’d seen in days. Plaquette curled up against his side. She was used to his snoring and the heaviness of his drugged breath. She meant to sleep there beside him, but her mind wouldn’t let her rest. It was full of imaginings: dancing with Msieur at the Orleans Ballroom, her wearing a fine gown and a fixed, automaton smile; Billy’s hopeful glances and small kindnesses, his endearingly nervous bad jokes; and Billy’s shoulders, already bowed at seventeen from lifting and hauling too-heavy boxes day in, day out, tick, tock, forever (how long before her eyesight went from squinting at tiny watch parts?); an army of tireless metal Georges, more each day, replacing the fleshly porters, and brought about in part by her cleverness. Whichever path her future took, Plaquette could only see disaster.
Yet in the air above her visions, They flew.
Finally Plaquette eased herself out of bed. The apartment was dark; she’d long since blown out the lamp to save wick and oil. She tiptoed carefully to the kitchen. By feel, she got Claude’s reading scroll out of the pocket of her apron. She crept out onto the landing. By the light of a streetlamp, she unrolled and re-rolled it so that she could see the end of the book. The punched holes stopped a good foot-and-a-half before the end of the roll. There was that much blank space left.
Plaquette knew My Lady Nobody practically word for word. She studied the roll, figuring out the patterns of holes that created the sounds which allowed Claude to speak the syllables of the story. She could do this. She crept back inside and felt her way through the kitchen drawer. She grasped something way at the back. A bottle, closed tight, some liquid still sloshing around inside it. A sniff of the lid told her what it was. She put the bottle aside and kept rummaging through the drawer. Her heart beat triple-time when she found what she was looking for. Pa did indeed have more than one ticket punch.
It was as though there was a fever rising in her; for the next few hours she crouched shivering on the landing and in a frenzy, punched a complicated pattern into the end of the scroll, stopping every so often to roll it back to the beginning for guidance on how to punch a particular syllable. By the time she’d used up the rest of the roll, her fingers were numb with cold, her teeth chattering, the sky was going pink in the east, and the landing was scattered with little circles of white card. But her brain finally felt at peace.
She rose stiffly to her feet. A light breeze began blowing the white circles away. Ma would probably be home in another hour or so. Plaquette replaced the scroll in her apron pocket, changed into her night gown, and lay back down beside her father. In seconds, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
MA WOKE HER all too soon. Plaquette’s eyes felt like there was grit in them. Pa was still snoring away. Ma gestured her out to the kitchen, where they could speak without waking him. Ma’s face was drawn with fatigue. She’d spent the night fetching and carrying for white people. “How he doing?” she asked.
“Tolerable. Needs a bath.”
Ma sighed. “I know. He won’t let me wash him. He ashamed.” Plaquette felt her eyebrows lift in surprise. The Pa she knew washed every morning and night and had a full bath on Sundays.
Ma pulled a chair out from under the table and thumped herself down into it. Her lips were pinched together with worry. “He not getting better.”
“We’re managing.”
“I thought he might mend. Some do. Tomorrow he supposed to start his San Francisco run. Guess I gotta do it.”
At first, Plaquette felt only envy. Even Ma was seeing the world. Then she understood the problem. “San Francisco run’s five days.”
Ma nodded. “I know you can see to him all by yourself, Darling. You’re a big girl. But you gotta go to work for Msieur too. Your Pa, he’s not ready to be alone all day.”
It was one weight too many on the scales. Plaquette feared it would tip her completely over. She stammered, “I-I have to-to go, Ma.” Blindly, she grabbed her bonnet and apron and sped out the door. Guilt followed her the whole way to Msieur’s. Leaving Ma like that.
She would have to start charming Msieur, sooner rather than later.
Plaquette was the first one to the shop, just as she’d planned it. Msieur generally lingered over his breakfast, came down in time to open the showroom to custom. She’d have a few minutes to herself. She’d make it up to Ma later. Sit down with her and Pa Sunday morning and work out a plan.
Claude and the George were beside her bench, right where she’d left them. She bent and patted Claude on the cheek. She delved into Claude’s base through its open hatch and removed the remaining three ‘books’ which Claude recited when the rolls of punched paper were fed into his von Kempelen apparatus. Claude bided open and silent, waiting to be filled with words. Eagerly Plaquette lowered her book onto the spool and locked that in place, then threaded the end – no, the beginning, the very beginning of this new story – onto the toothed drum of the von Kempelen and closed its cover.
She removed the ribbon bearing Claude’s key from his wrist. She wound him tight and released the guard halfway – for some of the automaton’s mechanisms were purely for show. In this mode, Claude’s carven lips would remain unmoving.
With a soft creak, the spool began to turn. A flat voice issued from beneath Claude’s feet:
“They Fly at Çironia, by Della R. Mausney. Prologue. Among the tribes and villages –”
It was working!
Afire with the joy of it, Plaquette began working on the George again.
But come noon the metal man was still as jake-legged as Pa. Seemed there was nothing Plaquette could do to fix either one.
She tried to settle her thoughts. She couldn’t work if her mind was troubled. She’d listened to her punchcard story three times today already. She knew she was being vain, but she purely loved hearing her words issue forth from Claude. The story was a creation that was completely hers, not built on the carcass of someone else’s ingenuity. Last night’s sleepless frenzy had cut the bonds on her imagination. She’d set free something she didn’t know she had in her. Claude’s other novels were all rich folk weeping over rich folk problems, white folk pitching woo. They Fly at Çironia was different, wickedly so. The sweep and swoop of it. The crudeness, the brutality.
She wound the key set into Claude’s side until it was just tight enough, and tripped the release fully. With a quiet sound like paper riffling, Claude’s head started to move. His eyelids flicked up and down. His head turned left to right. The punchcard clicked forward one turn. Claude’s jaw opened, and he began to recite.
“Now,” she whispered to the George, “one more time. Let’s see what’s to be done with you.” She reached into his chest with her tweezers as the familiar enchantment began to come upon her. While the Winged Ones screeed through the air of Çironia’s mountains on pinions of quartz, Plaquette wove and balanced quiltings of coiled springs, hooked them into layer upon layer of delicately-weighted controls, dropped them into one another’s curving grasps, adjusted and readjusted the workings of the George’s legs.
Finally, for the fourth time that day, the Winged Ones seized the story’s teller and tossed him among themselves in play. Finally, for the fourth time that day, he picked himself up from the ground, gathered about himself such selfness as he could.
The short book ended. Gradually, Plaquette’s trance did the same.
Except for the automatons, she was alone. The time was earlier than it had been last night. Not by much. Shadows filled the wide corners, and the little light that fell between buildings to slip in at the tall windows was thin and nearly useless.
A creaking board revealed Msieur’s presence in the showroom just before the door communicating with it opened. He stuck his head through, smiling like the overdressed man Plaquette had run
from on her way home last night. She returned the smile, trying for winsomeness.
“Not taking ill, are you?” Msieur asked. So much for her winning ways.
He moved forward into the room to examine the George. “Have you finished for the day? I doubt you made much progress.” His manicured hands reopened the chest she had just shut. He bent as if to peer inside, but his eyes slid sideways, towards Plaquette’s bosom and shoulders. She should stand proud to show off her figure. Instead, she stumbled up from her bench and edged behind the stolid protection of Claude’s metal body.
Smiling more broadly yet, Msieur turned his gaze to the George’s innards in reality. “You do appear to have done something, however – Let’s test it!” He closed up the chest access. He retrieved the mechanism’s key from the table, wound it tight, and tripped its initial release. The George lumbered clumsily to its feet.
“Where’s that instruction card? Ah!” Msieur inserted it and pressed the secondary release button.
A grinding hum issued from the metal chest. The George’s left knee lifted – waist-high – higher! But then it lowered and the foot kicked out. It landed heel first. One step – another – a third – a fourth – four more – it stopped. It had reached the workroom’s far wall, and, piled against it, the Gladstones and imperials it was now supposed to load itself with. It whirred and stooped. It ticked and reached, tocked and grasped, and then –
Then it stuck in place. Quivering punctuated by rhythmic jerks ran along its blue-painted frame. Rrrr-rap! Rrrr-rap! RRRR-RAP! With each repetition the noise of the George’s faulty operation grew louder. Msieur ran quickly to disengage its power.
“Such precision! Astonishing!” Msieur appeared pleased at even partial success. He stroked his neat, silky beard thoughtfully. He seemed to come to a decision. “We’ll work through the night. The expense of the extra oil consumed is nothing if we succeed – and I believe we will.”
By “we,” Msieur meant her. He expected for her to toil on his commission all night.
But what about Pa?
Self-assured though he was, Msieur must have sensed her hesitation. “What do you need? Of course – you must be fed! I’ll send to the Café du Monde –” He glanced around the empty workshop. “– or if I must go myself, no matter. A cup of chicory and a slice of chocolate pie, girl! How does that sound?”
Chocolate pie! But as she opened her mouth to assent she found herself saying instead, “But Ma – Pa –”
Msieur was already in the showroom; she heard the muffled bell that rang whenever he slid free the drawer holding the day’s receipts. Plaquette crept forward; obediently, Claude followed her onto the crimson carpet. Startled, Msieur thrust his hands below the counter so she couldn’t see what they held. “What’s that you say?”
“My folks will worry if I don’t get home ’fore too late. I better –”
“No. You stay. I’ll have the Café send a messenger.”
That wouldn’t help. She couldn’t say why, though, so she had to let Msieur herd her back to the workroom. Under his suspicious eye she wound up the George again and walked it to her bench. Not long after, Claude rejoined her. “That’s right,” said Msieur, satisfied. “And if this goes well, I’ll have a proposition to make to your mother. Eh? You have been quite an asset to me. I should like to, erm, deepen our connection.”
Plaquette swallowed. “Yes, Msieur.”
His face brightened. “Yes? Your own place in the Quarter. You would keep working in the shop, of course. Splendid, then. Splendid.” He winked at her! The door to the showroom slammed shut. The jangle of keys told Plaquette that Msieur had locked her in. Like a faint echo, the door to the street slammed seconds later.
She sank back onto her seat. Only greyness, like dirty water, trickled in at the workroom windows, fading as she watched.
So even if she became Msieur’s placée, tended to their left-hand marriage, he would expect her to continue in this dreary workroom.
Plaquette frowned, attempting to recall if she’d heard the grate and clank of the safe’s door closing on the day’s proceeds, the money and precious jewels Msieur usually hid away there. Sometimes she could remember what had happened around her during the last few minutes of her trance.
Not today.
Only the vague outlines of its windows broke the darkening workroom’s walls. And beneath where she knew the showroom door stood, a faint, blurry smear gleamed dully, vanishing remnant of l’heure bleue. She must go home now. Before Msieur returned with his chocolate pie and his unctuous wooing.
She considered the showroom door a moment longer. But the door from there led right to the street. People would be bound to see her escape. The workroom door, then; the delivery entrance that led to the alleyway. She twisted to face it.
Msieur had reinforced this door the same summer when, frightened of robbers, he sank his iron safe beneath the workroom’s huge oak cabinet. It was faced outside with bricks, a feeble attempt at concealment that made it heavy – too heavy for Plaquette alone to budge. Plaquette, however, was not alone.
Marshalling the George into position, she set him to kick down the thick workroom door. The George walked forward a few more feet, then stopped there in the alley, lacking for further commands. A dumb mechanical porter with no more sense than a headless chicken.
Though she hadn’t planned it, Plaquette found she knew what she wanted to do next. She rushed back to her bench. Claude cheerfully rocked after her. She erased all the corrections that she’d meticulously made to Msieur’s notes. She scribbled in new ones, any nonsense that came to mind. Without her calculations Msieur would never work out the science of making a wireless iron George. Someone else eventually might, but this way, it wouldn’t be on Plaquette’s conscience.
She took a chair with her out into the alleyway, climbed up onto it, and unscrewed the George’s cap. She upturned it so that it sat like a bowl on the George’s empty head. From her apron she produced the bottle she’d taken from Ma’s kitchen; the one with the dregs of jake in it. Ma could never bear to throw anything away, even poison. Plaquette poured the remaining jake all over the receiver inside the George’s cap. There was a satisfying sizzling sound of wires burning out. Jake leg this, you son of a – well. Ma wouldn’t like her even thinking such language. She screwed the cap back onto the George’s head. Msieur might never discover the sabotage.
One more trip back inside the workroom, to Claude’s broom closet. On a hook in there hung the Pullman porter’s uniform that Msieur had been given to model the George’s painted costume after. It was a men’s small. A little large on her, but she belted in the waist and rolled up the trouser hems. She slid her hands into the trouser pockets, and exclaimed in delight. So much room! Not dainty, feminine pockets – bigger even than those stitched onto her workroom apron. She could carry almost anything she pleased in these!
But now she really must hurry. She strewed her clothing about the workroom – let Msieur make of that what he would. A kidnapping or worse, her virgin innocence soiled, maybe her lifeless body dumped in the bayou. And off they went – Plaquette striding freely in her masculine get-up, one foot in front of the other, making her plan as she made up the stories she told Pa: by letting the elements come to her in the moment. Claude rolled in her wake, tipping dangerously forward as he negotiated the steep drop from banquette to roadway, falling farther and farther behind.
When they came to the stairs up the side of the building where she lived she was stumped for what to do. Claude was not the climbing sort. For the moment she decided to store him in the necessary – she’d figure out how to get him back to Msieur’s later. She’d miss his cheerful face, though.
Ma yelped when a stranger in a porter’s uniform walked in the door. She reached for her rolling pin.
“Ma! It just me!” Plaquette pulled off her cap, let her hair bush out free from under it.
Ma boggled. “Plaquette? Why you all got up like that?”
The sound of Pa’s
laughter rasped from her parents’ bedroom. Pa was sitting up in bed, peering through the doorway. “That’s my hellcat girl,” he said. “Mother, you ain’t got to go out on the Frisco run. Plaquette gon’ do it.”
Ma stamped her foot at him. “Don’t be a fool! She doing no such thing.”
Except she was! Till now, Plaquette hadn’t thought it through. But that’s exactly what she was going to do.
Ma could read the determination in her face. “Child, don’t you see? It won’t work. You too young to pass for your Pa. Gonna get him fired.”
Plaquette thought fast. “Not Pa. Pa’s replacement.” She pulled herself up to her full height. “Pleased to introduce you to Mule Aranslyde, namely myself. Ol’ Pullman’s newest employee.” She sketched a mock bow. Pa cackled in delight.
A little plate of peas and greens and ham fat had been set aside for her. Plaquette spooned it down while Ma went on about how Plaquette must have lost her everlovin’ mind and Pa wasn’t helping with his nonsense. Then Plaquette took a still protesting Ma by the hand and led her into the bedroom. “Time’s running short,” she said. “Lemme tell y’all why I need to go.” That brought a bit more commotion, though she didn’t even tell them the half of it. Just the bit about the George. And she maybe said she’d broken it by accident.
MA TWISTED PLAQUETTE’S long braids into a tight little bun and crammed them under the cap. “Don’t know how you gonna fake doin Pa’s job,” she fretted. “Ain’t as easy as it looks. I messed up so many times, supervisor asked me if I been in the whiskey. Nearly got your Pa fired.”
Plaquette took Ma’s two hands in her own. “I’m a ‘prentice, remember?” She patted the letter in her breast pocket that Pa had dictated to her, the one telling Pa’s porter friend Jonas Jones who she was and to look out for her and thank you God bless you. She kissed Pa goodbye. Ma walked her out onto the landing, and that’s when Plaquette’s plan began to go sideways. There at the foot of the stairs was Claude, backing up and ramming himself repeatedly into the bottom stair. Plaquette had forgotten she had Claude’s wardenclyffe in her pocket. All this time he’d been trying to follow it.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Ten Page 8