Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution

by Ann Vandermeer (ed)

  Ahead of her, the slim, pale lit, shadowed outline of her unit drew closer. Eliana thanked the God That Could Not See Her that she knew the narrow tracks of the Shaft’s circumference so well that she need not look down, that she did not need her gaze to direct every step. Though she did wish, squat and strong as she was, that she had not aged so much in the Shaft, that she still had the strength of the thirty-year-old woman who had descended so long ago and who could have carried the girl without the strain she felt.

  In the end, Eliana was forced to set her down to gain her strength before continuing. She sat, for a few minutes, on the path, in the pale glow of her uniform and a brighter cluster of fungi. She was used to seeing things in that eerie glow, but even so, the girl did not look healthy, or functional, or whatever other term you might use for a made person. Did a Returned die like her? Did they go pale and cold? Well, perhaps not cold. The Returned were always cold to touch. With a grunt, Eliana resumed her sure walk with the girl. If she had not been so close to the tarnished, bronze door of her unit when the strain began to tell again, she would have had to rest a second time. Instead, her muscles burning, the Botanist shouldered her way into the narrow unit and, thankful for once that she did not keep her bed upstairs, placed the girl down on the dark blue sheets.

  In the bright, yellow light inside the unit, Eliana could see that the girl was made not just from bronze but brass as well. The darker and lighter coloring that shone through the tattered remains of skin around her arms and legs suggested imperfection and sickness that had existed long before her fall. The girl’s clothes, which were made from red and brown, likewise hinted at blood and defecation. As if listening to her morbid thoughts, the sick machine moan of the girl’s heart grew louder, as if threatening to burst from its casing, struggling, pushing…and then silent, silent, silent, before with a spasm and a cough, it started again.

  Though her arms still ached from carrying the girl, Eliana descended to the bottom level of her unit. It was, like all single Botanist units, made from three narrow floors, linked by a set of rungs down the middle. The center floor was where she slept: there were tall, narrow closets and a comfortable chair that she sat and read in. The top floor held a small kitchen and the single, narrow table that she ate at. The knives and forks and cooking utensils were suspended from the ceiling and dangled like pit of spikes reversed. When strong winds buffeted the unit, they swayed dangerously and occasionally fell—she had been hit more than once, though thankfully she sheathed all the blades. There was an opening up there that she could push open to release smoke and odors from cooking. On the bottom floor was the workbench where she kept her samples, notes, and where she could manufacture pellets. There was also a tiny shower and toilet, the drains of which opened out into the Shaft in what she considered a small contradiction to her work of healing. In the opposite corner was a large cage that ran from floor to floor and that held a single, medium-size crow, all black and smooth, and that watched her with cold glass eyes.

  Under those eyes, she sat at her workstation and pulled free a piece of paper. In a thick, bold script, she wrote to the Department of Botany and explained what had happened. In her opinion, Eliana stated, she did not believe the Returned had much time left. She did not ask how the girl had come to be at the Shaft, or how she fell, though she might have, because it was difficult to do either without help; but she did not ask, because she was afraid of upsetting someone, which would result in aid not being sent. In her own mind, Eliana had decided that a Botanist had let her through, and the resulting theories of murder and mystery flowered in her mind. Who knew if they were true, however.

  Once she had finished the letter, she placed the note in a small brass case and walked over to the cage. The crow slipped out and perched on her arm with cold claws. It waited patiently as she attached the case to its leg. Once that was done, she climbed up a floor, and released it into the dark of the Shaft.

  When Eliana could no longer see the crow, she turned and regarded the girl who lay on her bed, slowly staining her sheets. A smell had begun to emerge: an oil machine mix of urine and shit and something as equally unpleasant. The girl’s body was still moaning, though it reminded her of growling, now, as if were fighting for life while the rest of it lay dying.

  When the girl made from bronze awoke that night, she did not scream.

  Eliana had expected her to. She spent the evening in her narrow kitchen, expecting the cry at any moment. Returned or not, the Botanist believed that the sight of shattered limbs and torn skin would be reason enough for horror. At the very least, she had expected tears. But the girl gave neither. Instead, she pushed herself into a sitting position and waited, quietly, until Eliana descended from the kitchen. Having placed her flowing, luminous Botanist uniform in the closet, she now wore a blue shirt and a pair of comfortable, faded black pants. Her tattoos, words and patterns made from red and black ink, twisted along her thick left arm, and around the exposed left-hand side of her neck and foot. It was not until that foot, with its slightly crooked toes, and the nail missing from the smallest, touched the cool bronze floor of the unit, that the girl spoke:

  “I appear to be broken.”

  Her voice was faint, but purposefully so, rendering it a pampered girl’s voice, the quality of which instantly annoyed the other woman. “Yes,” Eliana replied, curt where she had not planned to be. “You fell.”

  “This—this is the—”

  “Shaft, yes.”

  The girl spoke slowly, each word a chore, the stuttering moan in her chest causing her to pause after every short sentence. “Yes, I fell.”

  “You remember falling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Landing?”

  “No.”

  Eliana approached the bed. The noxious odor grew, and she struggled to keep it from showing on her face. Folding her thick arms in front of her, Eliana gazed down at the girl, but the latter did not return her gaze. Finally, she said, “I have sent a bird to my department, telling them of you—”

  “What? No!”

  It was her turn to be cut off now, her turn to pause. Her thick eyebrows rose in her only hint of surprise. Before her, the girl, the fragile, lost girl who had fallen, and who had sat before Eliana in a confused haze, disappeared. Evaporated like water beneath the hot red sun. In response, the pity that Eliana had meant to be feeling, but that she could not, for reasons she had not been given time to explore, was no longer required, and her dislike, her hostility, which she had been ashamed of, had sudden reason for purchase inside her.

  The girl spat out, “Why did you do that?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re dying.”

  “Ha!”

  “You are.”

  “Of course I am!”

  Eliana had no reply, had not expected that.

  The girl made from bronze gave a coughing splutter of a laugh. It was caught between self-pity, self-hate, and desperation, and it ended raggedly as the struggling moan in her chest choked it off. Finally, pushing her single good hand through the tattered remains of her hair, she said, “I won’t be thanking you for this.”

  “I think,” Eliana said slowly, out of her depth, trying to find a way to understand the situation. “I think you best explain to me what is going on here.”

  “As if I would explain anything to someone marked like you are!”

  The tattoos. Of course, it was the tattoos that spoke of Eliana’s religion, of where she had been born. The clean skin of the Returned did as much for her as the tattoos did for Eliana. The intricate words and designs that ran across the Botanist’s body recorded the forty-two years she had been alive. Parents, siblings, her growth into adulthood, her failed jobs and relationships: the words of each ran beneath her clothes and spent most of the time on the left-hand side of her body, before crossing at her shoulders and neck and descending down her right side. Once a year she left the Shaft for those markings. Once a year a Mortician’s needle
and ink set down her life so that when she died, God would be able to read her body, her life, and judge her, for Life, for Heaven, for Damnation, for Obliteration.

  “There is no God in the Shaft,” Eliana said, finally. “Have you not heard that?”

  The girl laughed, again, but this time it was forced, angry, and each broken movement she made in the laughter stripped the appearance of youth from her. Finally, when she could force no more out, the woman, the woman who was much, much older than Eliana, and who smelt of decay, lowered her head. With her very real eyes staring at the woman who looked her senior, she said, “I need a drink. Do you have one?”

  She did.

  It was cheap wine that Eliana bought down for the Returned. The bottle was green, the label plain and simple, and she had used a quarter of it some weeks back in a meal that had not been improved by its inclusion. It was not an act of friendship, nor was it an act of trust, but it was a signal that the Botanist was, at the very least, understanding of the situation. No woman was at her best while dying. When the Returned took the bottle with her one good hand, she did so quickly, snatching it, ripping it from Eliana’s strong, blunt fingers, before taking a long drink—and that helped too with her decision.

  “How old are you?” Eliana asked, watching. She held a second, unopened, good bottle of wine in her hand, and did not bother to hide it.

  The Returned swallowed, then said, “This is like vinegar.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Eliana repeated.

  “No, I did not.” Her good hand placed the bottle between the shattered stumps of her legs. Loose silver wiring was reflected dully against it. “My name is Rachel, by the way.”

  “I didn’t ask that.”

  “No.” Her dark eyes met Eliana’s. “You’re too busy trying to figure out what I am, rather than who.”

  The Botanist unscrewed the cap off her wine bottle, said nothing.

  “I’m 128,” the Returned said, a hint of defiance in her tone. “Happy?”

  “Yes.”

  Eliana didn’t say it, but the Returned’s—Rachel’s—words had affected her. She had turned, given the back to her after she had replied, but the Botanist knew that she had been treating the woman as a thing. She thought that she had left that kind of prejudice behind when she had entered the Shaft, but Rachel’s words suggested that she had not.

  Grabbing her orange chair that had a colorful array of patches over it, she swung it around and dragged it near the bed. Once it was close enough, but not so close that the stink of the girl assaulted her overly, she sank into it, propped her feet up on the edge of the bed, and took a long drink in front of the other woman.

  “I bet yours tastes better,” Rachel said.

  “Let that be a lesson.” Shame had not made her more sympathetic. “Politeness has its rewards.”

  At that, the Returned laughed: a short burst, different from the earlier laughter, natural this time. A faint, unwilling smile creased Eliana’s face in response.

  “This is going well, don’t you think?” Rachel asked. Her broken arm lifted, paused. She grunted and her good hand picked up the bottle. “When I was standing on the edge of the Shaft, Joseph—do you know Joseph?”

  “Callagary?”

  “Yes.”

  A tall, thin, white, clean-skinned man on the Department of Botany’s Board of Directors. He had a stylish bronze eyepiece that recorded everything. “I know him,” Eliana said, and not kindly.

  “Yes, that was my response, too.” Rachel lifted the bottle, drunk. Around the stumps of her legs and the torn pants of her genitals, the stain was refreshed in both wetness and odor. “I’ve known worse, mind. Much worse. He showed me the Shaft when I asked, at least. Was more than happy too. I was his student for a little while. It turned him on, I think. He told me the Shaft had been made by lava—that the center of the Earth had ruptured, leaving the heat nowhere to go. So it burst out. It scarred the world, he said. Such a dramatic boy. I still remember that little drop in his voice. Scarred the world, he said quietly.”

  “That’s the theory,” she said.

  “Believe it?”

  “No one has seen the center.”

  “No.” She fell silent. Then, “No, he said that. He said that some had journeyed down. He said that they had never returned.”

  “And you?” Eliana pulled her legs off the bed, leaned forward.

  “What?”

  “What was your plan? Were you running from Joseph?”

  Rachel let out a breath, half a laugh, half a grunt, and rubbed her chest as if it were in pain. Perhaps it was. “Joseph was just a man for the night.”

  She frowned. “You’re a prostitute?”

  “Yes.” The Returned lifted the bottle, regarded her with the defiance she had shown earlier. “I’m a prostitute. A dirty whore. Are you morally outraged now?”

  “I’ve known whores.”

  The other woman started at her.

  “Just not Returned whores,” Eliana finished. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “You live in a giant hole in the ground.” Rachel took a long drink and the dark stain across the bedsheet increased. The wine was going right through her—her thirst, her need, would never be sated by it. Seemingly unaware, she added, “In this case, however, I do admit: there aren’t many of us. It’s expensive. Being Returned is expensive. You have a body partly carved and partly found. It has to look real. That’s not cheap, so to buy us is not cheap. No.”

  Eliana did not know how to respond. She was not, and had never had been, a woman who could connect with others quickly. She responded to situations better and was able to meet a moment with the appropriate emotional response without difficulty. But sitting in front of Rachel, watching the wine stain her bed, trying to hide her growing revulsion at the smell that was growing stronger, and aware that the woman’s voice was not really focused on her, Eliana was being asked not to react to the moment, but to the person; and here, she did not know what to say. Fortunately, she did not need to.

  “I have over a hundred years of being fucked,” Rachel said. Her good hand tightened around the neck of the bottle and a faint cracking followed. “In eight days, I will have been a Return for a hundred years. Another month, and I’ll have been working for a hundred seven years. Working! Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea? How many men and women have fucked me? How many have looked at me as if I was nothing—as if I was an object!

  “My boss looks at me just like that. She organizes who sees me. She keeps me in drugs. She makes sure I get what I need to live. She’s surely a lot better than some of the pimps I’ve seen, but she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t talk to me. She talks about me. She talks around me.” She stopped, gave a faint ha, then fell silent.

  “I don’t—”

  “She’s my eleventh boss,” Rachel said, not even noticing that she interrupted the other woman. “My eleventh pimp. I hate that old term. But she’s my number eleven. I have watched ten others get old. I have watched clients get old. I’ve watched them all go gray and small. It doesn’t matter how rich, how intelligent, how whatever they were. They each faded, they—

  “I had worked for two years before I was Returned.” The woman switched topics without pause, her mind erratic. “I wanted money. I had plans—plans. The world—this world—I wanted to see it. With the money I had left I could buy a house. I wouldn’t owe anything to anyone. But there was a problem. I got sick. I had a hole in my heart. A hole. Surgeons told me I wouldn’t live past twenty-eight unless I got it fixed. And you can earn a lot of money on your back, but it’s not enough to get a new heart. No. You need help for that.

  “The man who paid for my Return ran the Brothel of Exotics. That’s what he called it. He was a Returned himself: Baron De’Mediala. His real name was Gregory. I—I didn’t want to die. Twenty-eight is too young to die. He sat me down in his office. It was filled with statues of birds: flamingos, cockatoos, seagulls, and dozens of other birds, colored
yellow and green and pink—every color but black and red. If there was a hint of black or red in it, it wasn’t there. I later learned that he had a strange obsession with bright colors. Bright colors meant life. He had even dyed his hair a shocking lemon.

  “He said to me, ‘The price, it is great.’ He had that way of talking. A theatrical way. I heard a rumor that he had once been a stage magician. I told him that no price was too high, that I would pay it. Even if it meant a hundred years on my back, I would pay. He told me that I would probably never be free from the debt. He said, he said, ‘M’dear, m’dear, each year a repair must be done, a part of you fixed. Each year you will have to fix your appearance. Each year your living tissue will require ointments. Each year the wires in you will need to be cleaned. Each year your look and fashion will need updating.’ Each year, he said. But it didn’t matter—I told him it didn’t matter. I was so afraid. I didn’t see endless service as a problem. I thought, ‘What’s so different about that to the life I currently live?’

  “I learned. The Baron—that’s what I called him, the Baron—he knew. He had Returned himself. He knew the cost. He kept himself free with our servitude and—and—” Rachel’s voice trailed off for a moment. Eliana, having not moved once during her speech, shifted her bottle, but did not drink. Opposite her, the Returned lifted the bottle, took a short, sharp drink, then said, “He was killed for bodysnatching. They caught him one night standing in an open grave. That’s what I heard. There were eight of them and they burnt the skin from him. When he didn’t die, they removed his organs. You only need the heart—” she tapped her chest, rubbed the spot where the moan gurgled “— that mechanical heart to live. I don’t know how long it took them to get to that. I know you can live without everything else. I once had lungs. A liver. I had all my organs, and they worked—but now? Now, now I have supplements. I can’t afford real livers, real replacements. I have fakes. I have simulations for sensations. I simulate. I—