by Kage Baker
“Darn,” he said. After a moment he put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly back up his hill, thinking very hard as he went.
Just as he came to the wide staircase below the Neptune Pool, a tour vehicle pulled up and he heard the docent say excitedly: “Ah-yah! This is very special, everybody. See that man? That’s Mr. William Randolph Hearst the Tenth! His ancestor was the one who originally built this wonderful place. He came here from Europe and saved it all when there wasn’t any more money to keep it open to the public! Wasn’t that nice of him? We don’t get a chance to see him much, because he’s very busy—”
Hearst ducked his head in embarrassment and considered hurrying away, but reflected that it wouldn’t really be polite to do so; there were a dozen mortal faces pressed to the windows of the tour vehicle, staring at him eagerly. He gave them a shy smile and stood there on display while the tour group disembarked and came rushing over. It was largely a party of reenactors, wearing passable early-twentieth-century costumes. One carried a SoundBox blaring out early jazz music. Hearst winced. He preferred modern music, on the whole.
He shook hands, answered a few questions, and hoped they’d all enjoy their visit to his house before he departed with the excuse that he had work to do.
As he stepped across the threshold of La Casa Grande, he wondered plaintively why contact with mortals made him so uncomfortable. It was easy to love them in the abstract, delightful to plan for their welfare; even now his heart warmed at the thought of their enjoyment of the splendors of his great house. He loved listening to the tourists’ reactions, as the docents pointed out this particularly fine Flemish Madonna, or that marvel of Persian figured tile. He was a little lonely when there weren’t guests downstairs, trooping through his echoing halls. He liked watching their progress on the surveillance cameras.
But he never liked looking into their mortal faces, clasping their mortal hands, talking to them. He never had, honestly, even when he’d been a mortal man himself. Only the endless building plans, only the work made him truly happy.
Nothing really mattered, except the work.
PART II
CHAPTER 5
Back in the Hill
Still no way to measure the hours or the years, in the darkness, but they went by. There were times when icy sweat beaded the walls and ran down to pool on the floor, and the slave’s teeth chattered in his head as he told Tiara the love story. In those nights Tiara struggled through frozen weeds to the farmhouse, and had to use every ounce of her will to make the big man rise from his bed and open the back door, gazing asleep into the darkness while she slid past him and rifled his shelves.
There were times when the air was heavy and stale, hard to draw into the lungs. A living reek came floating down into the places of the dead, nasty smells from Quean Barbie’s domain. But then the wind would shift, and a faint sweet breath from outside would find its way down, telling them about stars and grasses and blossoming thorn. Those were brief nights, but Tiara found she could range farther, run more swiftly then. She brought back wild plums for her slave, and hazelnuts, and with her hands she caught trout in a starry pool.
She carried them back in great haste, always, because the sooner she and the slave could eat, the sooner it would be time to cuddle close again and listen to the story. Tiara liked the heroine, Mendoza, well enough, identified with her in fact, the little girl who had been lost and alone in the dark and yet survived to become a fine lady; but Tiara’s favorite was the Englishman who died and came back again, just like her slave, who described him with such vividness Tiara felt sure she would recognize him in a second, should she ever meet him.
And how brave he was, and how clever in all his incarnations! But especially as Commander Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who was in the story the longest. Tiara could well appreciate a ruthless hero, and listened spellbound as the slave described the sea battles Edward fought, the adventures in mangrove swamps, and the duels with villainous slavemasters, the secret missions for his government, the beautiful ladies so grateful to be rescued or so eager to betray state secrets to him. Actually Tiara wasn’t sure she exactly approved of the other ladies, but the slave explained that Edward only romanced them because he hadn’t found Mendoza in that lifetime yet, and as soon as he had he would be faithful unto death.
But how awful the story of his death, when it came! Tiara wept and stormed and struck her slave, begging him to make the story come out some other way. He reminded her that this story was true, that he had to tell what really happened to Edward. And to Mendoza, arrested by evil Dr. Zeus, only because she helped Edward, condemned to be confined to a vat like one of the glass jars Uncle Ratlin kept big people parts in, floating and dreaming, neither dead nor alive.
What a relief to hear how the Englishman was going to be reborn and come back to rescue her! Tiara hugged the slave then. The slave wiped tears from his blind eyes and asked if she’d liked the story. She assured him it was the very best story in all the world, and ordered that he begin it all over again. How could he refuse? He was her slave, after all.
The long, long hours in the darkness dragged on, as the story was told and told again, and then one night somewhere during the years the slave broke off in mid-telling with the strangest expression on his face. “What is it, my treasure?” Tiara wanted to know, sitting up.
“I—Great Caesar’s ghost! My lower right quadrant diagnostic just came online,” the slave cried. He groped forward with his hand and felt his legs. “Yes! Yes! And there’s a signal getting through!” He began to laugh, a high-pitched shuddery laugh, and tears ran down his face. As Tiara watched, astonished, he flexed his right foot.
“Your leg moved,” she announced.
“Did it? Is it moving now? I can’t make sense of what I’m reading—oh, Princess dear, do you know what this means?” the slave gasped.
“It is moving! What does it mean, lover mine?”
“It means there really is some hope, after all,” the slave told her, reaching out again to touch his leg and reassure himself. “If I can get my legs back, if I can walk, we can get away from here, Princess.”
“And see the big world? And go to London? And have adventures?” Tiara leaped up in excitement.
“Absolutely!” The slave collapsed back against the wall, his thin chest heaving. “It must be all that food you’ve been bringing in, now that you’re becoming so clever at foraging. All those trout, and the hen eggs. I’m finally getting enough fuel to run the rest of my self-repair program.”
“Can we go away right now?”Tiara began to dance.
“Not yet,” the slave told her. “Yikes! What pins and needles. Oh, but it feels wonderful. Listen to me, sweetheart, I’ll need both legs working to walk. And we’ll need a plan. Silly me, all these years I never made one, but then I never really thought—”
“If you eat more, will your other leg work, too?” demanded Tiara.
“It ought to—but it’s not just a question of eating, you see?” The dreamy vagueness had gone from the slave’s voice; he sounded more sharp and alert than she could ever recall. “There are specific chemical compounds I need. My body must convert them into fuel. Potassium, magnesium, and iron. Selenium. Calcium.”
“They sound delicious, my heart’s darling,” said Tiara, but uncertainly, because she had never heard of such things.
“Ah, but where to find them?” The slave frowned, thinking very hard. “Can’t exactly jog down to the corner shop for orange juice and bananas, can we? No indeed. And liver’s not easy to come by either, unless you were able to steal one from some unsuspecting cow.” He turned his blind face in her direction. “Sweetheart, my adored one, what does he farm, that mortal you visit? Cattle alone? Or would he have rows of green stuff?”
“Nasty green stuff,” she told him, frowning and shaking her head. “I tasted it. Berries are nicer, and plums.”
“To be sure they’re sweeter, dearest, but will you bring a leaf or two of the nasty for your poor old sl
ave to try? Raw kale would suit very nicely, I think.” The slave hugged himself, shivering with happiness. “Roots of any kind, if you can find them. Oh, Princess, think of being free. Think of walking in the sunlight. I’ll take you to the gardens, the museums, the theaters, the shops! What a time we’ll have …”
Tiara could barely wait. She ventured far afield, farther than she’d ever gone, and did what Quean Barbie would have indignantly refused to do: dug roots with her own slender hands for an old slave, and filled her arms with nasty cabbagey stuff. It made her very cold and cross, to labor across the muddy night fields, and she was tired when she came back to the bone room; but her heart beat all strangely when she saw the slave sitting up, listening for her, his lined face anxious.
He ate so gladly of the kale, and coaxed her to try it, though she still spat it out and shuddered. Ah, but potatoes and carrots! Tiara couldn’t believe how delicious they were. She went back to the farmer’s field the next night and dug all she could carry away with her. The next night she did the same.
The next night, as she was working her way through the heather to the edge of the terraced field, a figure rose suddenly, looming against the starlight, and a gnarled hand caught her by the wrist. She screamed, so high and shrill no human ear could have heard her, and bit frantically at the hand.
“Hello hello,” hissed her captor. “I’d keep my voice down if I were you, stranger in the night, sweetmeat. Sweeney sits in the dark with a sling well loaded, ready to bash out the little pretty brains of you, if you make free with his truck patch again.”
“Uncle Ratlin?” she said in surprise, and somewhat muffled around his withered knob-knuckles. She lifted her face to stare at him, and he at her, in mutual astonishment.
Uncle Ratlin was terribly big for kin, nearly as tall as her slave might be if he could stand. And whiskery! The stupids’ gray skins were smooth and hairless, but Uncle Ratlin had a straggling beard and wispy elflocks trailing from under his hat. He was wearing big people clothes. But of course, he had to; for Tiara recollected now that he went out among the big people, did Uncle Ratlin, fooling them into thinking he was one too, so that he could further his grand scheme to ruin them all.
He peered at her now, his wide green eyes puzzled. “How should you know me?” he wondered, pursing his thin mouth. He thrust his face close and sniffled at her. “Was it you Sweeney was grousing about down at the Rising Moon, you stripping his fields? Pretty ripe girl, what hill are you from? There’s no kin in this county but mine.”
She drew back haughtily. “Unhand me, sir,” she ordered. “I am the Princess Tiara Parakeet.”
He bared his tiny sharp teeth in a smile. “No you’re not! Hellholes, I know you. You’re Barbie’s Baby!”
She bared her teeth right back at him, but he snatched off his hat with his free hand and danced round and round in the starlight, dragging her with him. Down in the shadow of his cowshed, the farmer Sweeney heard their scuffle and loaded a rock into his sling, straining his eyes to see through the darkness. Uncle Ratlin heard him and stopped abruptly. He crouched and ran through the heather, and Tiara had no choice but to run with him, until they made the shelter of a hazel thicket and vanished into its rustly shadow.
“Now then,” whispered Uncle Ratlin, “now then, my treasure, my love, and haven’t you grown up sweet! But where’ve you been, darling, all these long years?”
“I have been in London,” she informed him. “S-staying at Claridge’s and sipping champagne.”
He gaped at her, and then his eyes narrowed. “Not too likely, lovey. But you’ve been around big people, haven’t you, and learned things? London, she says. Where were you really, I’d like to know? Silly bitch Barbie killed you, broke your baby neck and left you outside for a dog to find, or so I always reckoned. She does that now and then, in her little fits of temper. But she didn’t, did she? You must have run off.”
“Yes,” said Tiara, realizing she had to tell him something. “I ran off.”
“I was ready to break her neck myself when I came back home and found no Baby,” he told her, his eyes shining. “Well! No more presents for her. Only for you, sweet thing. Who needs blowzy Barbie anymore, with you grown up and cherry-ripe? You’ll come back with me, now, and spit in her old eye.”
“I will not,” said Tiara, summoning every ounce of dignity. “I decline, thou baseborn churl.”
“Listen to her, listen to her, what fine words,” Uncle Ratlin cackled. “Oh, dearie dear, I know what it is with you. You’re High Hybrid like me, you’ve got a brain! And you must have been living under a library all these years, too. Well, you’ll have no trouble putting old Barbie in her place. She’s got the weight and the fingernails, but you’ll be quick and smart. Don’t be afraid of her.” He groped under her dress in a friendly sort of way.
“Never,” Tiara replied, reeling a little at what the Memory was telling her: she might kill Quean Barbie now, if she wanted! And take her place in that warm chamber, and watch whatever she wanted on that holoset herself, and have all the fine clothes and presents.
… And the game would begin, the endless game of romance, waiting for the keen pleasure of the vacant-eyed big men the Uncles would catch for her. Sometimes they’d be sampled, hairy massive darlings, and returned sleepwalking to wherever the Uncles had caught them, but sometimes they could be kept. Between times she could amuse herself with the Uncles and have little stupid babies, popping them out in litters for the other stupids to care for; but by the big men she’d have fine clever boys, Uncles like Ratlin and his brothers, and perhaps one day after years of Uncles a little girl, clever and lovely, a reflection of her own glory!
Though one day the girl would grow up and turn nasty… and of course the big men never lasted forever, even if they were as beautiful as an Elvis, even so they’d clutch their hearts and groan one day and the stupids would drag them away to the bone room … where her fair-haired darling slave had been thrown when Ratlin killed him. Thought he’d killed him. Careful, careful now.
“I am not interested in your kind offer, sir,” she told Uncle Ratlin, though the Memory was telling her this was the life she was meant for, this was the life that offered everything she could possibly desire for herself, lovers and status and presents!
“Ah, now.” Uncle Ratlin looked at her anxiously. “You don’t really mean that. I know what it is. You’re scared of the old bitch. Sweetie, precious babe, she’s old. And think of the kin. If you don’t come back, honey love, what’ll we all do? No new stupids to make things, no new Uncles to plot for us! And there’s such plotting to be done, now that we’ve almost got the delivery system perfected. Don’t you want to see our ancient enemies ruined entirely?”
Tiara shivered, searching the Memory for the right thing to say. “I wouldn’t go back for all the tea in China,” she said, though she had only the vaguest idea what that meant. “Live in that bitch’s house? Wear her clothes? Sleep in her sheets? You reek of her, you faithless bastard.” And she gave Uncle Ratlin what she hoped was an imperious stare.
To her great delight he cringed and whined. Then he looked crafty. “Clever little thing, good baby girl, she’s holding out for a better price,” he crowed. “That’s my darling, what a Quean you’ll make! What do you want, sugar, do you want a SoundBox? You want lipsticks? You want cider from the Rising Moon? Or is it nicer things and more refined you want, my jewel? Of course! You’re an educated young lady, and I wonder how? But it’s holonovels you want, Love’s Purple Passion and Her Scarlet Amours, isn’t it? I can bring you all your sweet heart could possibly require, baby love.”
“No,” said Tiara, lighting up inside because she’d had the most wonderful idea. “I spit on such things. If you are to win my hand, base varlet, you must be worthy. I shall set you a task, and if it is fulfilled to the letter, I shall be yours; but only then.”
What a thrill, to see Uncle Ratlin stand speechless with amazement, and annoyance, and respect! And he was caving to her, he was going t
o obey. She could even make Uncle Ratlin obey her now, Uncle Ratlin who was the cleverest uncle who’d ever lived. She threw back her head and laughed at him.
He gnashed his teeth, tugged at his skimpy beard. “Yes, dear,” he muttered. “What is it my little Quean would have her servant do?”
“I won’t live in that hill,”Tiara told him. “It’s old and it stinks. I want you to make a new place. Set all your stupids to work on it. A fresh green hill with a clean heart, no trash, no leaks in the tunnels. It must be painted and papered, with windows on the world and curtains of whitest lace. It must be heated and full of fresh air. I want furnishings of the finest, the best you can steal from the big people, and I want—I want a holoset bigger than Barbie’s. Do you hear me? These things must I have, or you’ll never touch my white skin.”
“That’ll take years, honey of my heart,” groaned Uncle Ratlin. “And I’ve the plot against the big people going forward, you know. It’s almost sprung.”
“What do I care?”Tiara said, tossing her head. “Do as I say!”
He growled up high in his throat, but knelt before her and kissed the raggy hem of her gown. “It shall be done, my blossom,” he promised, though he showed his teeth. “And where will you be staying in the meantime, might I inquire?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she told him. “At a fine hotel, perhaps.”
“More likely in the cellar at Wicklow House,” Uncle Ratlin guessed. “Am I right? Is that where you’ve been hiding all these long years? Must be! They’ve got a grand old library and I never thought to search there, never thought a little thistledown thing like you could float so far.”
“A lady never tells her secrets.” Tiara put her nose in the air. “And now, if you have no further business, I shall betake myself home.”