Elizabeth Hand - Æstival Tide

“But her?” Hobi stroked her cheek. “What could she teach?”

Nasrani sighed. “If I could find out how to access her interactive mode I might be able to question her, link with the others or at least access some of her classified files. But I just can’t figure it out. There must be a trick to it, but I’ve spent years trying and I still can’t wake her.” With a sigh he turned and walked away.

For a few minutes Hobi remained. “Wake up,” he whispered, his breath clouding the cool glass. Within her sarcophagus the Beautiful One slept on, heedless of him, heedless of all the world. He looked away, embarrassed.

In the middle of the room stood Nasrani, surrounded by the last few guttering candles. He seemed dispirited; even the tails of his greatcoat drooped to brush the floor.

“Moghrebi,” he called softly. “Apulieus, my good man. Come now, Moghrebi. Be a sweet girl, Jackie.”

One by one they returned to their sleep: the Anodyne Physician entering her cabinet with good grace, bowing her golden head to Nasrani and staring out at Hobi with unblinking glass eyes. Apulieus waved mockingly and disappeared behind his case’s oaken doors. The monads buzzed into their tiny compartments, their noise silenced as the doors snapped closed. Last of all went Maximillian Ur, his four arms with their glittering knives whistling through the air as he groaned and clicked and threatened, until Nasrani slammed the door after him.

In the hollow silence that followed Nasrani’s voice echoed mournfully. “ I keep them so she won’t be lonely,” he said, “so that in case one day she wakes, she won’t think she is the last of her kind.”

He bent to blow out another candle, then started for the door, motioning for Hobi to join him.

For a long final moment the boy gazed at the nemosyne, her staring green eyes with their golden veins, the sanguine tears welling up in them to spill upon the floor. His hand lingered on her face until he heard Nasrani shuffling impatiently.

As the boy went to meet him the last few candles began to sputter and go out. Nasrani fumbled for his key. The encroaching darkness frightened Hobi, and he stepped a little closer to the exile. It was silly, but when the replicants had been moving about, the place didn’t feel so desolate. At home he had often been in a room full of servers and tutors and scholiasts, but he had never felt like this, as though the replicants had characters of their own. The nemosyne most of all, of course: beautiful and tragic, trapped within her glass coffin. But the others too, although he had known them only briefly. Wicked Maximillian. Sarcastic Apulieus. The gentle Physician. His own robotic Physician had about as much character as his toothbrush.

But here for a little while, he had felt as though he were in a crowd; almost as though he were at a party. And he remembered something his mother had once said about Nasrani Orsina.

They had been at a gathering in the Orsinate’s sanctuary, the Four Hundredth Room. It was several years before Nasrani was exiled for his attempted murder of his sister—

“Look at him,” His mother raised her glass, a tiny bell-shaped tumbler dancing with the emerald spirits of Amity-in-Occis, and peered through it as though it were a spyglass. “Your father’s friend, Nasrani Orsina.” The name sounded like a curse in her mouth. “He’s like a clockwork man. Nods and talks and laughs on cue, bows to his sisters and smiles as he slices out your liver. A perfect gentleman. A perfect clockwork man.”

His mother was given to such blunt pronouncements. She had once, to her face, called Nike and her sisters “inbred swine,” a slur that had caused Nike to laugh with her hooting voice. The truth was that Angelika frightened her: Nike thought she was a witch. But now Angelika was looking not at Nike but at her brother Nasrani. Hobi wondered what it could be about this tall man, elegant in lavender moleskin trousers and crimson greatcoat, that reminded his mother of an automaton.

“His eyes,” she’d said. A drop of Amity clung to her upper lip like a petal of lime blossom. “His hands, his feet, everything. He has everything that a real person has, except a heart. Even that sow Âziz has a heart, although it’s a sick rotten thing.” She’d turned then to greet Âziz, kissing her and leaving a carnal smear of red across her cheek.

Hobi thought of that now as he watched Nasrani stoop to retrieve the failing lumiere. A clockwork man.

“What brought you down here? The first time, I mean.”

Nasrani turned to him, brandishing the lumiere so that Hobi shrank from him. But then he realized that Nasrani’s expression was not angry but tormented. Without a word he yanked the door open and stepped outside. Sudden terror seized the boy: that he had offended the man and would be left here alone. He started after Nasrani, stammering apologies.

“No, no,” said Nasrani. He held the door until Hobi stood beside him. Behind them something squeaked and chittered. Hobi looked over his shoulder in time to see a tiny form dart out to seize a bit of tallow. “I’m not angry, my dear. It’s just that—”

The exile’s eyes were immensely sad. “It’s just that I come here to forget. About all that—”

He shook his hand, indicating the ceiling and what lay beyond, level after level of misery and tumult and twisted steel, humans reduced to living in the ruins of monstrous machines and computers endlessly designing unlivable new habitats. “All that up there. The Holy City; the family curse.” He drew a hand to his face as though he were in pain.

In the doorway Hobi hesitated and looked back. For a moment he glimpsed the room, lit by a single pallid flame. In their cabinets the replicants and androids stood, gazing blindly or else with eyes closed, returned to that terrible dreamless state wherein they would wait forever until someone, came to rouse them. He stared at the nemosyne, her body shimmering blue and rose as the last blue flame leaped and tossed its feeble light upon her frozen smile. Then the flame went out. He heard tiny voices twittering, small feet pattering from the corners, and looked away as Nasrani locked the door.

Outside of Ceryl Waxwing’s chambers the nuclear CLOCK clanged twenty. Reive waited to see if this woman would say more. She had already said too much. But Ceryl was silent, her face pale as she stared at the window.

“That’s all,” she said at last. She would not look at Reive.

In her chair the gynander nodded and bit her lower lip, her brow creased as she debated how best to answer. Her breath felt heavy inside her; her head spun as she gazed at Ceryl and thought, She is mad, to have even dreamed of telling this to anyone, she must be crazy….

But Reive said nothing; only closed her eyes and wished she had brought the little brass case that held her joss sticks and incense burners, anything to gain a little more time, a few more minutes before Ceryl grew tired of waiting for her answer.

The meaning of the dream was clear. Reive had never before heard of a dream so obvious in its portents. Usually she had a little more trouble than the other mantics; just as she looked subtly different from them, so it was more difficult for her to scry the truth behind the mundane fantasies of bored technicians and anxious diplomats. The hermaphrodites had been bred for their sensitivity to the unconscious whims of others, but somehow Reive lacked their insight. She even wondered if she was a true hermaphrodite at all; but of course the physical evidence was unmistakable. It was simply that she had no gift for scrying. Often she just sat there, listening to the tiresome recitative of a nervous aristocrat while a yellow plume of smoke rose from her incense burner. When her patron finally grew silent, waiting for her to interpret the dream, Reive would make something up.