Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

Pa’s mouth was set in bitterness. He stared off at nothing. For a moment, Plaquette though he wouldn’t answer her. But then, his expression unchanged, he ground out, “Mount Rainier. In Seattle.”

“That’s it. This here tower, it’s taller than that.”

Pa turned his eyes to hers. “What’s it for?”

“How should I know? I’ll tell you that when it comes to me. I know this, though; there’s people flying round that tower, right up there in the air. Like men, and maybe a woman, but with wings. Like angels. No, like bats.”

Pa’s eyes grew round. The lines in his face smoothed out as Plaquette spun her story. A cruel prince. A fearsome army. A lieutenant with a conscience.

It would have to be Msieur.

That ended up being a good night. Pa fell back to sleep, his face more peaceful than she’d seen in days. Plaquette curled up against his side. She was used to his snoring and the heaviness of his drugged breath. She meant to sleep there beside him, but her mind wouldn’t let her rest. It was full of imaginings: dancing with Msieur at the Orleans Ballroom, her wearing a fine gown and a fixed, automaton smile; Billy’s hopeful glances and small kindnesses, his endearingly nervous bad jokes; and Billy’s shoulders, already bowed at seventeen from lifting and hauling too-heavy boxes day in, day out, tick, tock, forever (how long before her eyesight went from squinting at tiny watch parts?); an army of tireless metal Georges, more each day, replacing the fleshly porters, and brought about in part by her cleverness. Whichever path her future took, Plaquette could only see disaster.

Yet in the air above her visions, They flew.

Finally Plaquette eased herself out of bed. The apartment was dark; she’d long since blown out the lamp to save wick and oil. She tiptoed carefully to the kitchen. By feel, she got Claude’s reading scroll out of the pocket of her apron. She crept out onto the landing. By the light of a streetlamp, she unrolled and re-rolled it so that she could see the end of the book. The punched holes stopped a good foot-and-a-half before the end of the roll. There was that much blank space left.

Plaquette knew My Lady Nobody practically word for word. She studied the roll, figuring out the patterns of holes that created the sounds which allowed Claude to speak the syllables of the story. She could do this. She crept back inside and felt her way through the kitchen drawer. She grasped something way at the back. A bottle, closed tight, some liquid still sloshing around inside it. A sniff of the lid told her what it was. She put the bottle aside and kept rummaging through the drawer. Her heart beat triple-time when she found what she was looking for. Pa did indeed have more than one ticket punch.

It was as though there was a fever rising in her; for the next few hours she crouched shivering on the landing and in a frenzy, punched a complicated pattern into the end of the scroll, stopping every so often to roll it back to the beginning for guidance on how to punch a particular syllable. By the time she’d used up the rest of the roll, her fingers were numb with cold, her teeth chattering, the sky was going pink in the east, and the landing was scattered with little circles of white card. But her brain finally felt at peace.

She rose stiffly to her feet. A light breeze began blowing the white circles away. Ma would probably be home in another hour or so. Plaquette replaced the scroll in her apron pocket, changed into her night gown, and lay back down beside her father. In seconds, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

MA WOKE HER all too soon. Plaquette’s eyes felt like there was grit in them. Pa was still snoring away. Ma gestured her out to the kitchen, where they could speak without waking him. Ma’s face was drawn with fatigue. She’d spent the night fetching and carrying for white people. “How he doing?” she asked.

“Tolerable. Needs a bath.”

Ma sighed. “I know. He won’t let me wash him. He ashamed.” Plaquette felt her eyebrows lift in surprise. The Pa she knew washed every morning and night and had a full bath on Sundays.

Ma pulled a chair out from under the table and thumped herself down into it. Her lips were pinched together with worry. “He not getting better.”

“We’re managing.”

“I thought he might mend. Some do. Tomorrow he supposed to start his San Francisco run. Guess I gotta do it.”

At first, Plaquette felt only envy. Even Ma was seeing the world. Then she understood the problem. “San Francisco run’s five days.”

Ma nodded. “I know you can see to him all by yourself, Darling. You’re a big girl. But you gotta go to work for Msieur too. Your Pa, he’s not ready to be alone all day.”

It was one weight too many on the scales. Plaquette feared it would tip her completely over. She stammered, “I-I have to-to go, Ma.” Blindly, she grabbed her bonnet and apron and sped out the door. Guilt followed her the whole way to Msieur’s. Leaving Ma like that.

She would have to start charming Msieur, sooner rather than later.

Plaquette was the first one to the shop, just as she’d planned it. Msieur generally lingered over his breakfast, came down in time to open the showroom to custom. She’d have a few minutes to herself. She’d make it up to Ma later. Sit down with her and Pa Sunday morning and work out a plan.

Claude and the George were beside her bench, right where she’d left them. She bent and patted Claude on the cheek. She delved into Claude’s base through its open hatch and removed the remaining three ‘books’ which Claude recited when the rolls of punched paper were fed into his von Kempelen apparatus. Claude bided open and silent, waiting to be filled with words. Eagerly Plaquette lowered her book onto the spool and locked that in place, then threaded the end – no, the beginning, the very beginning of this new story – onto the toothed drum of the von Kempelen and closed its cover.

She removed the ribbon bearing Claude’s key from his wrist. She wound him tight and released the guard halfway – for some of the automaton’s mechanisms were purely for show. In this mode, Claude’s carven lips would remain unmoving.

With a soft creak, the spool began to turn. A flat voice issued from beneath Claude’s feet:

“They Fly at Çironia, by Della R. Mausney. Prologue. Among the tribes and villages –”

It was working!

Afire with the joy of it, Plaquette began working on the George again.

But come noon the metal man was still as jake-legged as Pa. Seemed there was nothing Plaquette could do to fix either one.

She tried to settle her thoughts. She couldn’t work if her mind was troubled. She’d listened to her punchcard story three times today already. She knew she was being vain, but she purely loved hearing her words issue forth from Claude. The story was a creation that was completely hers, not built on the carcass of someone else’s ingenuity. Last night’s sleepless frenzy had cut the bonds on her imagination. She’d set free something she didn’t know she had in her. Claude’s other novels were all rich folk weeping over rich folk problems, white folk pitching woo. They Fly at Çironia was different, wickedly so. The sweep and swoop of it. The crudeness, the brutality.

She wound the key set into Claude’s side until it was just tight enough, and tripped the release fully. With a quiet sound like paper riffling, Claude’s head started to move. His eyelids flicked up and down. His head turned left to right. The punchcard clicked forward one turn. Claude’s jaw opened, and he began to recite.

“Now,” she whispered to the George, “one more time. Let’s see what’s to be done with you.” She reached into his chest with her tweezers as the familiar enchantment began to come upon her. While the Winged Ones screeed through the air of Çironia’s mountains on pinions of quartz, Plaquette wove and balanced quiltings of coiled springs, hooked them into layer upon layer of delicately-weighted controls, dropped them into one another’s curving grasps, adjusted and readjusted the workings of the George’s legs.