Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2012 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Somebody brushed out tracks.” A familiar cold pressure grew between Doc’s shoulder blades, under the protection of his duster. Aware of how much he was giving away, but unable to stop himself, he let his gaze run over the ragged remains of the whatever-it-was. He might get lucky. He might catch the glint of sunlight off a gun barrel, or the flicker of motion as someone raised and sighted within that chambered darkness.

  “Yes.” Her voice was high and musical, charmingly out of place in her frame. “But coming or going?”

  The others had scuffed to a halt five feet or so back, waiting out the trackers’ verdict. At Miss Lil’s question, the voluptuous little blonde—Missus Jorgensen—shifted her hands from where they rested on her pommel and rubbed the left one with the right.

  “As it appears,” she quoted, “in the true course of all the question.”

  Doc snorted and quoted in return, “Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.”

  Her smile lit up her square-jawed face quite wickedly. “I had heard you were an educated man. It appears I was not misinformed.”

  “Ma’am,” he answered, and touched the brim of his cap. He looked at Flora, reminding himself who he was working for. “Whatever you came for—do you want to keep looking if you’re not the only ones?”

  “We’re looking for her logs,” Flora said.

  “Logs?”

  Her hair moved over her shoulders in a pair of squaw plaits thick as her wrists when she nodded. “That thing was a ship, Doctor Holliday. A ship that sailed between the stars.”

  “Huh,” Doc said, looking back at it. Still no sign of a carbine barrel, or any motion, or any life except the still burn of those blue lights in its depths. It had no wings, nor any sign of a balloon canopy, nor even the conical mouth of a giant Hale rocket on what he took to be its stern—the end towards the skid-marks, which was less damaged overall.

  He shrugged. “I’ll feel better when we’re under cover.”

  “Agreed,” Flora said. “Since we might be following someone in, what do you think of picketing the horses inside one of the damaged areas? At least they’ll be hidden from casual view.”

  “If someone’s going to steal ’em,” Bill said, “they can steal ’em from a picket line outside as easily as one in. And if we have to run for ’em, well, I’d rather not cross open ground under fire on foot. Or at all, for that matter.”

  He glanced at Doc, as if weighing his next words. “I can drop a ward line around ’em either way. Inside or out.”

  Doc sucked his teeth to get some moisture into his mouth. “You’re a hex.”

  Bill shrugged. “The ladies need some reason to put up with me.”

  “Huh,” Doc said. It might be autumn by any sensible man’s reckoning, but that didn’t help the heat that trickled sweat down between his shoulder blades.

  Since Bill had been so honest with him, he allowed, “I might have seen a trick or two like that my own self. And more men who claimed it than could do it. Wardings, though. That’s a bit beyond my experiences.”

  “What you do with that iron,” Bill answered. “That’s beyond me.”

  Doc tipped his head and let the compliment slide off.

  Missus Shutt pushed her hat down over that cropped steel hair. “Warded or not, I can’t imagine the horses would be any less safe than out in the open.”

  “Unless the wreck itself eats ’em,” Doc said.

  They all looked at him. He had sucked up the last splinter of horehound. He stifled a cough and wiped his mouth. No blood this time, for a mercy.

  “You think that’s likely?” Missus Jorgensen asked.

  “I think it could happen,” Doc answered. “Likely? That’s a whole ’nother thing.”

  * * *

  The horses came into the dim, reflected light of the wreck as if into a stable, heads lowered and calm. Their composure was reassuring, although Doc might have found it more peculiar if it hadn’t been fifteen or so of Doctor Fahrenheit’s degrees less hot in the damp shade of the hull of the ruined ‘star-ship.’ Although that was peculiar in its own right: You’d expect a metal shed, sweating in the sun, to be sweltering no matter how vast.

  Instead, the derelict exhaled a moist breath that seemed cool, even if only by comparison. Doc’s companions reveled in it, stretching themselves taller in the shade as if the desert light had weight. They moved around the arching space they’d chosen as a temporary stable, keeping an eye on the three buckled passages—one at ground level, two above—that led deeper into the wreck. The horses huffed into their nosebags and settled quietly, though no one did more to ease his mount than slip its bit. Girths stayed tight, in case a hasty retreat was indicated. Bill began casting around the edge of the chamber like a terrier after a rat—looking to set out his ward line, Doc imagined. He had that concentrated look of a professional—surgeon, gambler, hex, or shootist—considering a selection of inadequate options. Doc let him be.

  Doc wasn’t happy about stabling the horses in this mess; it was asking for lockjaw, but he didn’t see a good alternative. As he was checking the bay’s hooves before pulling the coach gun from the saddle, he heard rust flakes crunching under the footsteps of two of the booted, uncorseted women walking up between the mares. One of them—Missus Jorgensen, by her sharp dry tone—was saying something indistinct, and Doc strained to pick her words out of the coruscating echoes of footsteps, hoof clops, and one of the mares pissing like a downspout running into a catch barrel, before he realized what he was doing.

  If your sainted momma caught you eavesdropping, John Henry Holliday, you know a frown would crease her brow. But Doc wasn’t sure how thoroughly he believed Flora’s tale about this being an expedition to retrieve some long lost captain’s log—and in fairness, it was his life on the line. Funny how since Dallas he had no compunctions about holding a gun on a man, or gambling for a living. But he could still balk at trying to overhear something he maybe shouldn’t.

  It didn’t matter—he couldn’t make out much over the stamp of hooves and the creak of leather, except Miss Lil answering whatever Missus Jorgensen had said with, “…sense detail’s genius.”

  “I’m looking forward to this one,” Missus Jorgensen answered. “Could be our greatest run since the Spider Women of Queso Grande.”

  “Hey,” Flora interrupted. “No—”

  Whatever she said got lost in the background noise as well. Doc shook his head at himself and straightened up, letting the gelding’s off fore drop. A little confusion and thwarted curiosity was no more than he deserved for such rudeness.

  He almost lost the rustle of something unexpected kicking through rust flakes and litter in the hollow clop of the gelding’s hoof.

  “Shhh,” he hissed—but you couldn’t shush a horse, and he was the second one to hiss for quiet, behind Missus Shutt, who was turned at the waist, wrist cocked and one bony hand on her iron like she could have it skinned as fast as any man.

  “What?” Bill asked from the outside of the group, real soft—but his voice still echoed and sloshed around the crumpled, cavernous room.

  “Company,” Doc said gently. He let the coach gun slide into his hand now; he’d seen a man die once because he waited to try to get to a rifle on his saddle until the shooting started and the horse was spooked.

  Flora ducked under the gelding’s belly and flattened herself against its saddle behind Doc. “What’d you hear?” she asked, more breath than sound.

  Doc let his lips shape the words. “Footstep.” He thought about the sound, something about the way it rustled rather than crunched. “Moccasins or barefoot. Not boots.”

  Flora frowned, but as if she was annoyed or disappointed, not as if she were scared. “Oh, I hope they didn’t go there. That’d make me sad.”

  The corners of Doc’s mouth curved up at her irritation in the face of danger. But there was an intriguing clue in her words, and—well, he’d proven his unhealthy curiosity already today. “Who were you hoping not to have come here?” />
  Her eyes had been straining into the shadows beyond the shadowy bulk of the horses. She looked at Doc, now, startled. “I beg your pardon. Just a turn of phra—”

  Another rustle silenced her. Louder this time, closer. Doc let the coach gun rest beside his leg. He didn’t want to fire a scattergun over the horses that hemmed them on both sides, though he could use the big brown for cover and a shooting rest if he had to. Once. And then it would be hooves and half-ton panic everywhere, in a crowded chamber with uncertain footing.

  Better for everyone if they could get out of this without gunfire.

  Flora must have thought so too. “Bill,” she said, low and conversational this time so it would carry. “How’s that ward line coming?”

  “Faster now,” Bill answered, over a scraping sound. Doc caught a scent of burning orrisroot. A ward line wouldn’t stop a bullet—lead just didn’t answer to magic—but it would keep a person out.

  “Hey,” Miss Lil said, forgetting to whisper—and as Doc turned his head toward her, she suddenly pointed back over his shoulder.

  He whipped round, the coach gun to his eye, up on tiptoe to get line of sight over the back of the brown mare. Trying to remember not to hold his breath, because if he held his breath, he would start coughing. And if he started coughing, there was no guarantee that he would ever stop.

  Over the iron sights of the gun, Doc glimpsed something that nearly made him drop it.

  The figure half-silhouetted against the blue glow at the back of one of the above-ground-level tunnels could have been a naked child just on the verge of puberty—slender, fine-limbed, large-headed for the delicate lines of an elongated neck. Except he—or she, or possibly even it—hung upside down by its toes in the mouth of the tunnel like one of the slick mud-green tree frogs of Doc’s Georgia boyhood. The long fat-tipped fingers on its splayed hands did nothing to disabuse him of the comparison.

  The hands—

  Its hands were empty.

  Incrementally, Doc let the coach gun drift down, aware that beside him Flora was doing the same. The harsh breaths of his companions echoed to every side, layering over one another in an atonal fugue.

  Doc pointed the shotgun in a safe position and uncocked it. He lowered the butt to the ground, letting the barrel lean against his knee. He raised his hands again, fingers spread wide like the frog-thing’s, showing them to be empty.

  “Well,” he said. “I reckon you ain’t from around here.”

  The thing made no sound in return, but it leaned forward from the hips. Behind Doc, Missus Shutt stepped out from between horses, her iron reholstered too. Doc wanted to hiss at her to keep cover—the bony-limbed critter could be a decoy, a distraction. But as she walked forward, her boot toes nosing softly through the rust and trash on the floor, each step tested before she shifted her weight onto it—well, Doc found himself just purely unable to intervene.

  And all Missus Shutt’s companions just stood around and watched her risk her fool life like charades with moon men was some kind of a fashionable parlor game.

  “Hey there, friend,” said Missus Shutt. She spread her hands out a little wider, until Doc could see the light and shadows stretched between her fingertips. She paused when Doc could just see the faint greeny glow of Bill’s ward line shining against the scarred leather of her boots. “We didn’t know there were any survivors of the crash. We’re here to help.”

  The moon man didn’t even shift. But his—its—ribcage swelled visibly with what might have been a deep breath. Doc found that strangely reassuring: If it breathed, it was alive. And if it was alive, it was vulnerable to flying bits of metal and flying hexes both.

  Missus Shutt must have read some encouragement in its steady posture, because she let her hands drop gently against her thighs and said, “My name is Elisa Shutt. I’m a duly-appointed representative of James Garfield, the President of the United States of America, the political institution whose territory this is. And I am empowered to offer you assistance on behalf of my government.”

  Hah, thought Doc. I knew there was something more to this than treasure hunters.

  Behind him—not to him—Miss Lil whispered, “I thought this was a shooting adventure,” and Missus Jorgensen answered, “It isn’t over yet,” her tone prim as a Yankee schoolmarm’s.

  “Shh,” Flora hissed back, jerking her head at Doc.

  Miss Lil replied, “He can’t hear what’s out of—”

  That echoing incomprehensibility claimed the rest of the sentence. Maybe she’d turned her head.

  Maybe she was using some kind of hex to keep him from hearing what she didn’t think he’d ought.

  Flora ducked back against the horse. Doc could tell from the timbre of her voice as she leaned across the saddle that what she said to Lil, she meant to hiss low and sharp. But those echoes were deceptive, and his ears were pretty good.

  ““That’s John Henry Fucking Holliday over there,”” the quadroon whispered, as if his name were something to conjure with. She gave it more weight than Missus Shutt had given President Garfield’’s. ““He’ll kill you off, not just kill you out. So unless you never want to see 1881 again—”

  Doc snorted. Out of the corner of his mouth he said, “I heard that.” He was a good shot, fast, and despite his cough he rode with the Tombstone posse when the law needed him. But he hadn’t ever killed even a single man—although to hear some people tell it, he might have shot down two or three hundred.

  Still, he kept hearing that ring in her tone: awe as if at something out of legend…even as he kept his eye on the motionless moon man tree frog which—who—breathed, and looked at them, and breathed again.

  She said his name like he was somebody.

  Doc’s confusion was interrupted by the glitter of the moon man’s wide, black, sclera-less eyes as its head turned slightly, tracking the sounds of the others. He didn’t reach for the coach gun. He could skin his pistol faster, if he had to. But he was really starting to think he might not have to shoot.

  “We come in peace,” Missus Shutt said.

  The moon man was still in near shadow, but a little light fell across its face from the side, now that it had its head turned. Doc saw the long split of its lipless mouth part above—it was still upside down—the flat bump where a nose should have been. He saw the tongue glisten.

  “Water,” the thing said, in the piping voice of a child.

  “You need water?” asked Missus Shutt.

  It reached out a hand. “I give water,” it replied, in warbling tones.

  The Code of the West, Doc thought. Even a moon man understood it. He reached to lift his coach gun by the barrel, to slide it back into the saddle holster.

  The sound of a pistol shot, dizzy-loud in the echoing space as if somebody had boxed his ears, knocked him back against the gelding. The brown mare sidled, yanking her tie down, and hammered the coach gun from his hand. It went to the floor, under stomping hooves. To dive for it was to risk a crushed skull.

  Deafened, seeing black spots, head ducked, Doc hauled himself up the saddle leathers, his pistol in his right hand. A horse was screaming; so was the moon man. Or what Doc assumed was the moon man: It sounded like a reed instrument blown to piercing discord, and it went through Doc more sharply even than the report of the gun.

  The moon man wasn’t where it had been. Doc assumed it had sensibly dropped out of the tunnel and sought cover, just like everything that could.

  The mare and the gelding stamped and twisted, trying to bolt, caught on their snubbed-off reins. Between them was a bad place to be. Dodging past their hindquarters wasn’t any better. And there was Flora, clinging to the saddle beside him, a death grip on the pommel as she tried to stay by the gelding’s shoulder and not get smashed by hooves and rumps as the panicked mare swung around and bumped him behind.

  Somebody was returning fire. Missus Shutt and Miss Lil, it looked like—Missus Shutt against the wall, sighting down her arm in the direction of the tunnel the moon man had
dangled in; Miss Lil standing tall, legs braced, and handling her pistol with both hands like a target shooter.

  Doc got an arm around Flora’s shoulder and pulled her hard against him, hard against the wall. Over the squealing of horses and the reverberations in his head, he couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw her lips moving. There was a little curved alcove in the bulkhead just beyond the gelding’s head; he watched Missus Jorgensen push Bill into it and come out gun blazing, laying a line of cover down the far corridor.

  Doc and Flora had to get out from between the horses if they were going to live. He yelled in her ear. As deafened as he was, she didn’t hear him. She tugged away, but she was slender and light. He had no trouble at all hooking her around the waist and pushing her before him as he went under the gelding’s head and into that selfsame alcove while the displeased horse fought his reins and tried to rear.

  “But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger!” Doc cried, as much to encourage himself as anything else. His own voice sounded as if it came through layers of cotton wool. Flora stared at him, and so did Bill.

  Of course they’d seen his mouth moving. And they couldn’t make out a blasted word.

  He gave Flora a push on the shoulder, urging her to stay still as he poked his head out quickly to assess. The horses were still sidling and stamping, but there was no more gunfire, and they had stopped rearing against the reins. Miss Lil, Missus Shutt, and Missus Jorgensen stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the chamber, each one eyeing a different tunnel mouth. Of the moon man, there was no sign.

  Doc yawned to pop his ears, hoping. He could fool himself that the ringing eased a little.

  “Shit!” Flora snarled, then covered her lips in horror when he looked at her mildly, feeling his eyebrows rise.

  “My momma would be scandalized,” Doc said, and kissed her quick, sideways across that unladylike mouth. Beside them, Bill rocked back against the wall, looking away quickly.

  Doc, he thought, setting Flora back into the alcove, did you just kiss a Negress? Well, that wasn’t like him at all.