The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6

by Libba Bray

  It were Master Crawford give me the Poppy for Mam. “I was saving this for the End Times, like the Right Reverend Jackson said. But I’m an old man, and your mother needs it a sight more than I do.”

  I stared at the red-and-black cube in my palm. I had half a mind to swallow it down myself, live out the rest of my days on some colony in my mind. But then I were scared I’d be trapped in a forever night of nothingness, and me the only livin’ thing.

  I fed Mam a little to ease her passage and put the rest in my pocket. Then I lit the kerosene lamp and kept watch through the night. She never said nothing, but curled in on herself till she lay whorled against the bed linens like a fossil in the rock. I heard Master Crawford died during the winter. Died in his sleep in the pale work-room, under a blanket of down. ’Tweren’t the fever or his heart or his veins tightening up.

  It were just that his time had run out.

  Over the next few weeks, I learnt a lot about the Glory Girls. Josephine and her sister Bernadette had run away from the working fields. The overseer’s bullet found Bernadette ’fore they even reached the mountains, but Josephine got away, and now she wore a thread from her sister’s dress woven into her coarse braids as a reminder. She could set a broken bone as easily as she cooked a pan of corn bread, said it were about the same difference to her.

  When Amanda’s uncle got too friendly in the night, she found refuge doing hard labor in the shipyards. She’d spent long hours there and knew how to find the vulnerable spot in all that steel, the place where the Enigma could take hold and do its work. She were able to find timetables, too, so the girls would know which trains to hit and when.

  Fadwa were a crack shot who’d honed her skills picking off the scorpions that roamed the cracked dirt outside the tents where she lived with her family in the refugee camps. The authorities took her pap to who knows where. Dysentery took the rest of her family.

  That left Colleen. She’d been a debutante with fancy ball gowns, a governess, and a private coach. Her daddy were a speculator what had invented the Enigma Apparatus. He were also an anarchist, and when he tried to blow up the Parliament, that were the end of the gowns and the governess. They arrested her daddy for treason. ’Fore they could collect Colleen, she took the Enigma and fled on the next airship.

  I felt a might sorry for all of them when I heard their tales. It were an awful feeling to have nobody. We had that in common, and I had a mind to come clean, tell them who I were and stop lying. But I had a job to do. At first, I done like Chief Coolidge told me, stalling on the repairs while trying to sniff out details from the Glory Girls and their next robbery. But they wasn’t trusting me with that yet, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to know more about the Enigma Apparatus. Besides, my pride were on the line, and I figured I’d better make good on my reputation as a girl what could fix things. Soon I were hunched over that device, from rooster crow till long after the moons scarred the skin of the sky. I’d figured out most of the gears, but them sputters of light around the serum vial vexed me.

  “Simple windup won’t do. Near as I can tell, she needs a jolt to get her going,” I said after I’d been at her for a good three weeks with not much to show for it.

  Amanda looked up from the barrel where she was washing Fadwa’s long black hair. “Mercy, where would we find us somethin’ like ’at?” I thought for a bit, rubbing my thumb over the old Poppy square in my pocket. “I think a blue nettle might could do it.” “What’s that?” asked Josephine.

  “It’s a kind of flower with a little bit of lightning inside. They grow in a orchard back to New Canaan.”

  “But that’s on Believer land.”

  “Believers is all at the river for baptism time,” I said. “Besides, I know where to go.”

  “Guess we best go picking, then.” Amanda said. Giggling, she poured a bucket of cold water all over Fadwa, who pulled her gun so fast I thought I saw sparks.

  John Barks’s family hadn’t been Believers. His mam and pap died in an airship fight off the western coast when he were fourteen. The Right Reverend Jackson and his wife took John in and started teaching him the Ways of the One Bible. You’d think that an orphan left to fend for himself on a planet where even the dust tries to choke you might have a score to settle with the One God. But not John Barks. Where most of us believed ’cause we were told to or afraid not to or just out of habit, he believed with his entire self.

  “I’m a free man,” he’d say. “And I’ll believe what I want.” I couldn’t rightly argue with that.

  For two years, I’d watched John Barks grow from a sapling of a boy to a fine young man with muscles that strained the seams of the prayer shirts Mrs. Jackson sewed for him. He had a head of black hair what could rival a gentleman’s boots for shine. Becky Threadkill swore he’d take her to wife, said she’d seen it in her vision under the Pitch. Half a dozen other girls swore the same till the Right Reverend were forced to spend the next Sunday cautioning against the sin of sharing your visions.

  But it were me John Barks said “Mornin’ ” to when I went to fetch water, and me he asked to tutor him in the Scriptures. It were me he asked to tell him about being baptized in the Holy Pitch when he turned sixteen.

  Every spring, the Believers of the End of Days walked the five miles to the River Pitch and set down their tents to await the baptism day. Most of us got dipped when we reached thirteen and done all our catechisms. They dressed you in the robes and slipped the tiniest petal tip of Poppy under your tongue to quiet your fear, slow your breathing, and keep you still. It stole into your bloodstream and weighted your bones like stones sewn into the lining of your skin. I remember Mam telling me not to be scared, that it were just like getting in a thick bath.

  “Just lay real still, Addie-loo,” she cooed, stroking the eucalyptus balm over my eyes to keep the Pitch blindness out. “When you’re calm, the One God’ll show you a vision, your purpose in this life.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “But first you have to face the darkness. There’ll come a time when you want to fight it, but don’t. Just let it cover you. It’ll be over before you know it. Promise me you won’t fight.”

  “Promise.”

  “That’s my good girl.”

  The catechisms said that once you lay in the Pitch and come up again, you came up newborn, your sin purged and left behind you in the thick black tar, like an impression in the mud. That’s what they said, anyway. But you never knew what would come bubbling up inside you while you was under. You had to last a full minute with the oily darkness moving over you like a coffin lid, closing out the world. Even a world as damned as this one is better than the weight of nothingness the Pitch smothers you in. All sense of time and place is lost in that river. The Believers say it give you a taste of what could become of your immortal soul if you don’t turn to the One God and prepare for the End Times. When you come up outta that river, your damnation sliding down your body like a syrupy shed skin, you fall on your knees and say thanks to your Maker for that breath of hot, dusty air. It makes Believers, the Right Reverend Jackson says. No one wants to spend eternity in such a place as that.

  Once you was done, the priests gave you your first real taste of Poppy to seal your covenant with the One God. Miracles and wonders played across your eyes then, reminders of His mercy and goodness. Master Crawford muttered that it weren’t proof of nothing ’cept folks’ willingness to be hornswaggled. But nobody paid him any mind.

  I told John Barks all of this the week before his baptism while we were walking in the orchard.

  “They say that when you take your first taste of Poppy, your legs go all prickle bones and your tongue numbs like a snowcake feast and stars explode behind your eyes, making new flowers against the closed dark-velvet stage curtains of your retina, letting you know the One God’s show’s about to get under way,” John said, bustin’ with excitement.

  “Well, the Poppy is right strong,” I said.

  “And did you feel the One God sure and true the
n, Addie?” “I reckon.”

  We’d stopped under a blue nettle tree in full bloom, the glasslike, bell-shaped blossoms pulsing with small bursts of lightning. The air was sharp. Overhead, the seeding ships pierced the dark-red cloud blanket, trying to bring on rain. John Barks’s arm brushed mine and I colored. We were s’posed to keep a respectful distance, as if the One God’s mam walked between us.

  “What did the One God reveal to you down under the river, Adelaide Jones?” His hand had moved to my cheek. “Did you see us here by the tree?”

  We weren’t s’posed to tell our visions. They were for us alone. But I wanted to tell John Barks what I’d witnessed, see what he’d make of it, see if he could ease my mind some. So right there with the new light buzzing all around us, I told him what I seen under the river. When I were done, John Barks kissed me soft and sweet on the forehead.

  “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Not for one second.” “But I seen it!”

  “I think the One God leaves some things up to us to decide. He shows us a vision, and it’s your choice what to do with it.” He smiled. “I can tell you what I hope to see next week.”

  “What?” I said, trying hard not to cry.

  “This,” he whispered.

  It started to rain. John Barks put his coat over us and kissed me on the mouth this time, and oh, not even clockworks could match up to the feeling of that kiss. It made me believe what John Barks said, that we might could change our fates, and I forgot to be afraid.

  “Yes,” I said, and I kissed him back.

  I thought about that day while me and the Glory Girls collected the blue nettle, and I thought about it, too, while I extracted them tiny beats of lightning and placed ’em inside the Enigma Apparatus. While I watched them light strands prickle and inch toward the serum inside the glass vial, some new hope stirred in me, too, putting me in mind of Master Crawford’s vision, the messenger who would come and liberate us from our time-bounded minds. Maybe the Glory Girls were the ones to set us free. And the Enigma Apparatus were the key. Them thoughts about sliding through past and future come prickling up again, only I didn’t push ’em away so fast this time, and the only prayer that left my lips was the word “Please . . .” while I waited for the spark to set things in motion.

  The blue nettle connected with the vial. The serum pulsed inside its cage. The second hand on the clockface ticked. I shouted for the girls to come out quick. Soon, they was crowded ’round me in that work-shop while we watched the Enigma Apparatus hum with new life.

  “Girls, I think we’ve got ourselves a timepiece again,” Colleen said. I were supposed to have a rendezvous with the chief.

  I missed it.

  We tested it on a mail train the next day. It were just a local, steaming across a patch of plains, but it would do for practice.

  “Here goes,” Colleen said, and my nerves went to rattling. She bent her arm and aimed the clockface at the train.

  I’ve had me a few thrills in my sixteen yearn, but seeing the Enigma Apparatus do its work had to be one of the biggest. Great whips of light jump out and held that train sure as the One God’s hand might. Inside, the engineer seemed like he were made of wax—he weren’t moving that I could see. The Glory Girls boarded the train. There weren’t but bags of letters on it, so they didn’t take nothing, only changed ’round the engineer’s clothes till he wore his long johns on the outside and his hat ’round backward. When the light charge stopped holding and the train lurched forward again, he looked a might confused at his state. We laughed so hard, I thought the miners would hear us down below. But the drills kept up their steady whine, oblivious. And the best part yet? Somehow in my tinkering, I’d drawn out the length to a full eight minutes. I’d made her better. I’d bested time.

  The pigeon were on the windowsill of my workhouse when I get back. I unrolled the note tucked into her mouth. It were from the chief, telling me when and where to make our rendezvous, saying I’d best not miss it. I tossed the note in the stove and got to work.

  By the time we hit the 6:40 the next Friday, I’d taken her to a full ten minutes.

  The Right Reverend Jackson used to say there were a fine line between saint and sinner, and in the long days I spent with the Glory Girls robbing trains and falling under the spell of the Enigma Apparatus, I guess I crossed well over it. Before long, I’d almost forgot I’d had one life as a Believer and another as a Pinkerton. I were a Glory Girl as much as any of ’em, and it felt like I’d always been one. Truth be told, them were some of the happiest times I’d had since I’d walked with John Barks. Like being part of a family it were, but with no Mam to sigh when you forgot to burp the baby and no Pap to slap you when your words was too sharp for his liking. Mornings we rode the horses fast and free over the dusty plains, letting the wind whip our hair till it rose like crimson floss. We’d try to best each other, though we all knew Josephine were the fastest rider. Still, it were fun to try, and nobody could tut-tut that we was unladylike. Fadwa worked on my marksmanship by teaching me to shoot at empty tins, and while I weren’t no sharpshooter, I done all right, and by all right I mean I managed to knock off a can with-out shooting the horses. Josephine taught me to dress a wound with camphor to draw out the poisons. Amanda liked to sneak up on each a-one and scare the dickens out of us. Then she’d fall on the ground, laughing and pointing: “You shoulda seen your face!” and hold her sides till we couldn’t do nothing but laugh, too. At night, we played poker, betting stolen brooches against a stranger’s looted gold. It didn’t matter nothing—if you lost a bundle, there were always another airship or train a-comin’. The poker games went fine till Amanda lost, which she usually did, bein’ a terrible card player. Then she’d throw down her cards and point a finger at whoever cleaned up.

  “You’re cheating, Colleen Feeney!”

  Colleen didn’t even look up while she scooped the chips toward her lap. “That’s the only way to win in this world, Mandy.”

  One night, Colleen and me walked to the hills overlooking the mines and sat on the cold ground, feeling the vibrations of them great drills looking for gold and finding nothing. Stars paled behind dust clouds. We watched a seeding ship float in the sky, its sharp brass nose glinting in the gloom. “Seems like there ought to be more than this,” Colleen said after a spell.

  If John Barks were there, he’d say something about how beautiful it was, how special. “It ain’t much of a planet,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant.” She rolled a dirt clod down the hillside. It broke apart on the way down.

  It come about by accident that first time. I’d been experimenting with the Enigma all along, stretching out the time by seconds, but I couldn’t break past ten minutes. It were all well and good to lock the Enigma on a train and stretch the Glory Girls’ time on it; what I wondered were if we, ourselves, might could move around in time like prayer beads on a string. Inside the Enigma were the Temporal Displacement Dial. I’d scooted its splintery hands ’round and ’round, taken it apart, put it back together twelve ways from Sunday. Didn’t come to much. This time, I got to looking at the tiny whirling eye that joined them hands at the center. I cain’t rightly say what gear it were that clicked in my head and told me I should take a thin, pulsing strand of blue nettle and settle it into that center, but that’s what I done. Then I pushed that second hand faster and faster ’round that dial. With my hand tingling like a siddle-bug bite, I aimed the Enigma at myself. I felt a jolt, and then I were standing still in the shop listening to Josephine ringing the dinner bell. I knowed that couldn’t be right—it were only two o’clock in the afternoon, and dinner weren’t till six most days. Long shadows crept over the shop floor. Six-o’clock shadows. I’d lost four whole hours. Had I slept? I knowed I hadn’t—not standing up with my boots on, anyways. A tingle twisted through my insides till I felt as alive as a blue nettle. I’d done it.

  I’d unlocked time.

  That night, Colleen brought out a bottle of whiskey and poured us e
ach a tall glass. “There’s a train coming soon. The four-ten through the Kelly Pass. It’s the best one yet. I’ve seen the passenger list. It is impressive. You can be sure there’ll be pearls big as fists. And rubies and diamonds, too.”

  Josephine let out a holler, but Amanda scowled.

  “Gettin’ tired of gems,” she said, reaching for the bottle. “Nowhere to wear ’em. Nowhere to trade ’em in much anymore.”

  Colleen shrugged. “There’ll be gold dust on this one.”

  I couldn’t hold it back no more. “Maybe we’re goin’ about this the wrong way. Maybe we should be looking at the Enigma App . . .

  Appar . . . the watch as our best haul,” I said. I weren’t used to whiskey. It made my thoughts spin. “You ever think of using it on something other than a train?”

  Amanda spat out a stream of tobacco. It stained the hay the color of a fevered man on his deathbed. “Like what?”

  “Say, for going forward in time to see what you’ll be eatin’ next week. Or maybe for going back. Maybe to a day you’d want to do over.”

  “Ain’t nothing I’d want to go back to,” Josephine said. “What about all them tomorrows?”

  “I’ll likely be dead. Or fat,” Amanda said, and laughed. “Either way, I don’t want to know.”

  The girls commenced to teasing Amanda ’bout her future as a farmer’s fat wife. Maybe it were the whiskey, but I couldn’t let it alone. “What I’m sayin’ is that we might could use the Enigma to travel through time and see if there’s anything out there besides this miserable rock—maybe even to unlock bigger secrets. Ain’t that a durn sight better than a pearl?” I slammed my tankard down on the table, and the girls got right quiet then. I hadn’t never been much of a talker, much less a yeller.

  Colleen played with the poker chips. They made a plinkety-plink sound. In the dim light, she looked less like an outlaw, more like a schoolgirl. Sometimes I forgot she weren’t but seventeen. “Go on, Addie.”