Asimov's SF, April/May 2011

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Asimov's SF, April/May 2011 Page 5

by Dell Magazine Authors


  "The Spider Monkeys just added another switch and cable,” Andrew said, as their own car was pulled out from under the bells of St. Hippolytus. “There are some unused ones up here, to routes that have been taken down. It's easy to miss, particularly if you're more interested in stoking up the steam engine to get the wheels turning in the morning."

  "When Pardo's car came along, Gibbon and his boys distracted the station workers, tightened the cable, and pulled their own switch in. Pardo was too busy trying to work all the unfamiliar gear to notice that the bump onto the rail was much bigger than it should have been. And by the time he did realize what had happened, it was too late. There was no moving cable, so there was nothing for his grip to connect to. He slid down the support cable that led to Clepsydra, and his car sank right into the big water clock, under the big bronze numbers that marked the hours. It wasn't a busy route, but a few passengers still had to float around, getting their toes nibbled by carp, until someone could fish them out."

  "Poor Pardo,” Arabella laughed.

  "Poor Pardo for sure. Hann had him thrown into Carcery, the old city prison."

  "That seems harsh.” Arabella was startled. “Pardo was just trying to be a rough, tough telpherman. He just had the bad luck to run into some real rough, tough telphermen."

  "Hann was furious,” Andrew said. “Who'd trust a telpher line that had cars that could get lost? And the lines were fighting for passengers. Hann and Greensward were just getting ready to open a station in Carcery Square that would open up routes north in the city. The other lines had nothing that would compete. That was actually what Pardo had been working on when he decided to show off. I hear they gave him a cell overlooking it. The cables ran right under the prison wall, because those big blocks of stone were strong enough to support it."

  From St. Hippolytus their car had swooped across a city park and now passed through the upper bleachers of the Arena, where people had built high leaning houses far above what had once been the killing field, which was just a tiny oval from up here. It was now a swamp, where herons stalked frogs.

  There was a bustling community up here, raising fish in the old cisterns that had once stored water to hose down unruly crowds. Arabella saw their golden scales and wide eyes drying on a mesh once used by a gladiator to try to catch his opponent. The fall of the telpher lines was going to change these people's lives for sure. Would these descendants of the people in the cheap seats stay here, eventually developing their own language and culture, living on rainwater and fish? Or would they make the long trek down to street level?

  Two other people got off here, leaving Arabella and Andrew alone in the car.

  "Now, somewhere along the way, Gibbon had met Hann's daughter,” Andrew said. “She had fallen for him. I guess she and her father didn't get along. Because when Gibbon asked her to help him get up to the Greensward Carcery Station before it was finished, she agreed.

  "Maybe she just liked the puzzle. The station was crucial for Greensward's operation, so Hann had it guarded night and day. Since it hung from the side of the prison, and wasn't yet operational, they were posted on the ground. But she figured out a way. She and Gibbon ran a single line from a nearby cemetery up under the right wing of a statue of a mourning angel memorial, with a support hanging from the elbow of the arm that hid the angel's eyes, then up through the boughs of a couple of trees and up to the top of Carcery Tower, where Hann had allowed her to install an experimental light she was working on. So, one night, Gibbon attached his hanger to—"

  "Wait a minute.” Arabella had had just about enough of unexplained motivation. “Hann's daughter. Her father was head of Greensward."

  "That's right."

  "Aren't you going to tell me anything else about her?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like . . . everything. Did she have a name?"

  "Um.” He thought. “Dulcie. Her name was Dulcie."

  "Are you just making that up to placate me?"

  "Would I do something like that?"

  "Andrew—"

  "No, no kidding. It really was her name. Okay, Dulcinea, probably. Dulcie Decorum, her father's workers called her. Some of them thought she was stuck up."

  "I'm sure telpher workers were noted for their classical educations. Dulcie disliked her father enough to help someone sabotage the centerpiece of his line?"

  "I guess so. Her mother had died when she was young, and he had no real interest in her, had her raised by nannies and tutors. When Dulcie showed her ability to invent things that were useful for his business, it seemed to annoy Hann rather than please him.” Andrew unfolded the newspaper to reveal the young woman who Arabella now knew was Dulcie Hann operating the light. “Like this arc light. Instead of the usual carbon electrodes, it used a new kind, with magnetite and titanium. Lasted longer, gave brighter light. But after all that, Hann wouldn't let her use it for telpher operations. Just, like, for social events and stuff. No wonder she decided to get back at him. Gibbon was just the way that turned up."

  "Hey. So that electrode you got from Jill—"

  "Is the same one.” He hefted the thick black cylinder. “At least I think so."

  They both looked up as the telpher car's grip released on the cable, and it coasted to a halt, nowhere near a station. It dangled by the cornice of an office building. They could hear the quiet scrape of the moving cable as it moved past the loose grip.

  Through the windows Arabella saw an office with rows of desks and black filing cabinets. A man with slicked-back hair talked to a woman in a pencil skirt as she tried to get a thick file out of the lowest drawer. He watched her as she tugged, but didn't offer to help. Men and women sat at wood desks, pounding on typewriters. They didn't look up as a boy pushed a silver coffee urn past them on a cart, pouring cups with sleepy precision. A paper airplane sailed by and landed on a desk.

  The telpherman climbed out of the car. Andrew and Arabella exchanged a glance, then looked out of the window. The telpherman pulled himself smoothly over the cornice.

  "Is something wrong?” Arabella asked.

  "Not at all. Do you have an appointment you need to get to?"

  "The Balloon Market. Don't you remember?"

  "I'll just be a moment.” And he was gone.

  Arabella took the opportunity to look into the bucket the telpherman had carried down from the roof at the station with the antique store. In its bottom were four pigeon eggs, two pinkish, one bluish, one more blue green, smeared with bird droppings. Why had just the sight of them annoyed Jill the antiques dealer?

  "So,” Andrew said, “One night, Gibbon went into the cemetery with a hanger, which was really just a grip with places for your hands and feet. The younger guys used them to check for cable damage, stuff like that. As he was hooking it onto the hidden cable, he almost fell into a newly dug grave, right at the angel's feet. The angel was a memorial to prisoners who died without getting released, and this was another sacrifice to it. But whoever had dug it had stuck to their job and not noticed the cable in the bushes. Gibbon got on the hanger and pedaled up to Carcery Station.

  "He'd brought a bar breaker, so it didn't take him long to snap some of the crucial support struts that held the station onto the side of Carcery. The station sagged and tilted out of alignment, far enough that it would take weeks to repair the damage. Then he went a little too far. He loosened a return wheel. It was heavier than he thought. It fell right through the floor of the station and crashed to the street, pulling a lot of the station with it.

  "That finally woke up the Greensward guards. He had to get out of there. But the wheel had left a big hole between him and his hanger. The only way to get to it was to climb up and across the upper line of cells, above the stations. The prisoners were pretty much awake now. They cursed, they begged him to help them escape, they tried to grab him when he crossed their cells. Then, he almost fell into a cell. The bars were loose. But he could see that there was a prisoner in there, silent and unmoving.

  "Maybe i
t had been the stress of all the hours preparing for escape, or just the fact that those cells were exposed to the weather, and notoriously unhealthy. That man had managed to get close to freeing himself, but would never make it. He'd never get out of that cell alive."

  "Dead.” Arabella thought about it. “The empty grave under the angel!"

  Andrew grinned. “You know, I've never held with those people who think you're slow."

  "That's very loyal of you."

  Arabella could see that their driver was now in the office talking to the woman in the pencil skirt, who finally had the huge file spread open on her desk. The man with the slicked back hair pretended to be detailing his precise order to the bored youth with the coffee cart, but snuck glances at what she and the telpherman were doing. She smiled at the telpherman, blinking and tilting her head, and finally handed him a telephone. The telpherman dialed, said a few words. Then he hung up and put the phone down.

  "The body of the dead prisoner lay there on its pallet, waiting to be taken down to an anonymous grave in the cemetery. And the delay had given the Greensward boys a chance to close in on him. He was close to capture. Then Gibbon had an inspiration. He unwound the funeral shroud and hauled the body out through the window. With a few quick twists of the emergency line all telpher workers carried with them, he attached the corpse to his repair hanger and set it on its way down the wire.

  "The slope of the wire meant it really looked like a living person was in control of the hanger. It must have been a sight, a dead man dangling from the wire, whizzing through the trees at night. The Greensward team saw it, and naturally thought it was Gibbon, making his escape. They all chased after it, wanting to be in at the kill.

  "Word of Gibbon's situation got out to the Spider Monkeys, and they came out to Carcery Square in force. The Greensward guys, having realized by this time that they'd been duped, fought back. When the police finally brought it under control, Carcery Station was completely destroyed."

  The telpherman in the office made a few more faces at the woman at the desk, but he was clearly done, and interested in getting back to his car. He danced out, making a joke of it. The other man sipped his coffee solemnly, saucer in hand, and watched him go. The woman, now annoyed, curled her thumbs together and flapped her hands like a bird's wings at the telpherman's disappearing back.

  "The newspapers whooped it up. You know: rioting workers, irresponsible management, physical danger, violations of prison security—the result was government regulation, by popular demand. They broke the independent telpher lines, calling them ‘bandits,’ unified them, and brought them all under city control, as part of North Metropolitan Aerial Transport. Most of the Spider Monkeys, and the others, were fired."

  That only seemed reasonable to Arabella, though she wasn't going to say it. “What happened to Gibbon? How did he get away?"

  "He didn't. He got hit over the head with a falling strut early in the festivities, and it knocked him unconscious. By the time he came to, he was the only telpherman left on the scene. They arrested him. And threw him into Carcery."

  "I believe that's what you call ‘irony,’ “ Arabella said.

  "Well, maybe you do. By the time Gibbon got out, there wasn't any place for him. He went abroad, to work on steamships."

  Arabella waited a moment. “Is that it? What about Dulcie? What about the light?"

  "I don't know, Arabella. That's what I know."

  "We're just going to have to know more, then."

  "Sorry for the delay.” The telpherman hopped back into his seat and engaged the grip.

  * * * *

  The old ballroom that held the Balloon Market had an astoundingly high ceiling, most of it panels of glass that showed the sky. Just then, there were only five balloons, partially inflated and bumping for escape: two large cross-country tubes and three smaller utility gasbags dangling repair equipment and spare parts. Just below were the arched galleries where the older folks had once gathered to watch the younger people dance. Those were now piled with compressors, dismantled mooring masts, and other massive support gear.

  Past a couple of food sellers near the entrance, dealer booths crowded what had once been the ballroom floor. Arabella and Andrew were both out of place here. This was a market for actual ballooning, or lufting professionals: miners in remote areas, arctic explorers, and, of course, the operators of cross-desert tracked balloon lines, trying to make a living connecting remote locations. Arabella saw a desert balloonist, goggles up on her headdress, heavy gauntlets in shoulder straps in true desert buzzard style, examining some equipment dangling from chains.

  "Any ground gimbals?” she asked the proprietor, a short woman with eyes rimmed in black kohl. “They need to be transportable."

  The proprietor used a lot of pomade on her dark hair, so it didn't move when she shook her head, which she gave the impression of doing often. “Nah. I do mostly task lighting. He might have something.” She pointed at a neighboring booth.

  Andrew walked over and looked up at a collection of lighting equipment that projected from an actual moored balloon, suitable for a single observer. “What are the maintenance requirements for those?"

  The woman couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Maintenance? Where are you taking it? The North Pole?"

  "It's a gift for my father. For his office."

  "His office is inside, right? Not in a volcano or something."

  "Well, yes."

  "So I don't care if his pet cockatiel perches on the chain and fouls it daily. It's built to take real work. Okay, a bit of light oil every month or so wouldn't go amiss. Not too much, or it will get on your nice clothes.” She examined Andrew with a bit less sympathy than he was used to. “But you're the wrong customer for this equipment. Please don't waste both our time. There are some luft-style gadgets by the back wall, mooring pitons and the like. Don't do much, but look impressive. One of those would be a better choice.” She saw someone in the crowd. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some real business to attend to."

  Unable to think of anything to say, Andrew retreated in defeat to the shelter of same hanging lufting fabrics. Arabella followed, and found the woman desert balloonist examining gimbals. She had a line of three diamond-shaped scars on her right cheekbone, marking some level of achievement Arabella didn't understand.

  "Instantly responsive!” the salesman enthused. “Keeps you pointed into the prevailing wind at all time. They used these for recovering the wreck of the Arethusa, and you know how stormy it is there. Eighteen watermelon balloons with pointed noses. Even the late fall gales didn't knock them down—they kept pointed right into it."

  "They never recovered the Arethusa.” The woman was really quite small, Arabella saw. The quilted boots, protection against hot rock, made her taller.

  "That was pirates, miss, not the storm. They came down the wind when things were at their worst. The salvage crew scuttled the ship just in time, though. The pirates got nothing."

  "They got your balloons."

  "Not a technical failure, is what I'm saying. This gimbal was in no way responsible."

  She examined it, seeing its degrees of freedom, where it stuck and where it moved smoothly. Then she hefted it. “How much does this weigh?"

  "I'll have to look at the specs. . . ."

  "Too heavy. If I wanted to spin around on top of a mountain, maybe. But I'm trying to run a mobile business."

  "We should go,” Andrew said. “There's nothing for us here."

  "If you say so.” Arabella was reluctantly aware that people were waiting for them at home. But surely they couldn't go there, not yet. . . .

  "Give me a peek at that engraving,” she said.

  Andrew gave her a suspicious look—he'd gone from regarding it as mere electrode wrapping to a valued personal possession—but opened it for her.

  She looked around at the ballroom. It still looked much as it did in the picture, down to the two statues that flanked the entrance: a mammoth and a sabertooth, ra
mpant and facing each other, the ancient native animals that had been in the city's coat of arms since it was nothing but swamps inhabited by long-limbed bears that swam up and scooped explorers out of their galleys like connoisseurs slurping oysters.

  But the date . . . Seventeen years before, not long before they had been born, in fact, but the day after the Golden Fleece Ball, which had been, as Arabella knew, the peak of the old social season. And it had been held right here in this room. The floor under their feet, where you could see it, still showed its high quality, polished and springy. You could dance here all night and not get sore feet.

  And there was Dulcie. Arabella had searched through those finely dressed people gathered at the windows, and finally found someone she was sure was the young engineer. It showed her from behind, but the pattern of the low-backed gown seemed the same as the one worn by the woman operating the light. What connection had she had with the fall of Carcery Station? She certainly had been here that same night, able to see it as it happened.

  Light flared through layers of gauzy aerial fabric, like the sun rising through sea mist. Arabella and Andrew peeked around, to find the light seller, unexpectedly, smiling and gesturing them over.

  "The chain lights are for close-in work when you can't actually get close in.” She demonstrated how the armored bulb could be lowered from the arm, exactly as if they'd been friends all along. “When the wind is high, you don't want to get close up to the rock or the ice face or whatever, but a general arc light is just distracting. Are you interested in the matching impact drill, maybe? And these remote claws come as a graduated set of five, but are as smooth as any you'll find."

  She didn't look entirely sincere, Arabella thought. What had made her change her mind about selling lights to non-professionals? Feeling a bit perverse, Arabella decided to test the woman's patience.

 

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