Black Chamber

by S. M. Stirling

  Perhaps I’m still mentally cold; or even soul-cold, Luz thought. It’s no wonder, considering what’s in these maps.

  The metal tray she had removed from her trunk spent most of its time cushioning vials and packages of cosmetics, scented soap, and personal hygiene products; they gave the room a pleasant odor of lavender and verbena, and with the coal fire built up they also gave it a summery contrast to the steady cold rain outside. Now the tray’s true function was revealed.

  “I see!” Ciara said, kneeling beside her on the floor by the bed with the bottom half of the photo-development kit before them.

  I have found the route to Ciara Whelan’s heart, Luz thought with what she recognized, slightly startled, as genuinely fond amusement. It isn’t flowers or poetry or even my own radiant charm and sensual animal magnetism. It’s a really well-designed piece of machinery.

  “The clockwork pulls the strip of exposed celluloid through the chemicals,” Ciara said, instantly analyzing something that had taken Luz days to fully master. “Only this length of strong paper follower comes out, and then the perforations engage before you put the cover on and wind the spring and set it going! Like a Kodak, but for individual developing, with these timer mechanisms keeping the period in each solution precise. Building the skills into the machine.”

  Luz had brought together the various parts from items in her trunks, all carefully designed to look harmless. For instance, the power for the whole system came from the spring and wind-up train of a—perfectly functional—alarm clock, which was something quite commonly found in an affluent traveler’s baggage. Amused, she watched as Ciara deftly identified each and started to install them in the slots and screw holes of the base with the tools in a little Swiss Army knife. Luz only had to correct her once, and that was a matter of which of two pieces of gearwork to put in first.

  Luz tucked her hands in the wide kimono sleeves of her coat against a phantom chill that still seemed to pain them. Besides her best winter-weight tailleur suit she’d put on a knee-length coat she’d picked up in New York on impulse and that always lifted her spirits, French-designed but inspired by Bakst’s paintings for the Ballet Russe that had made such a sensation before the war. The fabric was an orange corded merino wool and lined with green satin, with a high soft collar and cuffs of black velvet trimmed with black fur. There was a jet-colored cloud-form pattern in the Chinese style embroidered with curled wool yarn and outlined with black silk cord in mirror images on the shoulders at the back and in strips to either side of the middle down to another outburst at the front bottom hem, and more on the sleeves.

  “And here’s the top,” Luz said, lifting it from the bed’s duvet.

  “So, you put the distilled water in here, the developer bath here, the stop bath here, then the washing bath and then up here to dry,” Ciara said. “It’s a darkroom in miniature! And of course developed negatives are far safer to carry.”

  “¡Verdad!” Luz said grimly. “And a very great deal is riding on these pictures.”

  They were both silent for a moment, thinking of what the information on the roll of film meant.

  “I’ve heard that there are new sonic devices for detecting submarines,” Ciara said thoughtfully. “Besides listening with hydrophones.”

  Then she put her hand to Luz’s forehead; it felt warm. “No fever! Saints, but I was deathly afraid you’d get pneumonia, after last night.”

  “I’m tough as an old root,” Luz said. “I only look pale, ethereal, and delicate.”

  That got her a startled laugh; unclothed what she actually looked like was one of the Flying Corellis, taut curves and long straplike muscle. Form followed function.

  “And yes, there are devices . . . they’re called Echels, echolocation systems, now. But only a few specialist destroyer squadrons have them, and they don’t work well in shallow water yet. Still more if the target is on the bottom. With these maps—or just the coordinates—the Navy can probably destroy all the U-boats, if they’re reasonably alert. Without them, even with warning they’d be lucky to get a small share. This Loki plot is complex, but not so much so it’ll fail completely if everything doesn’t go perfectly for them. And the weapon itself is a horror, but it’s an effective horror.”

  “We’ll just have to get the information through, then,” Ciara said stoutly.

  She was silent as they snapped in the various bits that would operate the little automatic developer, then lowered the cover on and secured it with wing-nut fasteners that pressed the grooved rubber light seal around it home.

  “Luz . . .” she said thoughtfully. “The Germans were the ones who started using the other war gases, chlorine and phosgene and the one they used on Verdun, mustard gas they call it . . . but the other powers, the British and the French, used them right back, didn’t they?”

  The cover plate had been part of a watertight compartment that held packets of the very latest pre-packaged disposable menstrual pads, the ones that had a removable strip on the bottom that covered an adhesive surface that held them in place in your drawers without a belt or loops. Ciara had been very impressed, since she’d heard of them but never seen any—and also grateful when Luz offered to share. They’d both be needing them in a few days, and the Boston girl had been planning to scrounge rags and face the prospect of hand-cleaning them in the room’s basin.

  Ciara hadn’t packed nearly as much gear when she left her home on what she thought was a mission of vengeance against the Sassenach who’d killed her brother.

  And of that, only the prospect of death is the same, Luz thought, then scolded herself for pessimism. You’re just still feeling no poder en tu alma about things.

  “Verdad,” Luz said. “The Entente powers couldn’t not use them, not if they wanted to fight back; the Russians never could produce much of it, and look what’s happened to them. I know we’ve got plenty stockpiled, and gas masks and so forth too, and our troops are training to use them.”

  “But doesn’t that mean that we’ll have to use the Breath of Loki too? That everyone will? Once they learn how to make it, and that won’t take long.”

  “It won’t?” Luz said, disappointed but not surprised.

  Secret weapons didn’t stay secret once you started using them, unless you were fighting savages without a modern industrial base. You usually only got one or two chances to surprise people with them before they came right back at you, often improved in the process.

  “No,” Ciara said flatly. “The Germans have the world’s best chemists and chemical industry, but they’re not that much better. And from what the old man said, they stumbled across this by luck . . . if you call it luck. Six months, a year at most, and we’d be able to make it too. The British and the French, maybe the same, maybe a bit more.”

  While they spoke, Luz had let Ciara help assemble the system, but she reserved pouring the chemicals through the built-in valves for herself; they were the only ones she had and there was no room for the slightest error.

  “I suppose so, and once everyone’s making it everyone will use it,” she said. “Just a minute, I can’t talk now.”

  After she’d finished and stoppered the valves she took a deep breath, pushed the whole unit slowly and carefully fully beneath the bed, and flipped the little lever. With a whine it began to work . . .

  And if it doesn’t work, what do I do? ¡Sepa la Bola! Damned if I know! Not much use in praying. Mima’s old tía told me those stories . . . I could sacrifice a goat to the appropriate Orisha, Ogún I suppose . . .

  They rose, dusting off their hands and packing away the bits and pieces back into harmless anonymity in her trunks.

  “Well, that’s going to be very bad,” Ciara said, resuming the conversation. “Because you’re right, Luz. This is a really, really powerful weapon. Masks don’t work with it and one tiny little drop will kill you and it stays around waiting to kill you. You can’t even touch
someone who’d been poisoned to help them . . . or even give them decent burial . . . because enough may be on their clothes or skin or hair to kill you or cripple you or drive you mad. Even the Germans don’t have any countermeasures yet, except those rubber suits—and you couldn’t put everyone, or even very many people, in those. Luz, you could destroy whole countries with enough of that horrible stuff. Even bomb shelters wouldn’t help—they’d be death traps unless they were hermetically sealed.”

  Luz opened her mouth, then closed it again. “You’re right,” she said simply.

  And if you mixed it in with explosives and incendiaries, even a little of it, the effects would build on each other because people would be too terrified to take shelter from the bombs or fight the fires. Usually I’m all for progress—I’m a Party member and it’s the Progressive Republican Party, after all . . . but this time . . .

  Aloud she went on: “But I don’t know what on Earth we can do about that, so there’s no point in worrying. The president will have to decide about that one. Let’s stick to things we can do something about and not occupy our minds with things we can’t affect.”

  They worked in silence at rearranging the trunks so the changes were undetectable to a casual eye. Then Ciara cleared her throat. Luz glanced at her and saw that she had her hands pressed together, something she’d already noticed meant nervousness.

  “Ah . . . Luz . . . can I ask you something?”

  “¡Ay! That always sounds ominous!”

  “Wha . . . what did you mean when you said I had lovely toes? Last night? It was what you said just before you went to sleep.”

  “Before me caí . . . went out like a light.”

  Luz laughed and took up the violin and began to check the tuning on the strings; they were going to play to cover the faint whine of the little spring-driven motor from the alarm clock, though that was probably unnecessary. Although they’d get to enjoy the music, which made it worthwhile in itself. From everything she’d heard travel by submarine was fairly hellish, so they might as well enjoy things while they could.

  “Ay, at that point I was saying the first thing that came into my head.”

  “Oh, I understand! You were . . . you looked like you were on the edge of death!”

  “There’s no quicker way to die of exposure than being sluiced with running water just short of freezing. I was on the edge of death. Another fifteen minutes out there and I would have been over it,” Luz said feelingly. “That wasn’t the first time you saved my life, but it counts.”

  “So if you were just babbling . . .”

  “Not exactly. Just not guarding my tongue. Do you really want to know?”

  “Ummmm . . . yes. I mean to say, I’ve never really thought about my, my toes. Except when I stub them or someone steps on them.”

  “Well, querida, everyone should be allowed a few eccentricities of their very own. One of mine is that I like toes.”

  “You like . . . toes?” Ciara said, looking baffled, intrigued, and apprehensive at the same time.

  “You know how someone will say: She has such nice hair, or She has wonderful sparkling eyes? Not that I have anything against hair or eyes, and yours are striking, but one of the things I notice about a pretty girl is her toes. Except that you usually don’t get to see someone’s toes on brief acquaintance, of course, more’s the pity. And yours truly are lovely; I noticed the first time I saw your feet bare. I said it aloud last night because I was nearly delirious; sorry if I presumed.”

  I will spare you what I actually like doing to, and with, pretty toes. Not that those are so very startling or unorthodox, but they would certainly sound . . . a little lascivious . . . as things are right now.

  Ciara sat at the piano; Luz suspected that was as much for the opportunity to stare at the keyboard as for the arpeggio she sounded out.

  “And you do think I’m pretty? Really?”

  “Devastatingly so,” Luz said cheerfully and sincerely; that was a lot more pleasant to think about than cities laid waste by the Loki horror-weapon. “Especially when you smile. Or when you blush, and better still when you smile and blush.”

  Ciara did both, made an attempt to speak, cleared her throat, and then went on: “I suppose . . . I suppose I was flirting with you the other day, wasn’t I? But I didn’t mean to . . . I mean, I didn’t know . . . I don’t want to hurt your feelings . . . I do like and admire you so much, but . . .”

  Luz laughed aloud and leaned an elbow on the piano and tapped her on the shoulder with the bow of the violin, which brought her face up.

  “Ciara, yes, you were flirting, yes, you didn’t know it, yes, I realized that and I shouldn’t have teased you, that was wicked of me, and no, this is not the time or place. We’re alone among enemies, in constant danger of death, and contrary to what the books say that is usually not very romantic. It certainly . . . distorts your emotions. Why don’t we settle for being good friends and comrades for now? And when it’s all over and the day is saved and we can relax and be ourselves . . . ¡Al fin, estaré harta de esperar! We’ll see what we shall see!”

  “Oh, yes!” Ciara said. “And I do so want to be your friend and help you, Luz.”

  “Bueno,” Luz said briskly. “You’ve shown you’re a very good friend to have.”

  Then she leaned closer and whispered: “But just before we drop the subject, you do have such lovely, lovely toes and they will haunt my dreams. And to seal the agreement—”

  The kiss was quick and soft. Luz straightened up and began to turn away with a smile:

  Really, you are rather wicked at times, mi corazón, she thought with satisfaction. Pero así está la semilla antes de cosechar, as the saying goes. No harvest without a seed. Let’s see how that grows . . . assuming we live to get back to America, that is.

  . . . and then a knock sounded at the door.

  “Play!” Luz said, snapping to alertness.

  Ciara was staring blindly and touching her lips with a wondering finger.

  “Play!” Luz said again, more sharply.

  The younger woman came to herself with a start, snatched some pages from the music rack, and began to peck out something that segued into Dvořák’s Romance in F Minor, Zubatý’s B.38 arrangement for piano and violin. Luz joined in—the violin part was the core of the piece, and she could do it from memory—and their playing gained strength as the weaving structure built. The knock wasn’t repeated until the final high trill.

  Luz went to the door. “Yes?” she said, opening it with the violin and bow in the other hand.

  Horst and the Herr Privatdozent were there. “Ah, you are feeling better!” Horst said with relief. “We did not wish to interrupt your duet, which was so lovely.”

  Oh, Horst, sweetie, if you only knew, Luz thought, and sighed.

  “There will be little time for the things of die Kultur in the weeks ahead,” von Bülow agreed solemnly.

  And that is so true as well, Luz thought, and managed to look solemn.

  “And for me this will be farewell,” von Bülow said. “My duties will call me elsewhere. It has been a great honor, gnädiges Fräulein.”

  “Fräulein Whelan said you were ill when she came to fetch your meal from the officer’s mess,” Horst said. “We were worried.”

  “Ah, well, not precisely ill,” Luz said. “Cramps and chills and a blue mood.”

  She glanced over to the chair that held the piled blue-and-white packages of menstrual pads, clearly labeled: Johnson & Johnson’s New Adhesive Sanitary Napkins, with Clean, convenient, discreet—freedom of motion for the freedoms of the New Woman! in smaller print beneath. There were times when she loathed her homeland’s advertising mania, and others when it was a source of innocent merriment. The claims were more or less true, in any case; it was a brilliant invention and far ahead of its time.

  She could refer to the pads—not in w
ords, of course—with reasonable if not perfect propriety, since the men had entered a ladies’ bedroom on their own initiative and without prior invitation. There were times when the code of manners that was so confining could be used as a weapon, rather along the same principles of redirecting force she’d discovered in jujitsu. Ciara was examining the upper wall opposite her and obviously wishing the castle would vanish, or possibly be carried away in a flood.

  In her world of Catholic Irish–shopkeeper respectability it would all be something you only mentioned with female relatives and friends.

  Luz could see both the German men read, mentally translate into their own language, then translate the idiom and context. Von Bülow actually blanched, but he’d been born deep in the Victorian period and had been a man and soldier, albeit a very young one, around the time of the Civil War. Horst flushed, averted his eyes, and forced himself not to mumble.

  “Ach, so,” he said, that singularly useful phrase. “Ah . . . we will be leaving tomorrow, I’m afraid, so everything will have to be ready to depart by dawn. I can arrange help if you need it.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, Horst, but I’m feeling uncomfortable, not crippled, and discomfort never stopped me from doing anything I thought essential.”

  As witness last night, poor boy, she thought, and finished:

  “Everything will be ready.”

  “Then we will leave you ladies to your preparations, and see you at dinner. I understand the cooks managed to, shall I say, acquire some surplus supplies from the Great General Staff headquarters train. They will attempt a Sächsischer Sauerbraten.”

  “See you then, Horst, Herr Privatdozent,” Luz said, and the men both clicked their heels and half bowed.

  The Black Chamber operative burst out laughing when they were safely gone, keeping it as quiet as she could but chortling until she was hiccupping.

  “Oh, I needed that! Did you see their faces! The trembling effort of will not to bolt! ¡Ay! The horror, the horror!”