That evening, after they had eaten, Lytton explained to Susan, showing her the maps and figures. Allie struggled to keep up.
“It's to do with Railway Privatization,” he said. “The measures that came in after the War, that centralized and nationalized so many industries, are being dismantled by the Tories. And private companies are stepping in. With many a kickback and inside deal.”
“There's not been a railway near Alder for fifty years,” Susan said.
“When British Rail is broken up, the companies that have bits of the old network will be set against each other like fighting dogs. They'll shut down some lines and open up others, not because they need to but to get one over on the next fellow. GWR, who are chummying up with the Squire, would like it if all trains from Wessex to London went through Bristol. They can up the fares, and cut off the Southeastern company. To do that, they need to put a branch line here, across the Southern edge of Maskell's farm, right through your orchard.”
Susan understood, and was furious.
“I don't want a railway through my farm.”
“But Maskell sees how much money he'd make. Not just from selling land at inflated prices. There'd be a watering halt. Maybe even a station.”
“He can't do the deal without Gosmore Farm?”
“No.”
“Well, he can whistle ‘Lillibulero.’”
“It may not be that easy.”
The lights flickered and failed. The kitchen was lit only by the red glow of the wood fire.
“Allie, I told you to check the generator,” Susan snapped.
Allie protested. She was careful about maintaining the generator. They'd once lost the refrigerator and had a week's milk quota spoil overnight.
Lytton signaled for quiet. He drew a gun from inside his waistcoat.
Allie listened for sounds outside.
“Are the upstairs windows shuttered?” Lytton asked.
“I asked you not to bring those things indoors,” Susan said, evenly. “I won't have guns in the house.”
“You soon won't have a choice. There'll be unwelcome visitors.”
Susan caught on and went quiet. Allie saw fearful shadows. There was a shot and the window over the basin exploded inward. A fireball flew in and plopped onto the table, oily rags in flames. With determination, Susan took a flat breadboard and pressed out the fire.
Noise began. Loudspeakers were set up outside. Music hammered their ears. The Beatles' “Helter Skelter.”
“Maskell's idea of hippie music,” Lytton said.
In the din, gunshots spanged against stones, smashed through windows and shutters.
Lytton bundled Susan under the heavy kitchen table, and pushed Allie in after her.
“Stay here,” he said, and was gone upstairs.
Allie tried putting her fingers in her ears and screwing her eyes shut. She was still in the middle of the attack.
“Is Maskell going to kill us?” she asked.
Susan was rigid. Allie hugged her.
There was a shot from upstairs. Lytton was returning fire.
“I'm going to help him,” Allie said.
“No,” shouted Susan, as Allie slipped out of her grasp.
“Don't…”
She knew the house well enough to dart around in the dark without bumping into anything. Like Lytton, she headed upstairs.
From her bedroom window, which had already been shot out, she could see as far as the treeline. There was no moon. The Beatles still screamed. In the orchard, fires were set. Hooded figures danced between the trees, wearing ponchos and beads. She wasn't fooled. These weren't Jago's Travelers but Maskell's men.
Allie had to draw the line here. She and Susan had been pushed too far. They'd lost men to Maskell, they wouldn't lose land.
A man carrying a fireball dashed toward the house, aiming to throw it through a window. Allie drew a bead with her catapult and put a nail in his knee. She heard him shriek above the music. He tumbled over, fire thumping onto his chest and spreading to his poncho. He twisted, yelling like a stuck pig, and wrestled his way out of the burning hood.
It was Teddy Gilpin.
He scrambled back, limping and smoldering. She could have put another nail in his skull.
But didn't.
Lytton was in the hallway, switching between windows, using bullets to keep the attackers back. One lay still, facedown, on the lawn. Allie hoped it was Maskell.
She scrambled out of her window, clung to the drainpipe, and squeezed into shadows under the eaves. Like a bat, she hung, catapult dangling from her mouth. She monkeyed up onto the roof, and crawled behind the chimney.
If she kept them off the roof, they couldn't get close enough to fire the house. She didn't waste nails, but was ready to put a spike into the head of anyone who trespassed. But someone had thought of that first. She saw the ladder-top protruding over the far edge of the roof.
An arm went around her neck, and the catapult was twisted from her hand. She smelled his strong cider-and-shit stink.
“It be the little poacher,” a voice cooed.
It was Stan Budge, Maskell's gamekeeper.
“Who'm trespassin' now?” she said, and fixed her teeth into his wrist.
Though she knew this was not a game, she was surprised when Budge punched her in the head, rattling her teeth, blurring her vision. She let him go. And he hit her again. She lost her footing, thumped against tiles and slid toward the gutter, slates loosening under her.
Budge grabbed her hair.
The hard yank on her scalp was hot agony. Budge pulled her away from the edge. She screamed.
“Wouldn't want nothing to happen to you,” he said.
“Not yet.”
Budge forced her to go down the ladder, and a couple of men gripped her. She struggled, trying to kick shins.
Shots came from house and hillside.
“Take her round to the Squire,” Budge ordered.
Allie was glad it was dark. No one could see the shamed tears on her cheeks. She felt so stupid. She had let Susan down. And Lytton.
Budge took off his hood and shook his head.
“No more bleddy fancy dress,” he said.
She had to be dragged to where Maskell sat, smoking a cigar, in a deckchair between the loudspeakers.
“Allison, dear,” he said. “Think, if it weren't for the Civil War, I'd own you. Then again, at this point in time, I might as well own you.”
He shut off the cassette player.
Terry Gilpin and Barry Erskine—out of uniform, with white lumps of bandage on his head—held her between them. The Squire drew a long thin knife from his boot and let it catch the firelight.
Maskell plugged a karaoke microphone into the speaker.
“Susan,” he said, booming. “You should come out now.
We've driven off the gyppos. But we have someone you'll want to see.”
He pointed the microphone at her and Terry wrenched her hair. Despite herself, she screamed.
“It's dear little Allison.”
There was a muffled oath from inside.
“And your protector, Captain Lytton. He should come out too. Yes, we know a bit about him. Impressive war record, if hardly calculated to make him popular in these parts. Or anywhere.”
Allie had no idea what that meant.
“Throw your gun out, if you would, Captain. We don't want any more accidents.”
The back door opened, and firelight spilled out. A dark figure stepped onto the verandah.
“The gun, Lytton.”
A gun was tossed down.
Erskine fairly slobbered with excitement. Allie felt him pressing close to her, writhing. Once he let her go, he would kill Lytton, she knew.
Lytton stood beside the door. Another figure joined him, shivering in a white shawl that was a streak in the dark.
“Ah, Susan,” Maskell said, as if she had just arrived at his Christmas Feast. “Delighted you could join us.”
Maskell's knifepoint
played around Allie's throat, dimpling the skin, pricking tinily.
In a rush, it came to her that this had very little to do with railways and land and money. When it came down to it, the hurt Maskell fancied he was avenging that he couldn't have Susan. Or Allie.
Knowing why didn't make things better.
Hand in hand, Lytton and Susan came across the lawn. Maskell's men gathered, jeering.
“Are you all right, Allison?” Susan asked.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault, dear.”
“I have papers with me,” Maskell said, “if you'd care to sign. The terms are surprisingly generous, considering.”
Lytton and Susan were close enough to see the knife.
“You sheep-shagging bastard,” Susan said.
Lytton's other gun appeared from under her shawl. She raised her arm and fired. Allie felt wind as the bullet whistled past. Maskell's jaw came away in a gush of red-black. Susan shot him again, in the eye. He was thumped backward, knife ripped away from Allie's throat, and laid on the grass, heels kicking.
“I said I didn't like guns,” Susan announced. “I never said I couldn't use one.”
Lytton took hold of Susan's shoulders and pulled her out of the way of the fusillade unleashed in their direction by Budge and Terry Gilpin.
Allie twisted in Erskine's grasp and rammed a bony knee between his legs. Erskins yelped, and she clawed his earbandages, ripping the wounds open.
The Constable staggered away, and was peppered by his comrades' fire. He took one in the lungs and knelt over the Squire, coughing up thick pink foam.
In a flash of gunfire, Allie saw Lytton sitting up, shielding Susan with his body, arm outstretched. He had picked up a pistol. The flashes stopped. Budge lay flat dead, and Gilpin gurgled, incapacitated by several wounds. Lytton was shot again too, in the leg.
He had fired his gun dry, and was reloading, taking rounds from his belt.
Car-lights froze the scene. The blood on the grass was deepest black. Faces were white as skulls. Lytton still carefully shoved new bullets into chambers. Susan struggled to sit up.
Reeve Draper got out of the pandas car and assessed the situation. He stood over Maskell's body. The Squire's face was gone.
“Looks like you'm had a bad gyppo attack,” he said.
Lytton snapped his revolver shut and held it loosely, not aiming. The Reeve turned away from him.
“But it be over now.”
Erskine coughed himself quiet.
Allie wasn't sorry any of them were dead. If she was crying, it was for her father, for the chickens, for the vegetable garden.
“I assume Goodwife Ames no longer has to worry about her cows being destroyed?” Lytton asked.
The Reeve nodded, tightly.
“I thought so.”
Draper ordered Gary Chilcot to gather the wounded and get them off Gosmore Farm.
“Take the rubbish too,” Susan insisted, meaning the dead.
Chilcot, face painted with purple butterflies, was about to protest but Lytton still had the gun.
“Squire Maskell bain't given' out no more pay packets, Gary,” the Reeve reminded him.
Chilcot thought about it and ordered the able-bodied to clear the farm of corpses.
Allie woke up well after dawn. It was a glorious spring day. The blood on the grass had soaked in and was invisible. But there were windows that needed mending.
She went outside and saw Lytton and Susan by the generator. It was humming into life. Lytton had oil on his hands.
In the daylight, Susan seemed ghost-like.
Allie understood what it must be like. To kill a man. Even a man like Squire Maskell. It was as if Susan had killed a part of herself. Allie would have to be careful with Susan, try to coax her back.
“There,” Lytton said. “Humming nicely.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Susan.
Lytton's eyes narrowed minutely. Maskell had called him Captain.
“Thank you, Susan.”
He touched her cheek.
“Thank you for everything.”
Allie ran up and hugged Lytton. He held her too, not ferociously. She broke the embrace. Allie didn't want him to leave. But he would.
The Norton was propped in the driveway, wheeled out beyond the open gate. He walked stiffly away from them and straddled the motorcycle. His leg wound was just a scratch.
Allie and Susan followed him to the gate. Allie felt Susan's arm around her shoulders.
Lytton pulled on his gauntlets and curled his fingers around the handlebars. He didn't wince.
“You're Captain UI Lytton, aren't you?” Susan said.
There was a little hurt in his eyes. His frown-lines crinkled.
“You've heard of me.”
“Most people have. Most people don't know how you could do what you did in the War.”
“Sometimes you have a choice. Sometimes you don't.”
Susan left Allie and slipped around the gate. She kissed Lytton. Not the way Lytton had kissed Janet Speke, like a slap, but slowly, awkwardly.
Allie was half-embarrased, half-heartbroken.
“Thank you, Captain Lytton,” Susan said. There will always be a breakfast for you at Gosmore Farm.”
“I never did give you the ten shillings,” he smiled.
Allie was crying again and didn't know why. Susan let her fingers trail through Lytton's hair and across his shoulder. She stood back.
He pulled down his goggles, then kicked the Norton into life and drove off.
Allie scrambled through the gate and ran after him. She kept up with him, lungs protesting, until the village oak, then sank, exhausted, by the curb. Lytton turned on his saddle and waved, then was gone from her sight, headed out across the moors. She stayed, curled up under the oak, until she could no longer hear his engine.
Turnover
GEOFFREY A. LANDIS
Geoff Landis is characteristically a hard SF writer, widely published in the magazines and often seen on award nomination ballots, and that's where this story is coming from. It appeared in Interzone, where a significant amount of the best humorous SF is published these days. One of the traditional hallmarks of satire is the world turned upside down, a clever way to expose the absurdity of conventional behavior, and in this case some clunky and old fashioned SF storytelling. The third word in the story is a suspicious intrusion from conventional fantasy and by the end of the first sentence we know we are in the world of deadpan. This story goes to show that a heavy hand sometimes delivers the strongest blow.
The scientist's guild had a requirement that each accredited scientist must have a beautiful assistant to ask questions. Doctor Piffelheimer's beautiful assistant was a young man named Percival Kensington. She looked him over. The coolsuit he was wearing, a necessary accoutrement against the Venusian temperature, had the advantage of being a skintight, form-fitting garment, padding and revealing every curve of his perfectly shaped body, down to and including the almost indecent bulge between his thighs.
The surface of Venus was almost hot enough for the rocks to glow. It was a good thing that the perfect thermal insulator had been invented, or it would have been completely impossible to send a team to Venus to answer important scientific questions.
Except for her assistant Percy, the surface of Venus held very little to see. One spot on the barren rock looked very much like another. Dr. Piffelheimer picked one at random and pointed. “This looks like a good spot.”
Percy obediently lugged the equipment over to the spot. Fortunately the ultradrill floated on a carpet of electrostatic repulsion, and lugging the five-ton mass of the drill to the indicated spot required little more than guiding it with a finger in the right direction. “Explain to me what we're trying to find out from this core,” he said, and cocked his head in a charming tilt to listen. They must have trained him perfectly in scientists's assistant school; this was exactly the type of obvious question that a beautiful assistant was supposed to
ask.
Piffelheimer motioned him to start the ultradrill while she expounded. The ultradrill would bore downward at a rate of 200 meters a minute. It made a racket like a herd of mating elephants while doing so, but fortunately the helmets of the coolsuits were perfect acoustic insulators as well as perfect thermal insulation, so she knew that her voice over the intercom was flawlessly clear.
“The surface of Venus is very anomalous,” Piffelheimer expounded carefully. “This was first really understood back in the last years of the twentieth century, when the primitive space probes discovered that the crater distribution was uniform across the surface.”
“What's anomalous about that?” Percy asked, completely on cue.
“Crater count indicates the age of the surface,” Piffelheimer said. “Since meteor bombardment occurs randomly at every point on the surface, a uniform crater distribution means that the surface of Venus is all precisely the same age. But, as every geologist knows, a geological surface is periodically resurfaced, by tectonic forces, by vulcanism, and the like. Vulcanism is necessary to get the heat out of the interior of the planet. So a planet cannot possibly have a surface of uniform age.”
“But you just said it does.”
“That's right. This is the scientific mystery, and we're about to find the answer to it.”
“Oh. How are we going to do that?”
“By drilling and inserting heat-flow probes,” she said. “The mystery is, how does the planet Venus release heat from the interior, if it doesn't resurface the planet through vulcanism?”
“Aren't there any theories?”
“Well, there is one.” Piffelheimer made a face. “One wacko from the twentieth century, a scientist named Turcotte, proposed periodic, catastrophic resurfacing. Every 500 million years or so, the entire surface of Venus resurfaces all at once. The whole surface of the planet becomes one single magma ocean, and all the heat of the interior is released at once. Then, of course, it cools down, and since the whole thing was molten at the same time, every part of the surface is the same age.”
“Well, that makes sense.” Percy looked down at the drill controls. “One kilometer, and drilling steady. So, why don't we like that theory?”
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