Steampunk! Part 16

"A little," Fran said. "But the bed was comfortable, and I kept the light on. I read for a while and then I fell asleep."

"Did you see your heart's desire?" Ophelia said.

"I guess I did," Fran offered, and then said no more.

"OK, then," Ophelia said. "I guess you should go. You should go, right?"

"I'll come back in the morning," Fran said. "I'll be here afore you even wake."

"Thanks," Ophelia said.

But Fran didn't go. She said, "Did you mean it when you said you wanted to help?"

"Look after the house?" Ophelia said. "Yeah, absolutely. You really ought to go out to San Francisco someday. You shouldn't have to stay here your whole life without ever having a vacation or anything. I mean, you're not a slave, right?"

"I don't know what I am," Fran said. "I guess one day I'll have to figure that out."

Ophelia said, "Anyway, we can talk about it tomorrow. Over breakfast. You can tell me about the suckiest parts of the job, and I'll tell you what my heart's desire turns out to be."

"Oh," Fran said. "I almost forgot. When you wake up tomorrow, don't be surprised if they've left you a gift. The summer people. It'll be something that they think you need or want."

"Good grief," Ophelia said. "This is starting to sound like Christmas or something."

"Or something," Fran agreed. "But you don't have to accept it. You don't have to worry about being rude that way."

"OK," Ophelia said. "I will consider whether I really need or want my present. I won't let false glamour deceive me."

"Good," Fran said. Then she bent over Ophelia where she was sitting on the bed and kissed her on the forehead. "Sleep well, Ophelia. Good dreams."

"'Night, John-Boy," Ophelia said, and laughed.

Fran left the house without any interference from the summer people. She couldn't tell if she'd expected to find any. As she came down the stairs, she said, rather more fiercely than she'd meant to, "Be nice to her. Don't play no tricks." She looked in on the Queen, who was molting again.

She went out the front door instead of the back, which was something that she'd always wanted to do. Nothing bad happened and she walked down the hill feeling strangely put out. She went over everything in her head, wondering what still needed doing that she hadn't done. Nothing, she decided. Everything was taken care of.

Except, of course, it wasn't. The first thing was the guitar, leaned up against the door of her house. It was a beautiful instrument. The strings, she thought, were pure silver. When she struck them, the tone was pure and sweet and reminded her uncomfortably of Ophelia's singing voice. The keys were made of gold and shaped like owl heads, and there was mother-of-pearl inlay across the boards, like a spray of roses. It was the gaudiest gawgee they'd yet made her a gift of.

"Well, all right," she said. "I guess you didn't mind what I told her." She laughed out loud with relief.

"Why everwho did you tell what?" someone said.

She picked up the guitar and held it like a weapon in front of her. "Daddy?"

"Put that down," the voice said. A man stepped forward out of the shadow of the rosebushes. "I'm not your d.a.m.n daddy. Although, come to think of it, I would like to know where he is."

"Ryan Shoemaker," Fran said. She put the guitar down on the ground. Another man stepped forward. "And Kyle Rainey."

"Howdy, Fran," said Kyle. He spat. "We were lookin' for your pappy, like Ryan says."

"I told Andy when I ran into him at the convenience," Fran said. "He went down to some meeting to praise Jesus. All the way to Florida, but I ain't heard from him yet, so mebbe they stopped over in Orlando to meet Mickey Mouse."

"I went to Disney World once," Ryan said. "Got thrown out for cussing out a princess."

"If he calls, I'll let him know you were up here looking for him," Fran said. "Is that all you wanted to ask me?"

Ryan lit up a cigarette, looked at her over the flame. "It was your daddy we wanted to ask, but I guess you could help us out instead."

"It don't seem likely somehow," Fran said. "But go on."

"Your daddy was meaning to drop off some of the sweet stuff the other night," Kyle said. "Only he started thinking about it on the drive down, and that's never been a good idea where your daddy is concerned. He decided Jesus wanted him to pour out ever last drop, and that's what he did, all the way down the mountain. If he weren't a lucky man, some spark might have cotched while he were pouring, but I guess Jesus don't want to meet him face-to-face just yet."

"And if that weren't bad enough," Ryan said, "when he got to the convenience, he decided that Jesus wanted him to get into the van and smash up all Andy's liquor, too. By the time we realized what was going on, there weren't much left beside two bottles of Kahlua and a six-pack of wine coolers."

"One of them smashed, too," Kyle said. "And then he took off afore we could have a word with him."

"Well, I'm sorry for your troubles, but I don't see what it has to do with me," Fran said.

"What it has to do is that we've come up with an easy payment plan. We talked about it, and the way it seems to us is that your pappy could provide us with entree to some of the finest homes in the area."

"We'd do a little smash and grab," Kyle said. "Except this way we could leave out the smash. Everybody would be happier."

"Like I said," Fran said. "I'll pa.s.s on the message. You're hoping my daddy will make his rest.i.tution by becoming your accessory in breaking and entering. I'll let him know if he calls."

"Or he could pay poor Andy back in kind," Ryan said. "With some of that good stuff."

"He'll have to run that by Jesus," Fran said. "Frankly, I think it's a better bet than the other, but you might have to wait until he and Jesus have had enough of each other."

"The thing is," Ryan said, "I'm not a patient man. And what has occurred to me is that your pappy may be out of our reach at present moment, but here you are. And I'm guessing that you can get us into a house or two. Preferably ones with quality flat screens and high-thread-count sheets. I promised Mandy I was going to help her redecorate."

"Or else you could point us in the direction of your daddy's private stash," Kyle said.

"And if I don't choose to do neither?" Fran asked, crossing her arms.

"I truly hope that you know what it is you're doing," Kyle said. "Ryan has not been in a good mood these last few days. He bit a sheriff's deputy on the arm last night in a bar. Which is why we weren't up here sooner."

Fran stepped back. "Fine," she said. "I'll do what you want. There's an old house farther up the road that n.o.body except me and my daddy know about. It's ruint. n.o.body lives there, and so my daddy put his still up in it. He's got all sorts of articles stashed up there. I'm not saying he steals from the summer people, but I have wondered from time to time if he don't have a business on the side. Like maybe he's holding for someone else."

"Dammit," Ryan said. "And he calls himself a Christian man."

Fran said, "I'll take you up. But you can't tell him what I done."

"A'course not, darlin'," Kyle said. "We don't aim to cause a rift in the family. Just to get what we have coming."

And so Fran found herself climbing right back up that same road. She got her feet wet in the drain, but kept as far ahead of Kyle and Ryan as she dared. She didn't know if she felt safe with them at her back.

When they got up to the house, Kyle whistled. "Fancy sort of ruin."

"Wait'll you see what's inside," Fran said. She led them around to the back, then held the door open. "Sorry about the lights. The power goes off more than it stays on. My daddy usually brings up a flashlight. Want me to go get one?"

"We've got matches," Ryan said. "You stay right there."

"The still is in the room over on the right. Mind how you go. He's got it set up in a kind of maze, with the newspapers and all."

"Dark as the inside of a black cat at midnight," Kyle said. He felt his way down the hall. "I think I'm at the door. Sure enough, smells like what I'm lookin' for. Guess I'll just follow my nose. No b.o.o.by traps or nothing like that?"

"No, sir," Fran said. "He'd have blowed hisself up a long time before now if he tried that."

"I might as well take in the sights," Ryan said, the lit end of his cigarette flaring. "Now that I'm getting my night vision."

"Yes, sir," Fran said.

"And might there be a p.i.s.ser in this heap?"

"Third door on the left once you go up," Fran said. "The door sticks some."

She waited until he was at the top of the stairs before she slipped out the back door again. She could hear Kyle fumbling toward the center of the Queen's room. She wondered what the Queen would make of Kyle. She wasn't worried about Ophelia at all. Ophelia was an invited guest. And, anyhow, the summer people didn't let anything happen to the ones who looked after them.

One of the summer people was sitting on the porch swing when she came out. He was whittling a stick with a sharp knife.

"Evening," Fran said, and bobbed her head.

The summer personage didn't even look up at her. He was one of the ones so pretty it almost hurt to peep at him, but you couldn't not stare neither. That was one of the ways they cotched you, Fran figured. Just like wild animals when you shone a light at them. She finally tore her gaze away and ran down the stairs like the devil was after her. When she stopped to look back, he was still setting there, smiling and whittling that poor stick down.

She sold the guitar when she got to New York City. What was left of her daddy's two hundred dollars had bought her a Greyhound ticket and a couple of burgers at the bus station. The guitar got her six hundred more, and she used that to buy a ticket to Paris, where she met a Lebanese boy who was squatting in an old factory. One day she came back from her under-the-table job at a hotel and found him looking through her backpack. He had the monkey egg in his hand. He wound it up and put it down on the dirty floor to dance. They both watched until it ran down. "Tres jolie," he said.

It was a few days after Christmas, and there was snow melting in her hair. They didn't have heat in the squat, or even running water. She'd had a bad cough for a few days. She sat down next to her boy, and when he started to wind the monkey egg up again, she put her hand out to make him stop.

She didn't remember packing it. And of course, maybe she hadn't. For all she knew, they had winter palaces as well as summer places. Just because she'd never been able to travel didn't mean they didn't get around.

A few days later, the Lebanese boy disappeared, probably gone off looking for someplace warmer. The monkey egg went with him. After that, all she had to remind herself of home was the tent that she kept folded up like a dirty handkerchief in her wallet.

It's been two years now, and every now and again while Fran is cleaning rooms in the pension, she closes the door and sets up the tent and gets inside. She looks out the window at the two apple trees. She tells herself that one day soon she will go home again.

The old man who had once been the Grand Technomancer, Most Mighty Mechanician, and Highest of the High Artificier Adepts was cutting his roses when he heard the unmistakeable ticktock-tocktock of a clockwerk velocipede coming down the road. He started in surprise and then turned toward the noise, for the first time in years suddenly reminded that he was not wearing the four-foot-high toque of state, nor the cloak of perforated bronze control cards that had once hung from his shoulders, both of which had made almost anything but the smallest movement impossible.

He didn't miss these impressive clothes, but the old man concluded that since what he heard was definitely a clockwerk velocipede, however unlikely it seemed, and that a velocipede must have a rider, he should perhaps put something on to receive his visitor. While he was not embarra.s.sed himself, the juxtaposition of a naked man and the sharp pruning shears he held might prove to be a visual distraction, and thus a hindrance to easy communication.

Accordingly, he walked into his humble cottage, and after a moment's consideration, took the white cloth off his kitchen table and draped it around himself, folding it so the pomegranate stain from his breakfast was tucked away under one arm.

When he went back out, the former Grand Technomancer left the shears by the front door. He expected to be back cutting the roses quite soon, after he got rid of his unexpected visitor.

The surprise guest was parking her velocipede by the gate to the lower paddock. The Grand Technomancer winced and frowned as the vehicle emitted a piercing shriek that drowned out its underlying clockwerk ticktocking. She had evidently engaged the parking r.e.t.a.r.dation m.u.f.fler to the mainspring before unlocking the gears. A common mistake made by those unfamiliar with the mechanism, and yet another most unwelcome noise to his quiet valley.

After correcting her error, the girl - or more properly a young woman, the old man supposed - climbed down from the control howdah above the single fat drive wheel of the velocipede. She was not wearing any identifiable robes of guild or lodge, and in fact her one-piece garment was made of some kind of scaly blue hide, both the cut and fabric strange to his eyes.

Perhaps even more curiously, the old man's extraordinarily acute hearing could not detect any faint clicking from sandgrain clockwerk, the last and most impressive advance of his colleagues, which had allowed modern technology to actually be implanted in the body, to enhance various aspects of physique and movement. Nor did she have one of the once-popular steam skeletons, as he could see neither the telltale puffs of steam from a radium boiler at the back of her head nor the bolt heads of augmented joints poking through at elbow, neck, and knee.

This complete absence of clockwerk enhancement in the young woman surprised the old man, though in truth he was surprised to have any visitor at all.

"h.e.l.lo!" called out the young woman as she approached the door.

The old man wet his lips in preparation for speech, and, with considerable effort, managed to utter a soft greeting in return. As he did so, he was struck by the thought that he had not spoken aloud for more than ten years.

The woman came up to the door, intent on him, watching for any sign of sudden movement. The man was familiar with that gaze. He had been surrounded by bodyguards for many years, and though their eyes had been looking outward, he saw the same kind of focus in this woman.

It was strange to see that focus in so young a woman, he thought. She couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen, but there was a calm and somewhat chilling competence in her eyes. Again, he was puzzled by her odd blue garment and lack of insignia. Her short-cropped hair, shaved at the sides, was not a style he could recall ever being fashionable. There were also three short lines tattooed on each side of her neck, the suggestion of ceremonial gills, perhaps, and this did spark some faint remembrance, but he couldn't pin the memory down. A submarine harvesting guild, perhaps - "You are Ahfred Progressor III, formerly Grand Technomancer, Most Mighty Mechanician, and Highest of the High Artificier Adepts?" asked the woman quite conversationally. She had stopped a few feet away. Her hands were open by her sides, but there was something about that stance that suggested that this was a temporary state and that those same hands usually held weapons and shortly would again.

The old man couldn't see any obvious knives or anything similar, but that didn't mean anything. The woman's blue coverall had curious lumps along the forearms and thighs, which could be weapon pockets, though he could see no fasteners. And once again, he could not hear the sound of moving metal, not even the faintest slither of a blade in a sheath.

"Yes," he said scratchily and very slowly. "Ahfred . . . yes, that is my name. I was Grand Technomancer. Retired, of course."

There was little point in denying his ident.i.ty. Though he had lost weight, his face was still much the same as it had been when it had adorned the obverse side of millions of coins, hundreds of thousands of machine-painted official portraits, and at least scores of statues, some of them bronze automata that also replicated his voice.

"Good," said the woman. "Do you live here alone?"

"Yes," replied Ahfred. He had begun to get alarmed. "Who . . . who are you?"

"We'll get to that," said the young woman easily. "Let's go inside. You first."

Ahfred nodded shakily and went inside. He thought of the shears as he pa.s.sed the door. Not much of a weapon, but they were sharp and pointed. . . . He half turned, thinking to pick them up, but the woman had already done so.

"For the roses?" she asked.

Ahfred nodded again. He had been trying to forget things for so long that it was hard to remember anything useful that might help him now.

"Sit down," she instructed. "Not in that chair. That one."

Ahfred changed direction. Some old memories were coming back. Harmless recollections that did not threaten his peace of mind. He remembered that it didn't matter what armchair he took; they all had the same controls and equipment. The house had been well prepared against a.s.sa.s.sins and other troubles long ago, but he had not restarted or checked any of the mechanisms after . . . well, when he had moved in. Ahfred did not choose to recall what had happened and preferred in his own head to consider this place his retirement home, to which he had removed as if in normal circ.u.mstances.

Even presuming that the advanced mechanisms no longer functioned, he now had some of the basic weapons at hand, the knives in the sides, the static dart throwers in the arms. The woman need merely stand in the right place . . .

She didn't. She stayed in the doorway, and now she did have a weapon in her hand. Or so Ahfred presumed, though again it was not anything he was familiar with. It looked like a ceramic egg and was quite a startling shade of blue. But there was a hole in the end, and it was pointed at him.

"You are to remain completely still, your mouth excepted," said the young woman. "If you move, you will be restrained, at the expense of some quite extraordinary pain. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Ahfred. There had always been the risk of a.s.sa.s.sination when he was in office, but he had not thought about it since his retirement. If this woman was an a.s.sa.s.sin, he was very much puzzled by her origins and motivation. After all, he no longer had any power or influence. He was just a simple gardener, living a simple life in an exceedingly remote and private valley.

"You have confirmed that you are Ahfred Progressor III, the last head of state of the Technocratic Arch-Government," said the woman. "I believe among your many other t.i.tles you were also Keyholder and Elevated Arbiter of the Ultimate a.r.s.enal?"

"Yes," said Ahfred. What did she mean by "last head of state," he wondered. He wet his lips again and added, "Who are you that asks?"

"My name is Ruane," said the woman.

"That does not signify anything to me," said Ahfred, who heard the name as "Rain."

He could feel one of the control studs under his fingers, and if his memory served him correctly, it was for one of the very basic escape sequences. Unlike most of the weapons, it was not clockwerk powered, so it was more likely to have remained operational. Even the chance of it working lent him confidence.

"Indeed, I must ask by what right or authority you invade my home and force my acquiescence to this interrogation. It is most -"