Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  “Will do. May I ask, though…?”

  She’d just touched the first step with her heel, but still she turned.

  “…why are you going to such trouble for a powdered princess in a decayed mansion? Is the pay…that good?”

  “The pay is okay. That’s not the point.”

  “Then…?”

  “The point…” She abandoned the stairs to rejoin Theo by the fireplace. “…is that I didn’t train here to make toys. I’ve told you this. That wasn’t the reason my family chose to burden a reclusive old man with my education. I know I can give life to anything I choose, and I have chosen to start now. The stakes are high, I’ve got the conditions gathered. I can’t fail. If Varadys could bring life to my childhood dolls, I can do the same. And…”

  She stopped herself short, keeping the rest of the justification to herself. She’d seen the woman, spoken to her, and if there was one thing consistent about halls of mirrors, was that one always struggled to find their way out. Not because of the mirrors, or the doors, or the confusing layout camouflaged behind the reflective walls, in that particular case. No. But because every mirror reflected the same thing, and that thing was a velvet armchair where a woman sat. She was young, dark, and the fire brought out the determination in her eyes, a soft gray lined with precise needles of black kohl. And like so many women before her, women for whom Rosie had carved check marks on her bedposts, she had a pronounced Cupid’s bow, and her fingers moved in the most alluring of ways every time she seized her glass and took a careful sip.

  ***

  It didn’t take Theo long to figure out what they’d have to do. The redhead was resourceful, and when he didn’t spend the day with her, fixing dolls for little girls, sewing tiny dresses, accessorizing his right eye with intricate loupes, or fixing the casual curl of the fringe that fell over his eyes, he was outside, collecting intelligence, making sure Rosie got the latest news without ever having to walk out the door. They were both outlanders, after all, neither born nor raised in the city that had seen them grow into their clumsy young versions of adulthood.

  That evening, he arrived with a triumphant note, and the smile on his face echoed the one that took her own lips by assault.

  “Did you get it?”

  “I got it.” He was feeling brave, the kind of bravery sold in pill boxes and syringes, and it showed in the way he sat on the counter and spun to plant his feet on the other side—her side—of the barricade. “A friend of mine, Aiden. He’s apprenticed to an embalmer across town. They get called to fix the…well, the ugliest bodies every once in a while, in the red light district, but—”

  “We don’t want an ugly body, Th—”

  “No, Rosie, I know we don’t.” His voice was flat, stern, but he held out his hands as if to apologize for it—scared that she could find him, perhaps, pretty enough to turn into a machine if all else failed. The idea, albeit attractive in theory, didn’t receive any gold stars from the pragmatic side of her mind. Rosie hadn’t forgotten. Rosie remembered the trees scratching the windows of her childhood home and the murderous look in her aunt’s eyes when she came home from a particularly taxing day, the scars she left on her slave’s body afterwards. She remembered his face, as well, Max’s face, enough to know it looked nothing like Theo’s, enough to wonder if the magic had held through the years. Maybe he’d found someone to restore his missing eye. “All I’m saying is…there’s a body in a morgue by the river. It’s a boy, and he matches your original idea. Black hair, light eyes. He might be a little too light-skinned, but…it’s an experiment, right?”

  His eyes looked hopeful, though unsure. Rosie raised an eyebrow, one decorated with three tiny silver rings. “What do you mean, an experiment?”

  “You won’t…sell him to her, right? Not the first? Not the prototype?”

  Rosie lay back in her seat, ran a hand through her hair, found her fingers caught in the knots. It was a good question. What if it worked? What if it didn’t? What if he glitched? What if the body wasn’t even usable to being with?

  No use in wondering. “Come along, we have work to do.”

  ***

  Across town, the young man Rosie assumed must be Aiden awaited them by the morgue. He looked perfectly nondescript, and his left sleeve ended in a knot below the elbow, nothing but frigid air where his forearm used to be. Rosie made a note to fix it for him, as soon as she could. He led them into the deserted morgue, their figures casting shadows upon, first, the waiting room, then the embalming tables, and finally, the wall of numbered drawers.

  “He’s over there. Bottom row, second door.”

  Theo swallowed shaky words, and gestured for Rosie to step forward. He hadn’t grown in the midst of madness the way she had—he wasn’t used to the bodies and the blood and the guts. She approached the set of metallic doors with respect, even though she knew what lay on the other side had to be seen as nothing but feedstock.

  The body slid out with a swift pull, feet first. He was barefoot, his feet clad in black stockings that ended beneath loose shorts that ended at his knees. He wore a corset, a bottle green corset that pulled in his waist—not enough to deform him, not enough to catapult him into the realm of the uncanny. His skin was pale, nearly white in the thin light, and his eyes were glazed over—hard to tell whether they were hazel or gray. Dark brown hair, growing long around his chin, an easy fix. But the inside of the drawer reeked of alcohol, and that, she didn’t find quite so auspicious.

  “Cause of death?”

  Aiden, standing by the door, hand draped over the door handle as if body snatching was something he did every day, gave her a shrug.

  “Not sure. Some are saying overdose. As I suppose you can imagine, he hasn’t been autopsied yet.”

  Was that passive-aggressiveness in his tone? Condescension? Rosie decided she would fix his forearm for him, sure, but she’d charge him twice as she would anybody else.

  “Drugs, then?”

  “I suppose.”

  That wouldn’t do. What if something didn’t work? What if he’d been damaged beyond repair, beyond the point where she’d still be able to fix him with money and machines?

  “Theo, help me prepare him.” He walked forward with a large bag clutched between jeweled knuckles, and together, they eased the body into its new cocoon. Halfway through, she decided to remove the corset. It left boning marks criss-crossed over his own exposed bones, and she wasn’t sure they’d go away.

  ***

  It was so late it was turning early, and Rosie couldn’t help but stare at the body on the table in the back room, a little workshop where she used to sit on a toolarge armchair and watch Varadys work on his most ambitious projects. The walls had been covered in brass legs and brass heads ever since she remembered, but nothing else had stood the test of time—she was alone then, braving new territory, and taking a risk with parts of a different kind. On the first day, Rosie wasn’t sure she could do it. On the second day, she was sure she couldn’t do it, when the smell set in and her fingers froze inches from the boy’s body, curling into hesitant claws, retreating to rest idly by her side. The experiment rotted in the back of the workshop, and she didn’t try to make it work.

  Two days later, morning found her huddled in a corner, wrapped in a tattered blanket. The safe rattled, the doll wanted out. On the table, the boy had turned purple where gravity had pooled blood beneath his skin. She sat as he lay, and in their own ways, both drifted closer to their own demises, carrying marks of their individual prisons—his a physical set of metal bones, hers a mental picture of a short but eventful life—into the unknown.

  If results tended to show themselves to her, they were not doing it this time. Oh no. Her mind was empty but for the icy paralysis that came with fear, and terror, and the stench of the corpse on her work table. Theo was gone. She’d asked him to lay off work for a few days, and when solitude became too much, she asked Aiden to recover the body. She didn’t say a word beyond the ones she’d written on her callin
g card, sent clutched in the right hand of a dead-eyed child, as her left held a brand new doll. Varadys Automata, Dolls For Dreamers, the sign over the door said—and sometimes, Rosie still tried to live up to it.

  The body left, the smell lingered. And then the note arrived, written in golden ink over pale pink, thick paper with a vague scent of roses.

  There’s one more thing, Miss. I want it to speak. But more than that, I want it able to converse. Call back when possible. With love, G.

  She tore the note and let the pieces fall around her feet on the floor boards. A figure of despair, she found herself looking up at the walls of the brass reliquary that was her workshop. The lady didn’t know what she wanted, but Rosie did—and it was no longer a robot. It was a slave.

  ***

  No one knew slaves quite like Max. Maximillian, once. Dark skin, wavy hair, bluegreen eyes, an eyepatch, and a body covered in scars, all worn like uncomfortable clothes around one of the highest penthouses in the city—one with rooftop access, and thus an escape route into the skies he had always called home.

  On the ground floor, a doorwoman stopped her with an authoritative hand, asked for her name, noted her address. She took them all with her into a small room where Rosie wasn’t allowed, a room from which she came back with a snarl.

  “Please take the elevator. He’ll be expecting you.”

  It could have been true, but the person on the other side of the ascending gilded cage was not the one she had been expecting. The defining characteristics had remained unchanged, but the eyepatch was gone, replaced by a discreet glass eye—he was already half doll, then, even without her intervention—and the scars on the back of his fidgeting hands had healed to barely noticeable silver lines. Hard to tell whether he was happy to see her.

  “Are you alone?” It was the first thing she asked, and the one that cracked his face into the smile she had always associated with his character.

  “Such a predatory question for a guest to ask, Rose.” He stepped forward and unlocked the cage, but didn’t open the door. “May I ask…why the sudden visit?”

  Half of her wanted to sit, relax, act friendly for old times’ sake. The other half wanted to leave as soon as possible, abandon the uptown world of polished hardwood penthouses and return to the moldy riverside, where the dust was toxic but the people were kind.

  “I need your help.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  When had the women in her family ever remembered him with no strings attached, no favors asked? Rosie wondered, as she followed his defeated shoulders into the living room. By the large windows, he invited her to take the sofa, but chose to stay on his feet himself—she understood he needed the advantage, and gave it away, sinking into the pillows, expecting the silence to break on its own. Finally, he indicated the city.

  “So how’s business on the ground?”

  “Haven’t you been down?”

  A headshake, a smile. “Not once this year, no. It’s too much for me—the people, the noises. I’d rather stay above ground…and get somebody else to do the shopping.”

  Did he need a companion piece, too? The smell of the dead body caught up to her, and his creature comforts didn’t seem quite so interesting in comparison.

  “Listen, Max…have you heard of the house of mirrors?”

  “Can’t say I have.” He seemed honest, if uninterested—she’d prepared herself to see him shiver, as if he too had been one of the lady’s nocturnal visitors, as if he too had already fulfilled companion duties a robot would never be able to live up to.

  “There’s a lady who lives there, and she never goes outside. She has hired me to create her…a doll. A companion piece. Life-sized, able to speak, to move, to do everything a human does, except…not human.”

  Max was listening. The one eye he retained any control over was curious. His knuckles were white from gripping his sleeves at his elbows.

  “I came to you in case you had any ideas.”

  “I don’t know anything about dolls.” But she knew he knew where she was going, and he was bracing himself for it.

  “No, but you know about machines. And you know about…”

  He nodded. “You can say it.”

  “…submitting. Listen, I-I can’t program a thing to speak if she wants it able to hold a conversation. I can’t make a machine do the things she wants. It’s just not possible. But I told her I would, and if I don’t, she…she’s going to flay me, I just know it.”

  Max gave her nothing more than a shrug.

  “Then find her someone. A slave, a submissive. With time, we could train someone.” He sat on the coffee table in front of her, elbows on his knees, a little too close, and she was again young, fascinated by this creature who would have once braved an army to keep her out of harm’s way. “Do we have time?”

  “It doesn’t matter, it’s just a thought. I’m not…I’m not really going to do it.” Or was she? “What if they change their mind, what if they leave? She doesn’t want a person acting like a robot, she wants a robot acting like a person, and it’s not the sam—”

  “No, it’s not, but can she tell the difference?” And his smile was different, and his face was different, and he wasn’t the most beautiful boy in the world anymore—she wouldn’t have handed him to a customer if he had been the last human standing.

  “I didn’t know you were this…cunning, Max.” And when he averted his eyes, she struck again. “Spending too much time working with my family, I see.”

  He gave her what seemed to be an eye roll, hard to identify by his half paralyzed orbs and his sudden, rushed movement, up and away from the sofa.

  “Don’t flatter your kin. If you want help, that’s my proposal.” By the window, he calmed down again, still as a statue, as his right hand moved into the void to explain his point. “She’s not going to know if you train someone and pay them well. There are hundreds of people out there who would love to get out of the streets, and into a house with a proper roof. Besides, if she treats them well…it’s not that bad of a deal.”

  She wondered if, apart from everything else, the parts she couldn’t see under his clothes, the rest she already knew about…Max had also sold his soul.

  “People will do the darkest things for safety. But I don’t expect you to understand.” He ran a caring hand through her hair as he walked by the sofa, and disappeared up the stairs.

  ***

  His words lingered in the back of her mind, but she pushed them aside every so often. She requested a second body from Aiden, and that time she wasn’t picky. Anything would do, and what came was a middle-aged woman, her hair a dyed shade of bright red. Anything would do, she kept telling herself, head lolling forward on the hinge of her shoulders, finding no solace even when she took the time to drag herself into the corner couch where childhood had brought her such sweet dreams.

  “Have you been sleeping?” It was Theo, concerned, voice mixed with the jingle of the front door keys hanging from his fingers. Was it past closing time already?

  She shook her head, closing her eyes in silent surrender. No, she hadn’t been sleeping, not at all. She felt herself being consumed by ideas, eaten inside out. That time, she opened the body. She wore gloves, and into a bag that Theo held open in his own bare hands—he could be fearless, when her motivation overflowed into him—she transferred every organ in the chest cavity. Next was the blood. She’d seen them do it in funeral homes, a pump replacing blood with embalming fluid, something to keep the tissues looking at least vaguely human while the insides became something else. It was late, but not enough to be early that time. Theo threw a blanket over her shoulders, and together, they stood and watched.

  “You know, I…this isn’t how I imagined my first contact with the workforce.” He added air quotes around the final word, surely a remnant from times spent with a nouveau riche family for whom work was such a shameful word it should never be uttered on its own.

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her neck and
smiled against the warm wool. It was strange to think she was the same age as Theo, curious to think that they had so much more in common than she and Max ever would—and yet, she thought of him as a pupil, the next in line for the little Varadys shop. Dolls for dreamers. Did he have what it took? Did the science of doll-making, life-making, did the god complex particles run in his blood, the way they did in hers?

  “Have you thought that maybe you could…take over in a few years?”

  “Oh, no…” He looked displaced, all of a sudden. “…no way, I…I’m not like you. I can’t do…the things you can. You look at a problem and your mind solves it before you do, but that’s not me. I can’t do that.”

  She looked at the body on the table, the blood replaced by the fluid, the skin looking waxen under the oppressive light bulbs. There was no moonlight, and the workshop was a silent crypt—she’d never seen herself so close to her demise.

  “I’m not sure I can solve this problem, either.”

  He smiled, sympathetic, before lacing an arm around her shoulders and squeezing lightly. “I have faith in you.”

  He brought tea and biscuits. She upgraded the look of the Creation itself from flesh-colored to gold and bronze. She replaced organs with clock parts and muscles with elaborate systems of levers and pulleys and pistons. She was close.

  A second note arrived.

  I hope this delay doesn’t mean you have stepped down from the assignment, Miss V. May I remind you, you shook my hand, we’re bound now. If not by law, then by honor. With love, G.

  But there was no honor among thieves, and Rosie let out a bone-chilling scream when the second body, too, started to rot.

  ***

  She returned to the house of mirrors after the third body, after the stench in the workshop became so intense she had started to work with a mask. Theo himself had moved works in progress to his own house—business wasn’t so bad it could justify selling miasmatical baby dolls. No need to pass on the honors of an unfortunate childhood at the hands of a Varadys masterpiece.

  Rosie said the words over tea with the lady, staring at impeccable nails tapping the arm of the powder blue armchair. The room reeked of rotten roses, or perhaps just roses in general, and she was the one bringing in the rot. “I can’t give you everything you want in one companion. It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”