Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express

Suddenly the face of his servant Torquetil was thrust before his own. De Maillet seized the shoulder of the young man's livery coat. "Torquetil!"

"Huzza!" cried Torquetil, pulling loose and leaping into the air in joy. "He stirs, he lives! My master speaks to me!"

A hoarse, ragged cheer broke out. De Maillet, dizzily, sat up. A motley collection of house servants, fisherfolk, and townsmen had gathered around him, some of them clutching burned-out torches. "We have searched for you all night," said Torquetil. "I brought the carriage as soon as the weather turned bad, but you had gone!"

"Help me up," de Maillet said. The young Breton put his shoulder under de Maillet's arm and hoisted him to his feet. "Monsieur's clothes are drenched," Torquetil said.

Blinking myopically, de Maillet stared at the pebble he held in his hand.

"It was the young gentleman here who first thought of looking among the Lovers' Rocks," said

Torquetil, gesturing politely at the confident well-dressed figure of Jean Martine the Younger.

"It was nothing," the young merchant said, stepping closer. "After we, ah, parted, I felt some concern for Your Excellency. The weather turned foul quite suddenly, and I thought Your Excellency might have sought shelter here." He smiled patronizingly at de Maillet, obviously pleased at his own ingenuity in tracking down an eccentric dotard. "The rocks were very high; in the wind and darkness my servants lost their way. I do hope Your Excellency is not injured."

"I've lost my spectacles," de Maillet said. "Torquetil, do you have my spare ones?"

"Of course, monsieur." He produced them. De Maillet hurriedly pinched them on and studied the wave-smoothed pebble. "Remarkable," he said. "Remarkable! Have I played by the shore of this great ocean so long, to have no more than this? Still, I have this. I do. This, at least, is mine."

Torquetil glanced pleadingly at Jean Martine; the merchant stifled a smile. "We must get Your Excellency into some dry clothes," he said. "My carriage is on the road, not far from here. It is at your service."

"Come along, monsieur," said Torquetil with exaggerated gentleness. He lowered his voice. "It is not well that the common folk should see you like this."

There was a sudden bustle at the back of the small crowd, and three ragged children burst forth. "We found it, we found it!" they cried. One of them carried de Maillet's ebony cane.

"Splendid!" de Maillet said. "Give them a little something, Torquetil." The servant tossed them a few coppers; they scrambled for them wildly. "And what about my parasol?" de Maillet said.

Torquetil looked sad. "Alas, monsieur, your wonderful parasol, so strange and colorful! The winds, the terrible winds, have blown it all to pieces; it is all cast down and wrecked."

"I see," de Maillet said. He was silent for a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh.

Martine cleared his throat. "If Your Excellency should care to visit my father's warehouse in town, perhaps we could find you another."

"Never mind," de Maillet said stoically. He polished the pebble across the front of his soggy waistcoat and dropped it into his pocket. Seeing him do this, the children pointed at him and giggled behind their hands.

"They laugh," de Maillet observed. "Posterity will laugh. Thus am I answered." He leaned heavily on his cane, then turned to go Torquetil helped him up the slope.

Suddenly de Maillet stopped and squared his shoulders "And what if they do?" he demanded. "At least, if they laugh at you, then you know you are still alive! Eh, Torquetil?"

Torquetil smiled. "Just as you say, monsieur." He brushed sand from his master's shoulders. "Let us go home. The cook has promised: no more curries."

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1987.

The early life of James Abernathy was rife with ominous portent.

His father, a New England customs inspector, had artistic ambitions; he filled his sketchbooks with mossy old Puritan tombstones and spanking new Nantucket whaling ships. By day, he graded bales of imported tea and calico; during evenings he took James to meetings of his intellectual friends, who would drink port, curse their wives and editors, and give James treacle candy.

James's father vanished while on a sketching expedition to the Great Stone Face of Vermont; nothing was ever found of him but his shoes.

James's mother, widowed with her young son, eventually married a large and hairy man who lived in a crumbling mansion in upstate New York.

At night the family often socialized in the nearby town of Albany. There, James's stepfather would talk politics with his friends in the National Anti-Masonic Party; upstairs, his mother and the other women chatted with prominent dead personalities through spiritualist table rapping.

Eventually, James's stepfather grew more and more anxious over the plotting of the Masons. The family ceased to circulate in society. The curtains were drawn and the family ordered to maintain a close watch for strangers dressed in black. James's mother grew thin and pale, and often wore nothing but her houserobe for days on end.

One day, James's stepfather read them newspaper accounts of the angel Moroni, who had revealed locally buried tablets of gold that detailed the Biblical history of the Mound Builder Indians. By the time he reached the end of the article, the stepfather's voice shook and his eyes had grown quite wild. That night, muffled shrieks and frenzied hammerings were heard.

In the morning, young James found his stepfather downstairs by the hearth, still in his dressing gown, sipping teacup after teacup full of brandy and absently bending and straightening the fireside poker.

James offered morning greetings with his usual cordiality. The stepfather's eyes darted frantically under matted brows. James was informed that his mother was on a mission of mercy to a distant family stricken by scarlet fever. The conversation soon passed to a certain upstairs storeroom whose door was now nailed shut. James's stepfather strictly commanded him to avoid this forbidden portal.

Days passed. His mother's absence stretched to weeks. Despite repeated and increasingly strident warnings from his stepfather, James showed no interest whatsoever in the upstairs room. Eventually, deep within the older man's brain, a ticking artery burst from sheer frustration.

During his stepfather's funeral, the family home was struck by ball lightning and burned to the ground. The insurance money, and James's fate, passed into the hands of a distant relative, a muttering, trembling man who campaigned against liquor and drank several bottles of Dr. Rifkin's Laudanum Elixir each week.

James was sent to a boarding school run by a fanatical Calvinist deacon. James prospered there, thanks to close study of the scriptures and his equable, reasonable temperament. He grew to adulthood, becoming a tall, studious young man with a calm disposition and a solemn face utterly unmarked by doom.

Two days after his graduation, the deacon and his wife were both found hacked to bits, their half-naked bodies crammed into their one-horse shay. James stayed long enough to console the couple's spinster daughter, who sat dry-eyed in her rocking chair, methodically ripping a handkerchief to shreds.

James then took himself to New York City for higher education.

It was there that James Abernathy found the little shop that sold magic.

James stepped into this unmarked shop on impulse, driven inside by muffled screams of agony from the dentist's across the street.

The shop's dim interior smelled of burning whale-oil and hot lantern-brass. Deep wooden shelves, shrouded in cobwebs, lined the walls. Here and there, yellowing political broadsides requested military help for the rebel Texans. James set his divinity texts on an apothecary cabinet, where a band of stuffed, lacquered frogs brandished tiny trumpets and guitars. The proprietor appeared from behind a red curtain. "May I help the young master?" he said, rubbing his hands.