Nebula Awards Showcase 54

by Nibedita Sen

  There are few trees here to hide her. She glances back: the three horsemen were surprised by her sudden turn back to the road and she’s put a little distance between them. Once she crests the hill, and is out of their sight for a moment, she’ll double back to the right and find the creek bed.

  She glances once more at the road and squints, frowning. The carriage is out of sight; it must have been travelling faster than she realized and crested the hill already, despite going off track for a moment. That must be a fine coachman to get the horses in hand so quickly after they took fright at Havoc’s approach. Perhaps they bolted.

  The air seems to shimmer the road like a soap bubble, just there by the old milestone. It’s mere fancy—everything looks strange at twilight—and she can’t afford a second look.

  Over the hill, hidden from view for a moment, Havoc veers back over the road toward the creek. She races along the most winding paths to Fleance Hall, where Alice Payne is expected.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In Which the Wrong Mistress Is Persuaded

  1889

  Prudence opens the hackney door before it stops and jumps onto the snow. Her motherfucking Victorian boot heels stick with every step, but after she gets out of the drift and up onto the frozen ground, she can run, holding her skirts.

  The Mayerling hunting lodge sprawls red-roofed against the bare Austrian hills. It’s just past dawn, with a murmur of cowbells and lowing not too distant. Here, though, everything is quiet.

  She had better be wrong. Oh, she had better be wrong. Mary Vetsera is only seventeen, and Crown Prince Rudolf has only been screwing her for a few months. Besides, Mary’s a baroness, hardly the one he’d choose for a suicide pact. He’s always used Mitzi for playing to his Byronic self-image: his Viennese demimonde “dancer,” so nicely shocking to the Austrian court.

  It has taken Prudence seventy-one attempts at 1889 to convince Mitzi to refuse to die with Rudolf, to report his suggestion of suicide to the police.

  Seventy failures and now, at last, success. Two nights ago, Rudolf came to Mitzi and she refused to die with him. They cried. Prudence was there, the maid in the next room, listening, ready to comfort Mitzi the moment her lover left. Rudolf even promised to get off the morphine. If he doesn’t kill himself, he’ll live with his syphilis for decades. Everything will be fine.

  Mitzi has told the police twice that Rudolf is suicidal. They never do a damn thing about it. But at last, Prudence thought she had saved them from their suicide pact. Mitzi was upset, but resolute. Strong. Any moment now, she should hear from General Almo, saying: You’ve done it. Mission complete. Come home.

  Home being the year 2145, for lack of anything better.

  And then yesterday afternoon, the letter arrived, from Rudolf, saying good-bye. It might seem a lover’s farewell, nothing more—but Prudence has misgivings. No word from Almo, no word from the future that the past has been changed. She asked her most useful gossip where Rudolf had gone that day, and she heard: Mayerling. With Mary Vetsera.

  She runs to the gatehouse and peers inside. One guard, but not at his post: he’s in the courtyard with another man, hitching two horses to a calèche. It’s six thirty in the morning, early for Rudolf to have asked for a carriage, but then this is a hunting lodge.

  She can tell the other man by his whiskers: Loschek. Rudolf’s valet. The man who always sleeps in the room next to Rudolf and whatever woman Rudolf has in his bed on any given night.

  Rudolf has sent the man in the bedroom next to his own outside, away from him. To hitch the horses? Or to get him away?

  She darts inside the gate and around the corner to the window Mitzi snuck out of a few months before, to get away from Rudolf in one of his moods. As Mitzi’s maid, Prudence knows well enough which room Rudolf uses as his bedroom when he has a lover here.

  He had better be sleeping. Oh, she had better be wrong.

  Goddamn those Misguideds. The damage they cause! The more they encourage Rudolf’s liberal tendencies, with their agent-tutors and agent-friends, the angrier Rudolf becomes with his tyrannical father. The worse Rudolf’s melancholy, the more entrenched Rudolf’s conviction that there is no point to his own life beyond sex and drink. The man who could save the world from the First World War, squandered to syphilis and depression.

  The Misguideds are now trying to fix the suicide problem, just as Prudence is, but they’re working with Rudolf. The Farmers can’t get close to him, so Prudence was assigned to Mitzi. Ten years ago. For ten years she’s been reliving 1889, getting it wrong, getting it wrong.

  She puts her boot on the drainpipe and thrusts her knife between the window and the sill. No matter where she goes in human history, she always carries a knife.

  The window budges, at last, and she pulls it open and heaves herself through.

  This time, there’s no chair in the hallway on the other side, so she falls to her stomach, knocking the wind out of herself. She waits, prepares herself to pose as yet another new mistress if anyone but Rudolf comes, but there’s no one. Silence.

  A shadow moves, far down at the other end of the hall. A guard.

  She’d like to unbutton the awful boots but there’s no time so she tiptoes as softly as she can, opens one door and then another.

  She knows, as soon she opens the right room, that she was not wrong. She’s seen Rudolf’s dead face many times. The image of her failure.

  She steps inside and closes and locks the door behind her. She can’t be discovered here. There might still be time; he might be alive.

  He’s slumped on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth.

  Gore on the wall behind him.

  There’s an empty glass; there’s a gun; there’s Mary, on the bed, not sleeping.

  Prudence kneels by his side, this asshole of a prince whom she’s never met but whose life she has been trying to save for ten years. Another failure. Under her fingertips, no pulse.

  “Major Zuniga.”

  She stands quickly and turns, dizzy for a moment. On a chair: a red felt hat, with black feathers.

  General Almo stands in his fatigues, a time portal behind him. Why the hell did he shimmer here himself? He’s never done that, not in any of her past failures.

  Any moment now, the valet will return. Almo turns and locks the door, as if he’s had the same thought. The key was in the keyhole. There is a hairbrush on the dresser, and by the bed a pair of dove-coloured women’s shoes . . .

  “It’s earlier this time,” she says, and her voice is full as if she wants to weep, although she has no more reason to weep than she’s had the last seventy times. But this time, she thought she had it. She saved Mitzi’s life. She thought she’d saved Rudolf’s too.

  “And he’s chosen a different partner, I see.”

  She nods. “Mary Vetsera. She’s just a girl. But now we know that’s a possibility. It won’t happen again, sir.”

  “There won’t be an again. I’m reassigning you.”

  She has to lean against something but there’s nothing to lean on, nothing that isn’t covered with Rudolf’s blood. She steps closer to the general, rooting herself in the movement.

  “Sir, I can do this.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  He’s a big man, and seems even bigger here, in this room. There is too much history here for these four walls to contain.

  “If it’s . . . I know there are limits to what a woman of colour can do in this setting, but I can work with Vetsera just as I worked with Mitzi. I’ve got a prep package to be an American artist, like Edmonia Lewis. Vetsera could be convinced to take art lessons.”

  “It’s not that. We’re shutting down this mission. Putting our resources elsewhere, in 2016. Let’s try 2016 again.”

  “But 2016 is completely fucked,” she says, trying to keep her voice even. “You know that. Sir. We have to go back earlier.”

  He shakes his head. “Obsession happens to all of us but we have to see it for what it is. It’s my fault. I wanted this too
. I let you stay here far too long. But no single moment of history is everything. It’s a long war, Major Zuniga. If we fight one battle forever, it will never end.”

  She nods, because she doesn’t trust herself to speak. He’s right. The war of attrition for human history will never end, not if the Farmers keep fighting the Misguideds battle to battle, moment to moment.

  General Almo is right. It is pointless to keep trying to push history one way while the Misguideds are trying to push it in another. But he doesn’t have the courage to do what needs to be done. The only way to end this war, to end all wars, is to stop anyone from changing history ever again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Companions; or, How Alice Is Transformed

  1788

  Alice loses her pursuers at the creek bed. Havoc picks his way back up the bank and into the woods, where he knows the paths to home.

  She urges Havoc to go faster, although it’s nearly too dark to see. She does not dare light the mica lantern in her saddlebag. She needs to return unseen. By now, Lord Ludderworth’s carriage will have arrived at Fleance Hall. Alice is meant to be at the door with Father to greet their guest, to distract his attention from the fewness of servants with bluster and goodwill.

  There’s a lantern at the second servants’ entrance, around the back of the house, where Jane waits, holding a candlestick.

  She takes Havoc by the bridle and says, “I’ll tie him here and stable him later before the groom does his rounds.”

  The fact that the groom is also kept busy being the coachman, the footman and man-of-all-work makes taking horses out of the stable very convenient. Before Father went away to war, Fleance Hall had nine servants. Now it has four: a cook, a housemaid, the groom and the indefinable Satterthwaite, her father’s butler/valet/man-of-business.

  “Your gown is just inside.” Jane points. “What kept you, Alice? Your father has been asking—he thinks I’ve gone up to your room to help you with some womanly requirement.”

  “Time for that later,” Alice says, and kisses her, snaking one arm around her waist.

  “Go on,” Jane hisses, pushing Alice, but she’s smiling. “Your father’s guest will be here any moment.”

  Alice slips through the propped-open door into the little anteroom, where her clothes are laid out on the bench. Her best yellow gown, of course. Jane’s lit two candles on the wall sconces, but it’s still gloomy. She kicks off the high riding boots and wriggles out of the breeches. She’s shivering in her shift when Jane slides in and closes the door behind her.

  Ten years they’ve lived together now at Fleance Hall. It was Father’s idea to bring his cousin’s ward here to be Alice’s companion, when he went away to America to fight. Alice was only twenty-two then, and Father held great hopes that she’d marry. Truth be told, she’s never done much to encourage proposals, and actively discouraged them whenever any of her lovers got too close. In those early years, while Father was away, Jane was a friend. Over the last year, she’s given Alice a reason to discourage proposals forevermore.

  She plops the purse full of coins and rings into Jane’s white hand.

  “Ah, you and Laverna got your man.”

  “We did.” Laverna is the name that Jane gave the automaton, early on: the patron goddess of thieves.

  Alice wriggles into her slim modesty petticoat, then pushes the clothes over enough on the bench to give herself room to sit, and points her toe. Each white stocking rolls up under Jane’s white fingertips, which brush the tops of Alice’s bare knees, under the modesty petticoat.

  “You know,” Jane says, “I was never jealous of any of your lovers, but sometimes I feel a little jealous of Laverna.”

  “She is your creation, darling.”

  “All the more reason. I don’t trust anything I build. Do you remember the walking doll I made for Freddy Combles last Christmas? I swear it used to migrate through the house in the night. I was glad to be rid of it.”

  She glances up and Alice offers a weary smile.

  “What is it, Alice? What did keep you, on the road?”

  “Ludderworth’s servants chased me. Don’t worry, Jane, they didn’t get close. But they did delay me. I can’t believe Lord Ludderworth isn’t here already. He must have stopped to wait for his servants. Lucky for me he did.”

  Alice puts her hand on the petticoat, keeping Jane’s hand there, and Jane slides her fingers up the inside of her thigh. Under the shift, under the petticoat, there is nothing between them. Jane’s thumb and finger find their places with absolute confidence as Jane leans into her and says against Alice’s lips: “Later.”

  Alice groans theatrically and stands up so Jane can wrap the stays around her body and lace them down the front, over the stomacher, shaping Alice into the role of Miss Payne. Jane knows every inch of her body, where it will give and where it will swell. Jane slides the wooden busk between shift and stays, and together they tie the yellow petticoat around her waist. A gauze fichu over the shoulders, then she slips into the gown like a jacket and Jane closes it in front, working fast, thrusting the pins into the stays.

  “Damn it,” Jane swears around the pin in her mouth. “It’s crooked here.”

  “Never mind that,” Alice says. She steps into the yellow silk shoes and picks up the white-ribboned cap, the only thing left on the bench, and pins it quickly over the back of her hair. It was braided under the hat, and the frizzes that have come free around her forehead will look just fine with the cap.

  It’s only Lord Ludderworth, anyway. If her gown is pinned crookedly and her hair a little wild, what does it matter? It’s been years since she could afford to keep a lady’s maid. She is thirty-two years old, keeping herself and her family under this roof by dint of adventure, and she does not give a damn if her bodice is straight.

  She tugs the sides of the fichu a little more closely together over her cleavage, and runs down the hallway, leaving Jane to gather the cast-off highwayman’s clothes and hide them in her study. The housemaid never ventures in there; she’s afraid of all the machines and instruments, and especially of the frogs in jars.

  Alice runs, one hand holding her skirt, the other skimming the walls that she loves, although the paper is peeling. Through the parlour, empty, lit only by embers. Voices in the hall just inside the main door. She runs past Satterthwaite at the door and comes skidding to a halt on the chequerboard floor, the only part of the big house that is scrubbed to a polish and brightly lit.

  The four men in the room turn to look at her.

  Father says, “Alice! At last!”

  Standing beside Father is not Lord Ludderworth, or even Lord Ludderworth’s coachman or footman, but the manservant who chased her on his horse. He’s wet with sweat and too alarmed to do anything but bow his head.

  “You remember John Grigson. Lord Ludderworth’s manservant. These two men with him are servants of the earl’s household as well.”

  “Of course,” Alice says, bowing her head. “Mr. Grigson.”

  “Miss Payne,” says Grigson, glancing from Alice to her father and back. She’s seen people do this her whole life, contrasting her father’s pale skin with her own. She takes after her Caribbean mother, whom she does not remember. Grigson is black himself, though, and usually it is white people who have more difficulty with the existence of Alice. It dawns that his hesitation, his glancing from face to face, has little to do with her. He’s had a shock. God, could he have some idea that she is the highwayman?

  “Lord Ludderworth went on ahead of us,” he says. “How can it be that he has not arrived?”

  “What do you mean?” Father barks. “You mean to say that your master is somewhere out there on the road, still?”

  Grigson shakes his head. “That he is not, Colonel. I’d stake my life.”

  “Then where, man?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On the Nuclear Option, with Cocktails

  2070

  Prudence pauses outside the yellow-brick house and pulls out her EEG scann
er. Just to be safe. Two people inside, both of them neutrals. She chose Helmut and Rati with care: radical conservatives, young enough with nothing to lose and smart enough to have dangerous confidence in their own decisions. To the scanner, that’s neither Farmer nor Misguided, but neutral. A person with extreme tendencies on either end of a spectrum sometimes registers the same as a moderate.

  The retina lock on the door is disguised as an old-fashioned peephole, because the only houses that would have such security in this part of suburban Toronto would be drug houses. Prudence would rather not attract any official attention. No records.

  The lock clicks and she turns the doorknob.

  “I’m home,” she says, stepping into the dim hall.

  She means it as a joke, but it feels true. Even before she set up her rogue project in this ugly little house, Prudence Zuniga always had a place to stay in 2070. Most of her friends—well, colleagues—are here, and this time around, her sister.

  This year is the destination of choice for discerning time travellers.

  2070: Later than the biggest waves of History War refugees and the backlash to them.

  2070: Twenty-one years earlier than the beginning of the History War itself, although the first rumblings of that war are now only a year away. Teleosophy begins as an intelligence wing of the U.S. military in 2071. Twenty years later, it will explode into a global war between the Farmers and the so-called Guides.

  The technology of 2070 is advanced enough to make life comfortable. Time travel is new but available for those who can pay; upstream in earlier centuries, the only travellers are military like Prudence. The war won’t get bad enough to visibly affect contemporary life until after the Anarchy hits in 2139. That leaves plenty of time for a human to live out a life. Sure, the climate’s a mess already by 2070, but it’s a catastrophe, not yet an apocalypse.

  Visit 2070: It’s Not an Apocalypse. Yet. This Time.

  She hasn’t written marketing copy in . . . what? How many years of her life? Too many to do the math. The voice of it in her head twists itself ever more cynically but never goes silent. Of course, propaganda isn’t all that different. She spent several years behind a desk doing propaganda for the Mao and Peron projects, and various European Union campaigns, before Almo recruited her out of the communications branch.