Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

But each old trick is forgotten by daddy’s next visit. Baby Ann Elisabeth has never even mastered walking. Father hoped for more, but the growth retardant process is not precise. When it comes to stinted babies, a few months can make such a difference.

Stint nannies know they don’t have to try too hard; visiting day is all that matters. Nannying is a good appointment for a working girl, but being fondled by my ugly old father can’t be pleasant.

But Daria is missing! Suddenly I realise my chance has finally come! Pretty Daria must be planning to run away. No ship has departed Amberjade in the past few weeks. The girl must still be here somewhere. There’s no need for me to learn to fly a ship. She knows all the offworld pilots by name. Daria and I will escape together and flee to Bellady’s moon.

I must act immediately. Harmon must know of my plans. Keen to avoid the tedious ritual of the six-year-old stint’s singing, I slip from the table unobtrusively. No one bothers me as I leave. The men are drunk, the women screeching over small holographic amusements. My swallowtails are forgotten.

As I make my way back through the autumn wing, my mind floods with possibilities. I will steal some of my father’s gold. He will not miss a little of it—it will be several days before he sobers up and notices I am missing.

I climb the staircase and hurry through the house as fast as I am able, all the way through my Autumn rooms to my Link portal. It activates as I enter, pulsing warm and red, the colour of my heart. The air fills with the scent of rose and jasmine, an olfactory hallucination. Such plants cannot thrive in this planet’s bitter soils.

A message awaits, as I knew it would. I am bursting with excitement. I nod for it to play, stand back and hold my breath. No, I will not wait another moment. Words will tumble from my lips in a delicious garble. He will not have to hear them to know what I intend because my manner will tell it all.

When the Link connects my darling Harmon stands before me.

He stands.

I pause, sensing the wrongness, not understanding what I’m seeing even as I’m seeing it.

He stands.

There is no blanket shielding Harmon’s supposedly damaged lower body. He smiles, and an undercurrent of unfamiliarity taints his voice. My Autumn suite grows deathly cold, rose and jasmine draining from the air.

This man is not my Harmon. This man has his face, but nothing else of him is the same.

His hair is coiffed, his clothing finer and his mannerisms much more aggressive than those of the man I know.

“Arna Maria, my dearest love,” he says. “I ache for you. If only we could be together. I would take you to see the grand touring exhibition of Rudiliere’s sculptures on Ellah, and then to the library on Gizienne. Why must we live so far apart? When will this torment end?”

Arna Maria? Who is she? A friend from the university Linklounge, perhaps?

“I love you, Arna Maria, as I have loved no other,” says Harmon. “Will your father not agree to our marriage? Soon I will have gold. Plenty of it. We can go anywhere we want.”

My breath catches sharply in my throat. “I love you, Arna Maria, as I have loved no other.” I know this line by heart. The very same words he has used on me. The exact words, as if taken from a script. A script he no doubt reiterates as many times as amusement dictates.

I fall to the floor, clutching at my chest. He has sent the wrong message to the wrong woman—how many of us has he accumulated in his Link harem? Is his error accidental, or an intentional act of cruelty? Harmon, my lovely Harmon, is a fraud.

“Say it to my face,” I whisper, all my dreams in ruins. Say it to my true face, not this cold, projected likeness. I will steal a ship from the Vazquenadas. I will fly to Bellady’s moon and discover the truth for myself.

I feel my heart burn and shrivel. I am no longer in control. I find myself limping through my father’s mansion, eyes blurred with tears, my mind consumed with the hideous image of my darling Harmon smiling at another woman with love that was supposed to be all mine.

Daria. Where is Daria? She will know which of the pilots can be trusted. I will make her take me with her. We shall escape from my father as he drinks himself to senselessness downstairs.

My uneven footsteps echo loudly on the polished marble floors. Room after useless room, yet I feel invigorated through my tears. Driven forward by my pain and confusion. Surely my Harmon does not mean those words? I have misheard him. Misinterpreted what he said, that is all.

Above the sound of my own anguished cries I hear another little voice. Instinctively, I head towards it, pushing through double gilded doors. A sickly stench assails my nostrils. Something putrid. Horrible. The wailing is much louder now, and I recognise it suddenly; the crying of a baby.

I find the infant through another doorway in the spring suite nursery. Baby Ann Elisabeth lies screaming in her crib in a mess of her own excrement, a drip feeder taped crudely to her arm. She looks to have been in this condition for some time. Where is nanny Daria? And then it strikes me that this is Fourthday—three whole days away from my father’s scheduled visit. Daria could be anywhere on AmberJade. My father would never know. So long as the baby is healthy for daddy’s visit, no one cares what happens on the other days.

I lift the squalling bundle from the crib, detach her from the apparatus, wipe her as clean as I can manage with the corner of the sheet. I pull a fresh towel from the linen closet and wrap her tightly.

The stench is indescribable. Covering my nose, I run from that awful place. My father will have to be informed. Daria shall be found and banished in disgrace.

I must find my father and present him with the filthy, squalling stint. I will demand he pay proper attention to his house and change his self-indulgent ways. I shall demand a ship of my own, and a pilot to fly me far away from this horror and decadence.

Baby Ann Elizabeth continues to howl as I carry her through my father’s house, through room after empty, pointless room till we reach the grand dining chamber. I will display the dirty stint before his precious dinner guests. Let them all smell its neglect. Interrupt the recital or the pretty song, or whatever he has the six-year-old performing for that troop of drunken Vazquenadas baboons.

I push open the double lacquered doors with my shoulder. The dining room is empty, the table still laid but the dishes abandoned. A butler whose name I do not know steps up to greet me, a crisp white linen draped over one arm.

“Would Miss Luisa Alice care to partake of refreshment?” he asks.

I lift baby Ann Elisabeth from my shoulder and present her to the butler.

“Take this to my father,” I say as calmly as I can, but I know my voice is wavering. If the butler thinks my request bizarre, he makes no obvious show of it. He lifts the squalling stint-child from my arms.

I wipe my hand across my face and find it damp with tears. My clothing reeks, and I realise that I am so terribly tired. I sit in the nearest chair, pick a crumpled napkin from the table and use it to mop my brow. Beside the napkin, a full glass of red wine that I drain in one gulp. I do not normally care for wine but I must have fortification if I am to face my father and demand a ship.

The wine spreads warmth through my veins. My thoughts begin to focus. I must have a ship. I will fly to Harmon and demand an explanation of his actions. It is only when I reach for a second glass that I remember his other words. Soon I will have gold. Plenty of it. Surely he could not be referring to my gold; the gold I plan to steal from my father? Where is my father and his revolting guests? Where has everybody gone?