The Apex Book of World SF 2 (41 page)

"I love you ,
Morholt," said Branwen without looking at me. "I love you whether you want it
or not. It's like an illness. A weariness that drains me of my free will, that
pulls me into the deep. I've lost myself within you, Morholt, and I shall never
find myself the way I was before. If you respond to my love, you, too, will
lose yourself; you will perish, drown in the deeps and never find the old
Morholt again. So think well before you give me your answer."

The ship stood by
the rocky shore. They were unloading something. Someone was shouting, cursing
in Welsh, hurrying the men. The sails were being rolled. The sails…

"It's a terrible
sickness, this love," carried on Branwen, also looking at the sails. " La
maladie, as they say in the south, on the mainland. La maladie d'espoir, the
sickness of hope. The selfish infatuation, bringing harm to everyone around. I
love you, Morholt, selfishly, blindly. I'm not worried about the fate of
others, whom I may unwittingly draw into the whirl of my love, hurt, or trample
upon. Isn't it terrible? If you respond to my love… Think well, Morholt,
before you give me your answer."

The sails…

"We are like Tristan
and Iseult," said Branwen, and her voice came dangerously close to breaking
point. " La maladie… What shall become of us, Morholt? What will happen to
us? Will we, too, be joined finally by bushes of hawthorn and brier-rose
growing on our graves? Think well, Morholt, before you answer."

I was not going to
do any thinking. I suspected Branwen knew as much. I saw it in her eyes when
she turned her face towards me.

She knew we'd been
sent to Carhaing to save the legend. And we had. The simplest way. By beginning
a new one.

"I know how you
feel, Branwen," I said, looking at the sails, "for I feel exactly the same. It's
a terrible sickness. Terrible, incurable malady. I know how you feel. For I,
too, have fallen ill."

Branwen smiled, and
it seemed to me that the sun had broken through the low-hanging clouds. That's
what this smile was like. Believe me or not.

"And the pox on the
healthy, Branwen!"

The sails were
dirty.

Or so it seemed to
me.

 

A Life Made Possible Behind the Barricades
Jacques Barcia
 
Jacques Barcia is an
information technology reporter living in Recife, Brazil. He has written widely
on Brazilian and international SF, and his stories have appeared in the
Shine
anthology and in the
Steampunk Reloaded
web annex, amongst others.

 

Beyond the aethership's window,
Catalonia shone like a brass and crystal star, lost and alone in the vastness
of space. Kilometric antennae cast to the void, flowers carved over its
colossal hull and around the main station's atrium, beautiful stained glass and
asymmetric lines. Art. Home, if everything went well. It had always bothered
Fritz, this tick-tock speeding up inside his chest. It knotted his guts,
tightened his pneumatics. And, of course, there was the noise, the clocks
emphasising his anguishes, excitements, dreads and delights, right there, for
everyone to hear. But now he tried to keep himself calm, the glassy-cold window
against his icy, metal forehead, the battle breaking the silence in the cabin
with a sharp sound.

 

"Soon it'll be over,
dear," Chaya whispered, half asleep and still under the blankets. "Just a few
more hours and we'll be there."

"Yeah, I know,"
Fritz whispered back, turning his head to his fiancée, giving her a silly,
theatrical smile. "It's just, well, you know I'm easily stunned by beauty." He
turned his back to the window and rested his gaze on the non-human girl.
Stunning. She lay nested amongst baggage packed too quickly and clothes
discarded in the rush of desire. A golem with roots for hair, all spread out
over the pillows.

"I see," she said,
stretching and finally sitting up, letting the blankets slide over her
earth-and-wood skin, her breasts suddenly uncovered. "And I know you love to
dramatise, too. Look, Fritz, don't forget that thing is a factory. And
factories are always about smoke, sweat and the whistle at the end of every
shift." She scratched her brick-coloured forehead, chose a single root and used
it to tie a ponytail. "Also, you should remember there's a war going on".

The war, the strike.
Three years of insurrection. Fourteen months of controlling the best part of
the aether mine-generator, Catalonia, as the Federalists had started to call
it. However, even with rifles and deaths and Tesla-mortars, that sphere sucking
mystical energy from the vacuum was the only place in the whole universe, or so
it was told, in which a motolang and a golem could live without begging for the
approval of their owner-creators? Even if it were true, it was something that'd
never be possible anywhere on Earth.

He came closer to
Chaya, gears grinding, engines almost frozen due to the cabin's poor heating,
and sat on the edge of the bed. Chaya's face rested in her hands, as she did
when she anticipated his
over-romanticised tone
. "There's beauty in the
word,
camarada
Chaya," he said. "An untouchable kind of beauty,
invisible to the eye. Something that exists wherever there's solidarity and—"

"What about the
barricades?" Her voice came cold and as hard as stone. "Behind the barricades
there are humans that never stop being human. Except when they're shot dead or
die on the tip of a bayonet. That ain't beautiful, you know? And it's not
beautiful when they sing
The Internationale
and look down on us because,
in a way, they're still our lords. They're humans, Fritz. Unlike us."

"What's your
problem?" he grumbled. "You chose to come along. You know this is our chance,
Chaya, the
only chance
we have to build a life together. Any life. Be it
good, bad, mediocre. What? You think we better get back to Mauritzstadt and
serve House Goradeski?"

"They're good
people. You know that."

"Humans. Lords. You've
just said that. Your lords, your makers. And even if I'm thankful to Mr
Goradeski for the decency of giving my goddamn punched cards back, I hate that
bastard for not letting me buy you, for not letting me marry you." Fritz stood
before her, joints creaking, an angry
tick-tock, tick-tock
coming from
beneath his brass thorax. "A sin, he told me." As if I wanted that stupid rabbi's
blessings."

Chaya punched the
bed in anger, crushing the iron frame under the mattress. "Fuck!" The agonising
screech of metal swallowed up their shouts. "I just don't want you to be
disappointed, okay? Look, I've escaped with you. I'm here in this aethership,
remember? With you. I know Catalonia's our only chance, but your dream may not
be that sweet. And I love you too much to see you sad and let down."

Fritz observed the
copper lines framing the cabin's velvety walls; adorned with so many organic
motifs and engravings it was as if the room itself were alive. A completely
unexplored jungle. Next to the inter-phone on the night table, Dr Cavalcante's
letter gave his tense coils some relief. His occultist friend, well-known in
Mauritzstadt's esoteric society, was serving as a field medic for Catalonia's
international brigades. His missive had ultimately persuaded both non-humans to
flee. Fritz turned to Chaya, accepting the truce, or their particular way of
making a truce. After all, she was right. Again. As always. He really was just
an automaton that dreamt of open fields, broken locks, sunny days and people's
respect. He dreamt of being a hero, of freeing himself after fighting tyranny
and oppression. But he'd never held a rifle. Not even to hunt with Dr Goradeski
in the forests close to the Guararapes hill. His only duties were doing the
accounts for his master's riches and tutoring the heirs to the clan.

"It'll work, Chaya.
I believe— No, I'm sure it'll work. Trust me."

She did trust him.
He knew it. It was written in her smile. But he also knew she was right. Life
wouldn't be pretty. They made love for a few more hours.

 

Though it was an
aethership station, it didn't behave like one. It didn't breathe like one.
There was no smoking, no mink coats, no comings and goings of serfs, luggage or
hats. Except for the brassy majesty of the
Nassau
, a true aether
leviathan, there was nothing in it that mirrored the luxury found in the ports
of Mauritzstadt or any other Earthly empire. But there were people. Lots of
people. A Babel debarking with Genovese and Madrileño accents, others being
Balkan and Ottoman, all too confused to be distinguishable. There were expatriates
from the Brazilian empire, too, and many Mauritzes. Men wearing cheap, brown
cotton. Their bodies kept together only by loose, rusty screws, steam leaking
from their joints. There were women, too, with severe eyes, coal-stained
dresses and calluses, guarding what little luggage they possessed. But they
were all smiling for they were pleased to step on firm ground. Not ground,
exactly, but that alchemical crystal shielding the arcologies sailing the
Earthly seas.

 

Fritz was overcome
with vertigo when he looked at the curves in the station's columns, each one
preciously engraved in typical Art Nouveau style. He almost fell to the floor
when, beneath his feet, he saw the city cascading down the inner walls of the
sphere and, at the centre, the aether condenser, the heart of the factory, with
its colossal tubes containing hundreds of pipes which, in their turn, carried
thousands of pre-processed aether foam, so wild and volatile that a simple leak
would open a metaphysical sinkhole big enough to swallow all God's Creations.
At least that's what the Luddites said.

A mechanical arm
waved over the caps of the volunteers coming fast in his direction. A whistle
could be heard coming from the crowd. It was like an invisible teakettle
leaving a trail of white puffs of smoke in the air. The immigrants started to
give way as the steam got closer and closer. From them emerged a hybrid
vehicle, something between a bicycle and a locomotive, a big wheel in front of
a chimney and two small vulcanised pneumatics behind, too close to the stove
heating the boiler. It made a hellish noise and Fritz couldn't help but agree
with Chaya when she said that the thing stank of garbage tea. On the top of the
vehicle, the pilot pulled the brake lever and turned the handlebar to the left,
forcing the machine to slide for some metres before stopping just a few inches
in front of the frozen couple. "I call it," shouted the man, forcing a dramatic
pause, "the locomocycle."

The automaton
laughed at the pilot's pomp and at his fiancée's disgusted expression. "It's
beautiful, Emilio," he shouted back. "Your design?"

"Every single rivet."
The man grinned behind a pair of pitch-black goggles that made him look like a
juvenile insect wearing a waistcoat and greaves. There was a blue, spectral
glimmer deep inside the blackness of his goggles. The crowd kept its distance
from the locomocycle, mainly because its boiler gave off an unbearable heat.
But they couldn't stop admiring that automotive marvel. The man called Emilio
stepped down from the vehicle, leaning his arm on the boiler. He faced the
golem with keen interest. "Is she the lucky one?"

"That's her," Fritz
answered, holding his lover's hand, suddenly solemn.

"Did she bring the
equipment I asked for?" His gaze was fixed on Chaya, who was uneasy at being
scrutinised not only by the scientist's goggled eyes, but also by the judging
eyes of the women at the station, condemning the bourgeois style of her
housemaid's dress. Worse, she wasn't precisely a maid, for in their eyes she
wasn't a woman, but a construct turned to life by the power of the one thing
more terrible than the Holy Church: magic.

"You can speak
directly to me, sir. I speak and decide for myself."

"My dear," Fritz
intervened, "this is Dr Emilio Cavalcante, the one I told you about. Physician,
engineer and member of the Order of Oriental Templars."

"Former member." Dr
Cavalcante raised a mechanical finger as an exclamation mark, his gears
spinning with the movement. "Apparently, my friend, the Order does not approve
of my mystical theories, not to mention my political practices. And vice versa."
Dr Cavalcante moved two steps closer to the couple, closer to the golem. "
Salud,
camarada
! Forgive me if I sounded a little bit sexist, but I was concerned
with the equipment. You see, it's not every day that—"

"Everything's here."
She turned her back to the doctor and dragged two wooden crates, one in each
hand, to him. The crates moaned, leaving deep scratches in the floor. She
released the boxes and faced the insect in the way someone might look at an
old, ill-kept and uninteresting daguerreotype. "That's all I could get. Fifteen
carbines, some Prussian pistols and not much ammunition." The golem looked at
the box to her left. "And here's the equipment you asked for."

Dr Cavalcante looked
at the containers, but his gaze drifted to a point way beyond them, to a dozen
crates being unloaded from the aethership's rear. They were somewhat different
and had red marks painted on their sides. "Yeah. Excellent. That'll do," the
doctor said.

The motolang looked
at his boxes and held his friend's shoulder. "So, you think you can do it,
Emilio? You think you can give us a child?"

Dr Cavalcante woke
from his trance, extended his mortal arm and shook the motolang's metallic
hand. "Fritz, my friend, if I were you I'd be scheduling the kid's baptism
already. The only problem is to find a priest who hasn't been fusilladed by the
revolution.

 

Chaya had spent the
last three weeks in Catalonia, but the city-factory still fascinated her. The
wreckage sacs, the barricades on every corner, the low-fluctuation trucks
painted with the revolutionary parties' initials, and, especially, the strikers'
colours. Everyone, absolutely everyone, either wore red or black and red
kerchiefs tied round their necks. Even the mechanoids, their gears exposed on
their chests or shoulders, insisted on showing off kerchiefs, ignoring the high
chance of an accident. And there were the brick-and-metal buildings carved by
bullets, bent at angles that far-surpassed the plans of Gaudi, almost destroyed
by Mauritzes' mortars. However, most impressive was the fact that this place
had become their home so quickly. Notwithstanding, it