SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Ruhan’s eyes grow wide, and then soften. “What about you, Kata?” he asks. “Do you want to die so badly?”

“Yes. But I won’t.” I know what my destiny will be. The ship may crash. But I’ll live because the wasp will keep me alive, just as he has for 900 years. I’ll emerge unscathed.

Ruhan looks at my swollen belly, then at my face. I see a new strength in his eyes. He relaxes, smiles. Then, without hesitation, he pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly. It’s the first prolonged human touch I’ve felt in hundreds of years. I cry; my body shakes with deep sobs, but no tears. Ruhan takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. “You aren’t alien, osita, ” he says. “I was wrong. Just like you said, you’re still you.” He wipes the blood from my lips and kisses me. Then he turns and keys in the code to the escape pod.

I watch as he climbs in. The door closes and seals shut with a hiss.

“See you on the surface,” I tell him, even though I know he doesn’t hear me.

Originally published by Lethe Press

The order was simple, and it arrived written in golden ink over pale pink, thick paper with a vague scent of roses. Rosie smiled at the coincidence, that a local legend should use perfume that referenced her own name in a professional card, but roses were common—unlike the job she was being commissioned for, she thought.

She folded the note into a small square, perfect to fit in her breast pocket, and slid into the shoulder strap of her tool bag. Slumped over a work table, Theo, her copper-headed assistant, sanded the last imperfections out of a piece of clay where he, too, had seen a doll head. He could watch the shop for a couple of hours, but as a reminder, she still gave him a soft pat on the shoulder before crossing the threshold of their discreet and picturesque door— Varadys Automata, Dolls For Dreamers —and stepping into a winter so harsh it’d taken her twelve years to get used to. Her eyes took a second to adjust to the silvery winter air, but a cab trip later, she was back inside—though the colors no longer matched the earth tones of doll parts, and instead the powdered shades of make-up and expensive perfume.

“Miss V, I presume?”

The voice belonged to a butler, an old man with dark, delicate hands that reached out to take her coat. She shed it without a second thought, and followed the man’s crooked back through halls of mirrors into a large, flaky ballroom. The blinds were only partially pulled, letting in blades of late afternoon light, and the fireplace was lit on the furthest corner of the room. On either side, an armchair, and on one of them, a delicate hand on an armrest.

The woman looked towards the door and her hair unraveled from behind her ear.

“You can leave, Carter. Thank you.” The hand curled into a wave. “Come closer, Miss. Please don’t be shy.”

Rosie had never been shy. Not as a child, even less as an adult. Strangers posed no threat when you’d grown up surrounded by the crème de la crème of the underground. She walked up to the fireplace, crude work boots echoing against the floorboards until she stepped on the carpet. The woman was young, and the fire brought out the determination in her dark complexion and soft gray eyes, lined with precise needles of black kohl. Her face was made-up, an invention, a mask of power that didn’t slip even when she had to look up from her disadvantageous sitting position, and meet Rosie’s stare. She controlled the room with an aura so strong it made Rosie’s heart wither and wilt.

“Please sit. We have a lot to discuss.”

Her only choice was the second armchair, and so she sat with eyes fixed on the fire ahead. If she moved she would surely pop a shirt button, or worse, disturb the languor that furnished the room. Words flew in the streets, and if one walked with ears perked high enough, they’d be able to catch them—the lady of the house of mirrors, was how they called her current customer. A poor thing, delicate and faint, a butterfly in her cocoon, with skin so sensitive to the sun that mere exposure would make her pass out, or inflame her skin until the tender, bulbous tumors rendered her unrecognizable, or dead, even—depending on whose words one took for granted on the matter.

“May I offer you a drink, Miss…?” Her voice was low, in that way of people who were sure even their whispers rose to the skies. “…excuse me, is it Varadys? Like the old man?”

“No, ma’am, I…” Rosie’s voice, though, was low in that way of people whose lips often failed to communicate the words so carefully aligned in their minds. “…I have taken up his business, but we are not related. You may call me Rose. And thank you for the offer, but I’d rather not…drink.” She didn’t add that while she wasn’t against voluntary intoxication, she didn’t trust anyone enough to let them fill her glass.

“Very well.” She took a careful sip from whatever glittering liquid filled the glass by her side, and reset it on the circle of condensation it had left on the surface of the table. Her nails, dark red, were filed to elegant points. “Miss Rose, then. May I ask why you’ve taken up his business if you are not related? You’re not from here, clearly.” She held out her fingers, gesturing towards Rosie’s self-conscious head.”

“I moved here when I was young. My family knew Mr. Varadys, and when the time came for them to take on a complicated job opportunity, they left me here to hone my…” She struggled to find a good way to word it, a small lie with which she could speak the truth. “…craft skills.”

The lady let out a small smile, as if the revelation pleased her.

“We have both been left aside by our families, then.”

“There were attempts to recover me afterwards, but by then I’d convinced myself I belonged here.” Here, where the underground has taken over the surface and no one seems to notice.

The lady held her chin on her dainty fingers and murderous nails, welltended lips pursing in thought.

“Wise decision. I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”

That small line delivered the final blow, and Rosie found herself growing uncomfortable.

“If I may be bold, ma’am…why have you called me here?”

“Your old employer was the best in the business, and you take after him. The truth is, Miss, I need something done.” Silence dragged on, while the lady appeared to rethink her words. “Someone, in fact. I want a companion piece, a machine that acts and looks human in every way…to keep me company, you understand, since nobody else seems up to the task.”

She didn’t doubt it. What she doubted, though, was her own ability to build such a thing. She knew herself incapable—even if there was little she had to consider on a rational level, no matter the assignment. Most mechanisms simply made themselves known to her, and in a trance, she built them to the image seared into her brain. Injecting life, a ghost into the machine wasn’t hard—it was life force, and like everything else in a world of labeled packages and weighted parcels, it could be harnessed and collected, distilled from blood and sweat, cooked from skin cells and forgotten hairs. There was method to what others saw only as madness—but she had no interest in showing it to them.

The lady had kept on talking. Rosie hadn’t noticed.

“…and I would want it to be polite and courteous, and to obey my every whim.”

“Why don’t you just hire someone?” It was an uncomfortable question, but Rosie had grown to accept that people would sell just about anything: their time, the skin off their backs, the arch of their spines when pleasure hit.