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

Finally, for the fourth time that day, the Winged Ones seized the story’s teller and tossed him among themselves in play. Finally, for the fourth time that day, he picked himself up from the ground, gathered about himself such selfness as he could.

The short book ended. Gradually, Plaquette’s trance did the same.

Except for the automatons, she was alone. The time was earlier than it had been last night. Not by much. Shadows filled the wide corners, and the little light that fell between buildings to slip in at the tall windows was thin and nearly useless.

A creaking board revealed Msieur’s presence in the showroom just before the door communicating with it opened. He stuck his head through, smiling like the overdressed man Plaquette had run from on her way home last night. She returned the smile, trying for winsomeness.

“Not taking ill, are you?” Msieur asked. So much for her winning ways.

He moved forward into the room to examine the George. “Have you finished for the day? I doubt you made much progress.” His manicured hands reopened the chest she had just shut. He bent as if to peer inside, but his eyes slid sideways, towards Plaquette’s bosom and shoulders. She should stand proud to show off her figure. Instead, she stumbled up from her bench and edged behind the stolid protection of Claude’s metal body.

Smiling more broadly yet, Msieur turned his gaze to the George’s innards in reality. “You do appear to have done something, however – Let’s test it!” He closed up the chest access. He retrieved the mechanism’s key from the table, wound it tight, and tripped its initial release. The George lumbered clumsily to its feet.

“Where’s that instruction card? Ah!” Msieur inserted it and pressed the secondary release button.

A grinding hum issued from the metal chest. The George’s left knee lifted – waist-high – higher! But then it lowered and the foot kicked out. It landed heel first. One step – another – a third – a fourth – four more – it stopped. It had reached the workroom’s far wall, and, piled against it, the Gladstones and imperials it was now supposed to load itself with. It whirred and stooped. It ticked and reached, tocked and grasped, and then –

Then it stuck in place. Quivering punctuated by rhythmic jerks ran along its blue-painted frame. Rrrr-rap! Rrrr-rap! RRRR-RAP! With each repetition the noise of the George’s faulty operation grew louder. Msieur ran quickly to disengage its power.

“Such precision! Astonishing!” Msieur appeared pleased at even partial success. He stroked his neat, silky beard thoughtfully. He seemed to come to a decision. “We’ll work through the night. The expense of the extra oil consumed is nothing if we succeed – and I believe we will.”

By “we,” Msieur meant her. He expected for her to toil on his commission all night.

But what about Pa?

Self-assured though he was, Msieur must have sensed her hesitation. “What do you need? Of course – you must be fed! I’ll send to the Café du Monde –” He glanced around the empty workshop. “– or if I must go myself, no matter. A cup of chicory and a slice of chocolate pie, girl! How does that sound?”

Chocolate pie! But as she opened her mouth to assent she found herself saying instead, “But Ma – Pa –”

Msieur was already in the showroom; she heard the muffled bell that rang whenever he slid free the drawer holding the day’s receipts. Plaquette crept forward; obediently, Claude followed her onto the crimson carpet. Startled, Msieur thrust his hands below the counter so she couldn’t see what they held. “What’s that you say?”

“My folks will worry if I don’t get home ’fore too late. I better –”

“No. You stay. I’ll have the Café send a messenger.”

That wouldn’t help. She couldn’t say why, though, so she had to let Msieur herd her back to the workroom. Under his suspicious eye she wound up the George again and walked it to her bench. Not long after, Claude rejoined her. “That’s right,” said Msieur, satisfied. “And if this goes well, I’ll have a proposition to make to your mother. Eh? You have been quite an asset to me. I should like to, erm, deepen our connection.”

Plaquette swallowed. “Yes, Msieur.”

His face brightened. “Yes? Your own place in the Quarter. You would keep working in the shop, of course. Splendid, then. Splendid.” He winked at her! The door to the showroom slammed shut. The jangle of keys told Plaquette that Msieur had locked her in. Like a faint echo, the door to the street slammed seconds later.

She sank back onto her seat. Only greyness, like dirty water, trickled in at the workroom windows, fading as she watched.

So even if she became Msieur’s placée, tended to their left-hand marriage, he would expect her to continue in this dreary workroom.

Plaquette frowned, attempting to recall if she’d heard the grate and clank of the safe’s door closing on the day’s proceeds, the money and precious jewels Msieur usually hid away there. Sometimes she could remember what had happened around her during the last few minutes of her trance.

Not today.

Only the vague outlines of its windows broke the darkening workroom’s walls. And beneath where she knew the showroom door stood, a faint, blurry smear gleamed dully, vanishing remnant of l’heure bleue. She must go home now. Before Msieur returned with his chocolate pie and his unctuous wooing.

She considered the showroom door a moment longer. But the door from there led right to the street. People would be bound to see her escape. The workroom door, then; the delivery entrance that led to the alleyway. She twisted to face it.

Msieur had reinforced this door the same summer when, frightened of robbers, he sank his iron safe beneath the workroom’s huge oak cabinet. It was faced outside with bricks, a feeble attempt at concealment that made it heavy – too heavy for Plaquette alone to budge. Plaquette, however, was not alone.

Marshalling the George into position, she set him to kick down the thick workroom door. The George walked forward a few more feet, then stopped there in the alley, lacking for further commands. A dumb mechanical porter with no more sense than a headless chicken.

Though she hadn’t planned it, Plaquette found she knew what she wanted to do next. She rushed back to her bench. Claude cheerfully rocked after her. She erased all the corrections that she’d meticulously made to Msieur’s notes. She scribbled in new ones, any nonsense that came to mind. Without her calculations Msieur would never work out the science of making a wireless iron George. Someone else eventually might, but this way, it wouldn’t be on Plaquette’s conscience.

She took a chair with her out into the alleyway, climbed up onto it, and unscrewed the George’s cap. She upturned it so that it sat like a bowl on the George’s empty head. From her apron she produced the bottle she’d taken from Ma’s kitchen; the one with the dregs of jake in it. Ma could never bear to throw anything away, even poison. Plaquette poured the remaining jake all over the receiver inside the George’s cap. There was a satisfying sizzling sound of wires burning out. Jake leg this, you son of a – well. Ma wouldn’t like her even thinking such language. She screwed the cap back onto the George’s head. Msieur might never discover the sabotage.

One more trip back inside the workroom, to Claude’s broom closet. On a hook in there hung the Pullman porter’s uniform that Msieur had been given to model the George’s painted costume after. It was a men’s small. A little large on her, but she belted in the waist and rolled up the trouser hems. She slid her hands into the trouser pockets, and exclaimed in delight. So much room! Not dainty, feminine pockets – bigger even than those stitched onto her workroom apron. She could carry almost anything she pleased in these!