Elizabeth Hand - Icarus Descending

Her voice trailed off into wordless chatter. Fossa cocked his head and whined softly, and Jane hugged the chimpanzee close to her.

“Who is he?” I demanded. “Scarlet, tell me!”

Miss Scarlet shuddered, saying nothing, but Trevor nodded. “Geneslaves,” he said. He held the skull out at arm’s length, eyeing it critically as he added in a matter-of-fact tone, “They all know of him, somehow. Either they have seen ’files of him, or heard his name, or—”

I started to demand a better explanation than this, when Giles broke in smoothly.

“Perhaps this isn’t the time, Trevor. Perhaps we should show our guests to their rooms. I’ll start dinner.”

“No!” I said. “I think you should tell us—”

But Giles and Trevor had already started for the door.

“I’d like my clothes,” Jane called after them, her face pinched. “ And my weapon.”

“Of course, of course.” Giles paused beside his partner and took the skull from Trevor’s hand. “Marlena Hawksbill?” he asked, placing it back upon the mantel with its fellows.

“Sextus Burchard, I think,” said Trevor. In her little chair Miss Scarlet pulled the tartan more closely around her frail shoulders. Her rage had faded; once more she looked like some Ascendant child’s toy. I bit my lip, feeling an agony of sullen anger and dismay. I longed fiercely for those powers I had lost, the rage and strength that might have protected us, gone now, all gone….

“Come.” Giles walked to the door and paused, waiting for us. Jane stood and wrapped herself in her blanket like a cape, sweeping from the room with her head in the air. Miss Scarlet followed her more cautiously, almost fearfully. As she passed where he crouched upon the floor, the aardman Fossa stood. He stared down at Miss Scarlet with intelligent wolvish eyes. She stopped to stare back up at him. He was three times her size, graceless where she moved with the elegance of a courtesan; and yet—

And yet suddenly I could see the affinity between them, something older even than their bond as geneslaves. At HEL I had seen holofiles of cave paintings, eerie drawings from a site in Uropa that had been destroyed during the Third Shining. Tiny black mannikins flinging spears at fleeing ibex; crouched figures stalking something with bulging eyes and vestigial tail, something that looked very much like the aardman Fossa. I had paid little attention to those ’files—the paintings were gone, after all, turned to ash and steam along with all those other treasures from the Magdalenian epoch.

But now I felt as though one of those cave paintings had come to life and moved in the smoky firelight before me. Only Miss Scarlet held no weapon, and the creature that stared down at her was nodding slowly as it growled, “No harm—no harm—”

In the hallway Jane stared back impatiently.

“Come on, then,” she snapped. I rose and left the room, hugging my blanket tightly across my chest. Fossa padded after me, and Miss Scarlet beside him. As we walked down the hall, I was surprised to see that weak daylight now shone upon the frayed carpets. The shrieking wind had died away. Outside, it seemed, the storm had moved on. Inside Seven Chimneys I felt as though it had just begun.

We were given three adjoining rooms in the upper story of one of the long ells that extended from the back of the main house. Small rooms, probably not the finest at Seven Chimneys, but clean and comfortably furnished with tired furniture that looked accustomed to its surroundings. My chamber had a small fireplace—“A Jeffersonian fireplace,” Giles explained proudly; “this was part of Virginia once”—and overlooked sloping fields that in the distance surrendered to woodland, all now lost beneath the snow. Solar panels were fixed to the roof below amid a spiky array of antennae. I was surprised to see a video monitor beneath the window, small but with all its dials and screens intact. I pressed a switch, and waves of gray and white covered one screen. Hissing filled the air, but no images. After a moment I turned it off.

There were other odd things as well. A kinetic sculpture in the bathroom, showing a young man coyly disrobing and ducking into a spray of water. Talking books that whispered long-forgotten titles when I picked them up: Jane Eyre, Descent into Hell, Magya Pliys 754. There was even some kind of telefile, much larger and older than any I’d ever seen, but so shiny and clean, it seemed never to have been used. Its yellow plastic headpiece fit snugly over my temples. When I clicked it on, I heard faint music, all clicks and sirens and high-pitched voices. Warhola Amarosa, a late twenty-third-century castrato opera. Two summers ago Gilgor, one of the other empaths at HEL, had played it incessantly. I removed the headset and stared at it, frowning. Where was the transmission coming from? I knew that Curators used to broadcast to radio receivers within the City, but surely such transmissions had been curtailed by the occupation. Who would be broadcasting something as trivial as an opera if the City was under siege? But if the transmission didn’t originate in the City, where did it come from? Puzzled, I replaced the headset and explored the rest of the room.

Everything appeared to be of a similar vintage as the opera, perhaps one hundred fifty years old. I picked up a holo chip the size of a pebble and held it to my eye, saw a miniature and incredibly detailed landscape of sunset cliffs and azure sea, with archaic aviettes scuttling across the sky like beetles. There was a machine that played back a recording of Trevor and Giles arguing about house repairs, and a vocoder that, when I spoke into it, translated my words into Tagalog. I went from one corner of the room to the next, continually astounded to find objects so old that still worked, that hadn’t been destroyed or remanded by the Ascendants. The vocoders and ’files and machines all had the air of being stockpiled, as though Seven Chimneys were some sort of museum; and perhaps that was the truth of it. Perhaps Trevor Mallory’s family had somehow managed to keep all these things safe and hidden through the years. Or perhaps they kept them here expressly for those high-ranking Ascendants who visited once or twice a year. But that seemed unlikely. If these things were really intended for use by Ascendant guests, they wouldn’t be hidden in the back bedrooms. Still, who else would use such things?

In the City I had seen how the Curators managed their collections of ancient objects, archaic computers and navigation systems and engines jumbled up with sarcophagi and the petrified remains of ancient archosaurs and other extinct creatures. Everything treasured and catalogued and studied, but all with their original uses forgotten or perverted over the centuries. Even items that had been in common use at HEL—’file chips, torchieres, simple prosthetics—were in the City used primarily as ornaments by Paphians, or battered among the Curators as mere oddments.

Yet here in the wilderness two solitary men had retained the use of a telefile—and the fact that it picked up transmissions meant that somebody else had one, too. I frowned, flicking at a robotic monad the size of my little finger. It buzzed and retreated back onto the shelf it shared with toothbrushes and empty morpha tins. Suddenly I felt exhausted. The first stirrings of the grief I had held in check began to creep through the crumbling layers of my fatigue. I turned to dress for dinner.

My clothes were laid out on the spindle-bed, dry now if no cleaner or warmer than they had been. But beside them were other garments. A blouse of thick buttery suede, trimmed with bone-and-glass buttons; a long flowing skirt of some kind of jacquard, crimson and deep blue and shot with gold thread. There were high woolen boots, too, with heavy leather soles, knit in an intricate pattern of red and green and white. I sat for a long time, holding the blouse and stroking it. I thought of Justice: how I always had traveled with him disguised as a boy; how it had been months and months since I had worn woman’s clothing—not since leaving HEL. I picked up the torn tunic I had worn at Winterlong and brought it to my face, smelling ashes and blood and smoke. Without warning, grief overwhelmed me: like nausea, waves of it so powerful, I could scarcely breathe. I fell onto the bed and sobbed, until sorrow gave way to rage and I ripped the tunic end to end, clawing at my face and then burying it in a pillow so that I could scream without being heard, over and over and over again.