The ten-page ransom note came back with a form rejection.
Someone had scrawled at the bottom, "Please be aware of grammar and length requirements for all Letters to the Editor submitted to the Ledger."
Brenda waited until late Friday and left it on Dr. Mason"s desk after he was gone. Sat.u.r.day he would be torn away from his dastardly doomsday experiment in order to observe Captain Justice in action; Lord Destiny III was planning an impenetrable death trap for Captain Justice and the Lawful La.s.s, and that would take up at least half the day.
If she was lucky, she could get all the way to Sunday without hearing from him about needing to make edits.
She was going to enjoy every minute.
When the phone call came in (Sat.u.r.day, just before dusk), she had already rewritten the ransom note.
Not that she told him. If he knew she worked weekends, she"d spend the rest of her days in that farm house lair.
Her draft made it into the Ledger.
She knocked on the lab door to give him the good news. He was in his usual position in the far corner, making tiny adjustments to the vaguely arachnid doomsday device, which hulked fifteen feet high on knife-sharp metal legs. Brenda still didn"t understand why you"d have to strap a person to it to make it seem dangerous.
When she held up the letter, he gasped, shoved his goggles back on his head, and scrambled down to see it for himself.
(Brenda"s last job had been at an accounting office. You had to give some credit to a guy who was so excited about what he did.) " "We will obey your demands and publish this ransom note on the front page in tomorrow"s edition," " he read with glee. He handed back the letter. "Miss Bryce, I must admit I"m impressed."
She knew better than to let an opportunity pa.s.s her by. "So, no doomsday machine?"
He frowned. "Yes. I suppose it"s not ideal to risk a valued employee on a possibly-risky endeavor. If you really don"t want to-"
"Great," she said, and closed the door before he could change his mind.
At home, she quietly checked some job sites. There had to be admin positions that weren"t quite this involving.
The day the doomsday ransom note ran, Captain Justice held a press conference on the Town Hall steps to warn Dr. Mason and the Dark Consortium against any more civil unrest.
He was in full costume and his ceremonial-occasions-only Winged Justice helmet, but Brenda was so used to it by now that she hardly noticed the difference between him and the uniform suits of the City Hall reps.
"I am not alone," Captain Justice said, looking directly at the camera and resting a fist on the podium. "The people are with me, the Amazing League is with me, and, as always, justice is with me!"
The crowd went wild.
Dr. Mason wrinkled his nose.
"He"s just so . . . blond," he said.
Unexpectedly, Brenda sort of knew what he meant.
With the doomsday gauntlet officially thrown, Dr. Mason started living in the lab. Brenda eventually caved and did the same. (He offered her the bedroom infested with moths. She slept on the living-room couch.) Sometimes, listening to his commentary on the inevitability of general munic.i.p.al lesson-learning, Brenda couldn"t help but feel that Enid should have left a coded warning Post-it or something two years ago.
She knocked on the door. "I have a question about the ignition switch you wanted me to order."
"Not now," he said. Behind the gla.s.ses, his eyes gleamed.
"It"s time-sensitive."
"Maybe to you. You should work on budgeting your time, Miss Bryce. Oh, can I get pizza from the thin-crust place for lunch? No garlic in the sauce, though." He narrowed his eyes at the beaker in his hand. "I hate garlic."
"Pizza sauce is already made when you order," she said. "Remember you had me call the restaurant and complain for you last time?"
After a moment, the memory registered, and Mason made fists on his desk and hissed. "Those garlic-lovers! Well, find me a place that doesn"t use garlic."
Fourteen phone calls later, she knocked on the lab door and stuck her head in.
"I found a place willing to make a special order. Some garlic-free pizza is coming."
Dr. Mason looked up and considered this. "Is it thin-crust? It had better be thin-crust."
There was a little silence.
Then Brenda said, "I"ve reconsidered the doomsday device."
It turned out that the doomsday device was a lot taller than it seemed in the workshop, and that she was strapped awfully close to the ticking timer.
The good news was that Dr. Mason had tied her up on the scenic side, so at least she could look out over the city. It was the closest thing to a night out she"d had in a long time. There wasn"t much to do after work in farmhouse-lair country.
She waited one hour, five minutes, and thirty-two seconds (according to the ticker) before Captain Justice showed.
He soared out of the sky and landed beside her with a wide-legged impact that, if the device had been motion-triggered, would have gone pretty badly. His armor, close-up, squeaked.
"Don"t worry," he called, climbing across the metal legs. "This night, Captain Justice will hear your case!"
Brenda had to admit, he did seem really blond.
When he reached her, he yanked the Blade of Truth out of his belt and started slicing.
"Poor, innocent citizen. How did Dr. Mason ever steal you away to this awful fate?"
"I"m his a.s.sistant," she said.
Captain Justice"s hands froze on the ropes, and he leaned back and gave her stink eye for so long that she began to worry about the timer.
"It"s overtime," she defended half-heartedly.
Captain Justice shook his head and started slicing through the ropes with the Blade of Truth.
"You know," he said, "Enid was once where you are now, but she really grabbed the bull by the horns and pulled herself up by the bootstraps when it mattered."
"That"s a mixed metaphor," Brenda said. "And does that mean Enid"s the Lawful La.s.s?"
"Of course not," said Captain Justice. "Enid"s my a.s.sistant! But that"s purely administrative. The League has a rule never to recruit active members from the ranks of the enemy, unless they have superpowers." He frowned. "Does she have superpowers?"
Brenda would have shrugged if she wasn"t tied up. "I wouldn"t know."
"Well, if she does, I"m not supposed to leave her alone with information about the other members of the Amazing League." Captain Justice paused. "My G.o.d, she"s there right now. What if she has superpowers? How could she have kept them from me all this time?"
Brenda suspected it wouldn"t take much.
"Are you a good boss?" she asked.
He looked aghast. "Of course! I and my fellow crime-fighters in the League enact justice in all its forms, including workers" rights!"
"Really? Because it"s eleven at night on a Sat.u.r.day, and Enid"s still at the office."
Captain Justice thought about that. Then he sliced off the last of the knots with significantly less gusto than he"d used on the first.
"Well," he said, "I guess you"re free. You should go. I must disable this device at all costs, before the city falls to pieces under Methuselah Mason"s stone-fisted despotism!"
"Don"t worry," Brenda said, hopping to the ground between two of the spider legs.
"Don"t worry? Listen here, you may think nothing of working for the maddest mind this city has seen in a hundred years, but some of us-"
"The ignition doesn"t work."
He stopped. "What?"
"He was busy with the airborne chaos serum and wouldn"t review the electronics order," she said. "I ordered the wrong switch. The ignition won"t connect."
He frowned. "On purpose?"
"Well, not as far as he knows. Those things all look alike." She smiled. "Not like he could test it beforehand, right? This way everybody"s safe."
His frown deepened. "You"re not a very good a.s.sistant, are you?"
Brenda stared.
When she showed up at the farm house lair the next morning, Dr. Mason was so surprised that he took off his goggles and blinked several times.
"I thought for sure you"d take a job with Captain Justice," he said finally. "I mean, after what happened with Enid . . ."
Brenda shrugged and sat behind her desk. "I feel my place is here," she said.
He thought that over, then nodded.
"Good thing, too," he said. "We have work to do. Captain Jerkpants beat the living daylights out of that doomsday machine."
"Sorry," said Brenda, pulling out a notebook.
"It just means we"ll have to try harder on the next one," Dr. Mason said. "We"ll start with some st.u.r.dier supplies, for one thing. That exoskeletal support structure could barely hold you."
He turned and slapped his goggles back on.
"So. Miss Bryce, take a note."
Genevieve Valentine"s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, was published by Prime Books in 2011 and won the Crawford Award for best fantasy debut and was a finalist for the Nebula Award. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthology Running with the Pack and in the magazines Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Futurismic, Clarkesworld, Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, and more. Her work can also be found in John Joseph Adams"s anthologies Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Armored, Federations, The Way of the Wizard, and The Living Dead 2. In 2010, she was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.
The genes we receive from our parents will shape our entire existence. Trivial details like the shapes of our fingernails or the size of pores are spelled out in our chromosomes, as are critical inheritances like our s.e.x and our propensity for disease. When we look in the mirror and see our father"s nose or our mother"s ears, it is easy to understand how genes affect our physical bodies.
It"s not as easy to trace the effects of genetics upon the mind. Are traits like musical talent really pa.s.sed on by our genetics- or do prodigies simply grow up in environments that stimulate their gifts? Do smart parents have smart children, or do they just encourage their kids to act more intellectual? How do genes play out in disorders like autism and ADHD? Are our brains the product of nature or nurture? These questions hum in the background of our next story. With its unusual narrators, this story, which first appeared in the online magazine Strange Horizons, demanded to be included. Here we meet a group of exceptional young women who share a common bond of unusual fathers. They"re all smart, interesting and attractive. But if madness is inheritable, these ladies are in trouble.
THE MAD SCIENTIST"S DAUGHTER.
THEODORA GOSS.
In London, we formed a club. It"s very exclusive. There are only six members. Five of us live on the premises. Helen, who is married, lives in Bloomsbury, but she comes to have dinner with us twice a week. We need each other. None of us has sisters, except Mary and Diana in a way, so we take the place of sisters for each other. Who else could share or sympathize with our experiences?
I. The House Near Regent"s Park Mary created a trust that holds the deed to the house. We are all listed as beneficiaries: Miss Justine Frankenstein Miss Catherine Moreau Miss Beatrice Rappaccini Miss Mary Jekyll Miss Diana Hyde Mrs. Arthur Meyrinck (nee Helen Raymond) But it is her house, really. Her father left it to her, along with a moderate fortune. She is the only one of us who has inherited any money. Science does not pay well; mad science pays even worse.
From that fortune, she created a fund out of which we can draw for emergencies, but we all work. Mary paints on porcelain. Justine and Beatrice embroider vestments for the church. I write potboilers for the penny press. Diana is on the music-hall stage. She can"t, she says, stand the dull, ladylike sort of work the rest of us do. She must have excitement: the footlights, the greasepaint, the admirers. We don"t judge. Who, indeed, are we to do so? We have all done things of which we are not proud. The club is a haven for us, a port in a particularly stormy world.
Helen does not work, of course: she has a house hold to run, a daughter to raise. She is also her husband"s model. You might remember her as Helen Vaughan, although she also went by Herbert or Beaumont, at the time of what the newspapers called the West End Horrors. I have seen paintings of her at the Grosvenor, as Medusa with snakes for hair, or a lamia. I envy her sometimes, living in the midst of an artistic ferment, partic.i.p.ating in the world. But then I curl up on the sofa by the fire in the clubroom, at peace with the world and myself, and think about how lucky I am to be here, out of the tumult of life, and I am content.
II. How We Live and Work Beatrice lives in the conservatory. We had it built especially for her, at the back of the house where the laboratory used to be. Looking in through the gla.s.s, from the garden, you would think we were growing a jungle. Vines grow up the posts of her bed, orchids and pa.s.sion flowers hang down over her as she sleeps. I can see the table where she hybridizes her flowers, but only dimly, since there is always a mist on the gla.s.s. Some of the plants I recognize: jasmine, oleander, castor bean, h.e.l.lebore, laburnum, all part of her poisonous pharmacopeia. And plants that she has created, plants only we have seen, and only in glimpses, since it is deadly for any of us to stay in the conservatory too long. She pollinates them herself, since insects can"t live in the conservatory. She breathes in their fumes, and they give her a particular l.u.s.ter.
Beatrice is the only one of us other than Helen with any claim to beauty, but it is the beauty of a poisonous flower. Sometimes when she has been sitting with us in the clubroom too long, she tells us that she feels faint, and must return to the conservatory. The powders she makes and sells to the medical school supplement our income.
Apart from Beatrice, only Justine can visit the conservatory for any length of time. Nothing seems to harm her physically, although eventually, breathing those poisonous fumes, even she will begin to feel faint. But she is the most sentimental of us: the pigeons coo-cooing on the roof, the first flowers on the cherry tree outside her window, a book of poetry, will all bring her to tears. Reading Wordsworth will depress her for a week. I can"t help laughing sometimes, to myself of course, when I look out my window and see her sitting in the garden, sighing like a sad giantess.
Justine lives in the attic. She says that she likes to be close to the sky and the pigeons, but really I think it"s the only room in the house where the ceiling is high enough for her. When you"re seven feet tall, even a ten-foot ceiling feels cramped. All of her furniture had to be made to order: the long bed, the wardrobe tall enough to accommodate her dresses, the looking gla.s.s that we bought from a magician, who used it to perform tricks. We"ve offered to help her decorate, to paper the walls, hang lithographs. I"ve offered to sew her curtains. But no, she says. She prefers the spartan simplicity of whitewash, a bedstead and a single chair, sunlight streaming through the windows. A cross hanging over her bed and a miniature of her grandmother on the dresser are the only decorations. And books. Piles and piles of books. Mostly religious, but also a great deal of poetry. Too much, I think, to be entirely healthy for her.
Mary, Diana, and I live below her, on the second floor. Mary and Diana share a room. We"ve told them it"s not necessary, that we can convert the library into a room for one of them, but they prefer to live together. I think it took so long for them to find each other, they do not want to be parted, even for a night, although they constantly disagree. Mary: tall, slender, fair, a quiet girl who is always either embroidering or reading philosophical works. Diana: short, dark as a gypsy, as temperamental as I imagine all actresses are. When we found her, she was working in a brothel. We are not entirely certain that she has given up her less respectable pursuits. When she comes home, smelling of gin, it is Mary who sits with her and bathes her head while she lies on the sofa, moaning. I suspect Mary has, on more than one occasion, paid Diana"s debts.