The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  Sebastian was wearing…oh, it was upsetting to contemplate. Characteristic, but still hard to look at: A vest, no shirt, and that pocket watch of his, its chain looping all the way down to one knickerbockered knee. Around his neck hung a pair of dusty goggles a handspan wide, and on his head was a pointed leather aviator’s cap, straps hanging down. Across his chest he’d strung multiple golden medallions and a leather cord, from which something that may have been a tooth or bone described a graceful curve.

  “What is the costume for the day, then?” Adelaide asked, ushering him in off the street before taking it all in. “You’re a pilot. Navigator? Fan dancer? Not sensible employment, even in these climes.”

  “It’s a statement, Babbage.”

  “Of your impending mental bedlam?”

  “Fashion is dead. Do you know where I found these things? On the High Street. They’re selling off stock at discount to make more room for pirate gear. Lacy bodices and flouncy ruffled blouses and black leather breeches and, oh…”

  It was true. Pirates were the rage this year.

  Adelaide smiled. “Does this then mean that, should fashion prove impossible to resuscitate, I can begin wearing whatever I like?”

  He looked at her in dour disappointment, as though she’d sworn. She nearly laughed aloud.

  “I shall wear all of these things—at once, if needs must—until the world rights itself.”

  “Well, you’ve got Little Darcy convinced. He looks like a befouled barrister.”

  “I saw Wild Charlotte earlier today, dressed in a racially insensitive manner.”

  “I blame you for both.”

  “I proudly accept.”

  “Sebastian, how can we go anywhere? You look like a mad scientist who’s turned to the docks.”

  “My dear, that’s exactly how I feel.”

  The reason for Sebastian’s visit—for he always had a plan or scheme or flimflam, that one—was unclear; and as he was not forthcoming with the details, she could not prepare herself. She led him to Commonplace instead, so that she could work while he talked himself out.

  “Rupert was wearing some sort of helmet, some bloody submarine on his head. He looked like a clockwork, peering out through a rusty grate in the faceplate. Must’ve weighed sixty pounds. And on those weak, rounded shoulders, as well! And Gerald—he may as well have been going through my closet a year ago. Perhaps he has a portal through time, and will continue raiding my closet for the remainder….”

  Adelaide laughed, and turned from her typewriter to look at Sebastian, sprawled across her bed.

  “Charlotte was just telling us how she’s convinced she’ll be transmitted backwards through time and have to live on the frontier. It was quite diverting. And Papa, as well…Everyone seems to think the world is ending, or becoming something terrifying.”

  “You’re not afraid, though. Not my Ada. Woman of Science! And her Man of Leisure. We’ll meet the future head on. All its accomplishments will be our champagne toasts.”

  “I just don’t understand this…desperate reaching back, reaching back. Even Little Darcy is terrified of vulgarity now. I have tried to ease him, to explain to him that change is to be expected, but he won’t have it. Lord help us if we did suffer some sort of time displacement. If we found ourselves in Wild Charlotte’s savage lands, he’d become a witch-hunter or something similar before we’d even dusted off our clothing. Raise a new church to tidiness.”

  “Rupert would eat poisoned berries before sunset. And Gerald, why, he can’t be trusted unattended at midday!”

  “Lucia Mapp would shuck her dress at the first chance she got, and go and live with the wolves.”

  “She’d be their ruler! Queen of the Wolves!”

  “They’d welcome her. Someone to take them in hand.”

  As much as Sebastian hated Gerald and Rupert, singly and as a pair, Adelaide hated Miss Lucia Mapp. Her dark-red lips, a signature touch, never parted but to send off some wretchedly belittling comment—and, thence released from service, they’d curve into the tightest, grimmest, vilest grin. Lucia Mapp made Adelaide want to pack up Commonplace and move somewhere very far away. She swore she could instantly detect Lucia Mapp’s presence merely by the shiver going down her back.

  Sebastian loved Lucia Mapp because she was awful, and adored being in her company. Although, small mercy, he scarcely saw her, due to a specific failure of nerve that only liquor could combat: Miss Mapp was the only thing that scared Sebastian Rocquefort, and he had no qualms about admitting it.

  “Say, you know what that steam-brain of yours needs?”

  Adelaide knew exactly what it needed: PARAMETERS FOR TIME, whatever that might mean. She shook her head, amused in advance at whatever madness he might unleash. Later it came to her that she would always remember that moment when he threw his arms out carelessly and said, with one bunch-panted leg sticking straight up in the air, heeled Chelsea boot inscribing circling arabesques across the ceiling, vest pulled cockeyed across his bare chest: “A voice.”

  And so Adelaide’s lists of Important Tasks grew ever larger in number. In addition to the Household, her Charges (among which she privately included Sebastian and their friend Henry, as neither lived exactly in the world, but above and below it, respectively), her halfhearted search for Companionship, Papa’s grumblings, the all-important Nanny Question, and the accumulation of Data, she now labored to bring a Voice to Commonplace.

  Sebastian was, as always, a steadfast—if variable—ally in the attempt. He was proud, when he remembered to be, and when she could entice him to concentrate, he’d work ceaselessly at a problem. So she sat him down with a gramophone—old, horn included—and asked him to analyze the mechanics of the thing. She knew the acoustic principles, but wondered whether anything in its structural makeup might prove useful. She loved putting old things to new uses as much as she loved translating from one language to another, never giving a thought to the fact that these activities themselves were parallel, if slightly translated.

  Meanwhile, she worked from the other end with her punch cards, attempting to communicate her ideas to Commonplace itself. The engine had always found music easy to understand—much of its early training, even before its quantum heart was placed, had consisted of scores of texts on musical theory and reams of sheet music from Papa’s theatre—so she explained her plan in just this way. It would save so much time, would it not, to simply speak to Commonplace, and have it answer in kind.

  Before long, the machine itself began to ask questions about the process and its development, often in strange or frustrating moments. They’d be typing back and forth for a long while, answering each other’s questions and streamlining their understandings of syntax, and suddenly Commonplace would start asking after the project. Sometimes, they were the same questions verbatim; sometimes, they were slightly reworded.

  A strange card appeared on the foyer desk one day while Ada was out shopping with the children. She never so fervently wished to devote herself fully to the Nanny Question as on market days: Little Darcy inspecting children in their prams with the unblinking solemnity of a baptizing cleric: Wild Charlotte climbing to the top of things, Ada’s shouts and calls unheeded. The hours of trudging and racing and waiting and following, and all the many sighs that accidentally escaped her.

  It was her greatest panic: Everyone staring at her, wondering why she still lived at home with her little beasts, and had not married. Everyone clucking at her multitude of sacks. Everyone drawing conclusions from her charges’ bullheadedness and bizarre dress as to the quality of their home. The Babbages were a wealthy family, even as Lytton families went, but without the help of finance to discern sheep from goats, the other families in their neighborhood had shown infinite capability in finding new ways to measure themselves against one another.

  The card was folded, a sign of a formal invitation or personal business, her name scrawled across the front. Within—and she sunk onto the seat beside the desk when she saw it—was Miss L
ucia Mapp’s name and address, with a date and time.

  “If it’s a party, or a dinner, or a dance, I’ll have to feign something dreadful. Or perhaps the children could go…in my stead, as it were…if it’s the sort of occasion they…”

  “Fancy a sister like you, sending her innocent charges to the Queen of Wolves as bloody tribute. On Charlotte’s frontier they’d have you strung up as a traitor, or worse.”

  “Sebastian, do not tease. You always know the reasons behind these things. What’s this about? And is there any way I can escape?”

  “None. And, as for Miss Mapp’s purpose in issuing the invitation—which, by my count, she has not previously done since we were in school and her hand was forced—I fear my lips are sealed. But I assure you that your purposes would be served in attending. More, I cannot say.”

  He rung off then without prelude, which meant he was serious. Sebastian Rocquefort could not keep a secret. The prospect caused him such discomfort that he would take sometimes shocking steps in order to avoid submitting to his darker urges. If he could not speak about it on the telephone—his favorite device in all the world—it must be important indeed.

  Which did not help. Not one jot. Because that meant that there was a plan, and it was known to at least two individuals. And whether or not she were the prime subject of the scheme, it did not bode well. Sebastian would never hurt her, or see her embarrassed—would, in fact, resort to real violence to keep her from any such—but he did have a fairly heartless (if evenhanded) attitude towards what he thought of as their Personal Development.

  Miss Mapp would have nothing to do with Commonplace, or children. Where else could her interests—vain, sickly, double-crossing as they must be—intersect with Ada’s own? Adelaide had nearly risen from her chair when she sat back again, as though a mule had kicked her. Oh, the voracious horror of the woman! Only one thing could unite Miss Mapp’s purposes and Sebastian’s; only one thing could be so diverting for Lord Rocquefort that he could keep his mouth shut:

  A man.

  Adelaide made her brisk way into the Rocquefort house without waiting for Nurse to pull the chimes that signaled a visitor, or checking the parlor for Sebastian’s airy mother. No, straight up the front stairs she went, bashing her shoes against each and every stair to warn Sebastian of her imminent and furious approach. One could never tell what one might find in that room.

  For example, as she, snarling, threw the door open—so hard it jounced against the wall—she found Sebastian once again wearing that sleeveless outfit, with a headdress the twin of Wild Charlotte’s lying cantilevered back from his forehead, inspecting himself closely in the mirror. When he turned to the door in surprise, she could see his eyes rimmed in kohl and a gypsy earring dangling from only one ear.

  “You’ve taken to pirate fashion after all?”

  “It’s a comment. I refuse to express myself through fashion anymore. Too intimate. Now I shall only comment on fashion itself, cruelly. Every garment will be an indictment.”

  “I cannot discuss this no-doubt well-informed stance with you at present, and I’m afraid that I cannot discuss it with you in the future. My time will be taken up in choosing my outfit for your funeral.”

  He turned back to the mirror, rolling his eyes.

  “…Yes. And without me there to help, you’ll be dressed as a sweep.”

  A quiet laugh in the corner caught her attention, and she immediately collected herself: Henry Wootten sat in an overstuffed chair in a shadowy corner of the room, reading a formidable volume by the light of a baroque floor lamp. As was his wont.

  “Wootten! I beg your pardon.”

  He smiled at her and swirled the brandy in his glass. Henry Wootten was quite fond of Adelaide; in fact, she was the only person in Lytton for whom he showed any preference at all. He was near to Sebastian most days, geographically, but the two never seemed to look at or speak to each other much. At least, not in Adelaide’s experience.

  She’d given careless thought, a few years ago, to marrying Henry, possibly. He was an amenable chap, after all, and it was debatable whether he’d even notice the proceedings until well after the fact. But one look from Sebastian and she’d folded that idea up as quietly, delicately, and precisely as one would a handkerchief of spider’s gossamer, and stowed it away on the highest shelf in her mind.

  “Henry’s having a swot at the old Queen Mab. Nine cantos! Count them, Lady Adelaide: Nine. If you’d like, I’m sure he can read them aloud to you, as he was doing shortly before his injury.”

  Henry held up an arm without looking up from the page: “Nailed me in the elbow, without even looking.”

  At Henry’s feet lay one of Sebastian’s great Chelsea boots.

  “Sebastian! Henry, that’s terrible.”

  “He is a vocal and passionate critic when it comes to poetry,” said Henry, with an indulgently glum cadence, “Old Rocquefort.”

  Adelaide turned back to Sebastian, exasperated. “Sebastian, I should unleash him on you—all nine cantos!—for what you’ve done. And now, to add his injury to my insult! You’ve declared war on your closest friends.”

  Sebastian sighed heavily, looking longingly at his reflection as though bidding that doubled friend a reluctant adieu, and looked at her with reproof.

  “Ada. Firstly, I barely nicked him, and he’s clearly undamaged. Secondly, you’ve been tossing around all manner of hateful speech since you arrived—unannounced, which is something we have discussed—and you have yet to pin these tedious emotions and outbursts to anything like a reasonable argument.”

  He took her by the hands, then, and smiled delightfully. She could have punched him in his giddy, shining face. She felt like a drunken sailor; today, she could manage it.

  “Adelaide, your paranoia has gotten the better of you. It’s clearly a reaction to being invited to a party for the first time in your life. But fear not!”

  “Sebastian, that’s hardly…”

  “Fear not, my dearest friend! I will be your guide. Mercutio to your Romeo, Beatrice to your…old blind whatsit…Homer.”

  “Dante,” Wootten supplied from the corner.

  “…Old Blind Dante,” Sebastian continued, “Tiresias to your Oedipus.”

  “Sebastian,” Henry said slowly, slipping one meaty finger between the pages of his book, “All those people came to a bad end.”

  “Aha!” shouted Sebastian, turning to reach for the other boot. “Dante came back!”

  “He went to Hell, Sebastian.”

  Adelaide nodded wildly. “This is precisely what I…”

  “Ada!” Sebastian interrupted again, grinning over at Wootten. “Indeed, my lady. He went through Hell. And came right out the other side again.”

  He stood for a moment with arms akimbo—like Pan, but twice as cocky and just as inscrutable. Sometimes it was like talking to Commonplace.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Sebastian. And I won’t let you deter me with an explanation, or more of your rhetorical frippery. I came to notify you that I have uncovered your wretched plan—with Miss Lucia Mapp, of all the uncanny demons you might conspire with—and to notify you that I shall have none of it.”

  “Ada…”

  “I shall have none!”

  Sebastian sniffed, and evinced abashment for the moment it took him to draw breath.

  “Can I…Would you, at the least, permit me to provide you with an image?”

  Ada cocked her head as he retrieved from a shoulder bag slung on the vanity a single daguerreotype, unframed, and cast on white paper rather than glass: A tow-haired fellow, handsome enough, and of an age with the three. One arm was tossed around a strangely familiar device as though it were his school chum. His ankles were crossed, giving him the illusion of even greater height, but one look into those eyes sent her reeling.

  “That man has the smile of a scoundrel! His eyes are rakish. Mad!”

  Henry and Sebastian burst out into loud guffaws. There was something hysterical
about Henry’s laughter, she thought briefly, then wondered if it were only her lack of familiarity with the sound that struck her so strangely. Henry was taciturn, as a rule.

  “She has you there, Rocquefort,” Henry sighed, leaning back in the puff-pastry chair and staring gleefully at the pressed-tin ceiling.

  “He’s nothing of the sort, Henry,” Sebastian protested, but one look at Ada’s owlish disapproval sent him off again. “Well. Of character, you are a proficient judge, Ada. I’ve always said so. And, as Lord Wootten has indiscreetly indicated, your arrow here has not fallen too far afoul of your mark. And yet.”

  “‘And yet?’ I…This person is a known associate of Miss Lucia Mapp, an admitted rascal, and apparently some sort of mad scientist, or…”

  “Ah, my dear, no. I’m afraid it’s Miss Mapp who is interested in him. That’s why you’ve been invited.”

  “But how…”

  “He is from the south of Lytton, attempting to make his way in Lytton through the sale and deployment of a certain device. A theatrical device. And in so traveling, he met one man—a theatre owner; successful, a bit pious, but a handsome widower with a winning air nonetheless—whose daughter…”

  “I cannot believe this. Are you truly…”

  “Ahem. Whose daughter’s image, captured in a film loop that caught his eye during their discussions, so distracted him from any meaningful conversation—costing him the sale, I’m told—and so intrigued him that he plodded, heartsick and loveless, back to his—and please, do attend, and imagine this part with all your faculties—one-room boarding apartment with plank floors and tissue-thin walls, there to wait for Cupid’s arrow to finally sap the very life from him….”

  “Sebastian!”

  “…Only to see, less than a week later, that selfsame maiden roaming sylphlike through the market, back bent nearly double by her frenzied attempts to curtail the antics of two nigh-elemental…”

  “No. No, Sebastian, stop! I can’t bear it!”

  “…And he taken so completely by this vision, this harried Demeter, this valiant Artemis, as though ‘twere nothing at all to cross the square with not only that weeks’ shopping but the ears of two violently insane children gripped between her ivory fingers….”