Mary: "Once, a man tried to kiss me. He was a clerk at the attorney"s office, when I went to hear the provisions of my mother"s will. That was when I learned about Diana- it was my mother who had placed her in that orphanage. The front hall was narrow, and as he was handing me my coat, he suddenly leaned down . . . But then, at the last moment, he drew back. There was a look on his face, as though he had smelled something repugnant. I don"t know what it is- I don"t think I"m unattractive. But no man has tried to kiss me since."
Helen: "I don"t know how many men I"ve slept with- I never kept track. They were all respectable men, the kind you meet in drawing rooms or at b.a.l.l.s during the season. You have no idea what strange tastes some of them had . . ."
Beatrice: "Well, please don"t tell us. I don"t think I have any secrets. Does that make me boring?"
Diana: "I"ve had an abortion. And I would do it again, if I had to."
Catherine: "Some days, when I look in the mirror, I just wish I looked normal."
X. Our Plans for the Future Helen is the only one of us who has ever been married. Arthur Meyrinck is her second husband. Her first husband committed suicide. Men have a way of doing that around Helen. But Arthur is an artist. Nothing she does can shock him. If he comes down in the morning to find that the parlor has turned into Arcadia, with naked woman dancing to the sound of Pan pipes, he eats his breakfast in the kitchen.
Most men are not so tolerant. Most men do not want a wife who is stronger than they are, like Justine, or who can bite through their necks, as I can, or who, like Beatrice, can kill them with a breath.
That, I suppose, is why we rather spoil Leda, sewing her dresses, letting her borrow what ever books she likes. Mrs. Poole makes her cakes and biscuits and tarts.
Justine has said, "Why don"t we make a child of our own? We would make her out of corpses, or a large dog. Or," looking at Beatrice, "some sort of shrub? Maybe a rhododendron?"
I say, "Do you really think it would be a good idea to create another one of us? Aren"t there enough of us in the world already?"
I know that Justine disagrees, that she thinks there"s nothing much wrong with us, that the problem is with the world, which has no place for us in it. Except here, in this house. She has the confidence that comes from having once been loved.
Helen says, "Why just one? Why not start with three- plant, animal, corpse, and see which one works best? Then go on from there. We could make any number of daughters, if we wanted. What none of you, except Diana, realizes is that we"re powerful. Not just because we"re strong or deadly or have sharp teeth, but because of everything we"ve endured. We"re our father"s daughters in more ways than one. We could control this society we live in, rather than hiding from it."
Ever since we joined the club, Helen has tried to convince us to take over the world.
Helen: "Plan A. Beatrice creates a poison that we can introduce into the water supply. We make all of London sick. We offer to release the antidote, but only if the government pays us a certain sum of money. That"s if we need money."
Mary: "We always need money."
Catherine: "Bea, could you actually do that?"
Beatrice: "It wouldn"t be particularly difficult, scientifically. But I wouldn"t want to harm anyone."
Helen: "That"s why we"d have an antidote. Plan B. We kidnap Queen Victoria. She shouldn"t be too difficult to extract from Balmoral. Justine snaps her neck and then reanimates her in a remote location, perhaps the cottage her father used to own on the coast of Scotland. The reanimation erases her memories, creating a blank slate for us to write on. Over the course of a month, we teach her to trust us, do what we tell her to. We return her to a grateful nation, saying that we found her wandering, suffering from amnesia. And then through her, we control the government."
Justine: "How do you expect me to reanimate her? And you know how well that worked for my father- the creature he created was uncontrollable, destructive."
Beatrice: "But wasn"t he made from the corpse of a criminal? I"ve met the Queen- she"s a kind and gracious woman. I"m sure her corpse would be much more amenable to suggestion."
Mary: "For goodness" sake, don"t let Mrs. Poole hear you. She has a picture of the Queen hanging over her bed. Where do you think we could get another house keeper?"
Diana: "We know you still have your father"s notebooks. They"re in the bottom drawer of your dresser, under your chemises."
Justine: "I can"t believe you would go through my personal things!"
Catherine: "You are talking about Diana here. I"m sure she"s gone through all of our drawers. She doesn"t take your clothes because they"re too big for her, but I"m constantly missing stockings . . ."
Helen: "Plan C. Catherine creates an army of beast people. We use them to terrorize London."
Mary: "How would that lead to world domination?"
Helen: "Honestly, I haven"t thought that far ahead. I just think it would be fun. Imagine, we could make horse people and dog people and rat people . . ."
Diana: "Well, what does Cat think?"
Catherine: "I don"t know. On one hand, it would be nice to have more of us. On the other, I don"t think any of you understand my and Bea"s and Justine"s position. At least you were born rather than made. Do we really want to- manufacture beings like ourselves? To create monsters, as our fathers did? Although making beast people does sound easier, scientifically, than concocting a poison and its antidote, or animating corpses. I mean, it"s just sewing the parts together. Any of us could do it."
Justine: "But why? Would we make society any better?"
Helen: "We could, if we wanted to. We could put Mary in power. She"s so orderly and logical. Imagine what sensible rules she would make. At least the trains would run on time."
Justine: "I suppose we could do it for the greater good. We could clean up the East End, especially those dreadful areas around Whitechapel. We could find homes for the children in orphanages, and employment for the women who flaunt their wares on the streets . . ."
Helen: "There, you see? I"m not saying we should spend all of our time planning to take over the world. I have other commitments myself. But I do think we should start giving it some serious consideration."
Diana: "Helen"s only being practical. You know they"re going to come after us eventually. They always do- scientists, other monsters, the police. So why not take control first?"
Helen: "Whether or not you agree with me now, there"s going to come a day when all of you, except perhaps Mary, will want children. You"ll want them to live safely in this world, and then you"ll realize that it"s time for us to seize power. You"ll see."
Maybe she"s right. I do sometimes think about how nice it would be to have a daughter of my own, not just cats.
XI. Why I Wrote This Sketch Someday, I would like to write a book that isn"t about Rick Chambers or Astarte. It would be the sort of book that George Eliot could have written, about life in a country town and the people who live there, their jealousies, their ambitions, the minutiae of their lives. How they fall in love with the wrong people, or the right people at the wrong time, or lose the mercantile business on which their fortune is built. Or misplace wills. You know, literature.
But I"ve never experienced any of those things myself. All I know is monsters.
So I decided to write about us. Just a sketch, no heroic Englishman journeying into the heart of a dark continent, no idol with rubies for eyes. No Caverns of Doom. Just us, sitting and talking. A story that George Eliot could have written.
We are as ordinary, in our own way, as the inhabitants of a country town. In the morning we rise and make our beds, except Diana. We eat breakfast (toast and eggs for Mary, steamed turnips for Justine, raw chicken for me, and for Beatrice a cup of mossy water). Then Justine and Mary take up their work, while Beatrice helps Mrs. Poole, who has found mice in the pantry. (Poor Beatrice. How she hates exterminator duty. But it"s an easier death for the mice than Alpha"s claws.) I curl up in the rose chintz armchair and start my chapter. In the afternoon, Mary will go around to pay the bills, Diana will rise and go to the theater, Beatrice and Justine will play a game of chess, and I will help Mrs. Poole polish the silver.
We will worry about where the money"s going to come from for a summer dress, how to make a cake with only one egg in it, who left the back door open, the plumbing, whether the cherries on the tree in the back garden will ripen this year, and growing old. I think George Eliot could have made something of us, don"t you?
XII. An Application for Membership Yesterday, I received a letter. "Dear Miss Moreau," it began.
My friend Mrs. Jonathan Harker (nee Mina Murray) suggested that I write to you. Until a month ago, I lived in an asylum in Wittenberg, caring for my mother, whose health and sanity had been destroyed by certain experiments in blood transfusion performed by my father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, whose work may be familiar to you from a variety of scientific journals. My own health was affected while I was yet in the womb, for her pregnancy did not alter his research.
I suffer from an acuteness of hearing, an antipathy to light and to strong scents, and per sis tent anemia, as well as other medical symptoms that I can describe to you in more detail if required. After my mother"s death, I could not bring myself to live with my father, so I have been staying with friends or in boarding houses for the past month. I have no in dependent income, but I make a little money by giving singing and piano lessons. Mrs. Harker has described for me the club you have formed in London for the daughters of mad scientists, and I wonder if my parentage and experiences might qualify me to join you? I would certainly be grateful to have a good home and to find companionship with others in my circ.u.mstance.
Yours sincerely, Lucinda Van Helsing Justine: "Yes, of course. Write to her immediately and tell her that she can come, poor dear."
Mary: "We can turn the library into her bedroom, and put the books in the clubroom. We may also have some room for shelves in the front hall. I"ll start sewing her curtains to block out the light."
Diana: "It will be nice to have some music around here. It"s so deadly quiet sometimes. I wonder if the piano is still in tune?"
Mrs. Poole: "I"ve heard terrible things about this Professor Van Helsing. He killed a girl by driving a stake through her heart!"
Beatrice: "But that"s terrible! How can society allow such things?"
Helen: "You know what I think- the more of us the better. All right, any objections? We have to be unanimous, you know." We all shake our heads. "Well, write to her then. Leda and I have to go now. We have to prepare for a Walpurgisnacht party in the studio. Artists! You can"t imagine the mess they make. A troop of satyrs is nothing to it. Mrs. Poole, have you seen our umbrellas? We"re going by bus, and I think it"s starting to rain."
I say, "I"ll write to her tomorrow. It will be nice to have a new member of the club."
Then we sit by the fire, reading or sketching or embroidering, just us monsters.
Theodora Goss"s stories have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, Lady Churchill"s Rosebud Wristlet, and Apex Magazine. Anthologies featuring her work include Ghosts by Gaslight, Logorrhea, Other Earths, Polyphony, Year"s Best Fantasy, The Year"s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Apocalypse Reader, and John Joseph Adams"s Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom. Much of her short work has been collected in In the Forest of Forgetting. She is also the editor of Voices from Fairyland and Interfictions (with Delia Sherman). She is a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Rhysling Award, and has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Mythopoeic, and Tiptree awards.
Devil worship. Alchemy. Witchcraft. The very words conjure up a distant time, a past where superst.i.tion ruled and science had yet to be discovered. But historians suggest many of the practices condemned as witchcraft and alchemy were rooted in the beginnings of scientific inquiry. Many of the women decried as witches were simply midwives and herbalists, using time-tested plant-based cures. And although no one ever successfully turned lead into gold, the technology Renaissance alchemists developed in their quest became the tools of doctors and chemists.
In our next story, we give you science through the lens of history and a scientist famed for his paranormal prowess. Here is a tale that explores the s.p.a.ce between magic and science, mystery and a.n.a.lysis, ignorance and understanding.
Think of it as The Mad Scientist and the Philosopher"s Stone.
THE s.p.a.cE BETWEEN.
DIANA GABALDON.
ONE.
Paris, June, 1778 He still didn"t know why the frog hadn"t killed him. Paul Rakoczy, Comte St. Germain, picked up the vial, pulled the cork, and sniffed cautiously for the third time, but then recorked it, still dissatisfied. Maybe. Maybe not. The scent of the dark gray powder in the vial held the ghost of something familiar- but it had been thirty years.
He sat for a moment, frowning at the array of jars, bottles, flasks, and pelicans on his workbench. It was late afternoon, and the late spring sun of Paris was like honey, warm and sticky on his face, but glowing in the rounded globes of gla.s.s, throwing pools of red and brown and green on the wood from the liquids contained therein. The only discordant note in this peaceful symphony of light was the body of a large rat, lying on its back in the middle of the workbench, a pocket-watch open beside it.
The Comte put two fingers delicately on the rat"s chest and waited patiently. It didn"t take so long this time; he was used to the coldness as his mind felt its way into the body. Nothing. No hint of light in his mind"s eye, no warm red of a pulsing heart. He glanced at the watch: half an hour.
He took his fingers away, shaking his head.
"Melisande, you evil b.i.t.c.h," he murmured, not without affection. "You didn"t think I"d try anything you sent me on myself, would you?"
Still . . . he himself had stayed dead a great while longer than half an hour, when the frog had given him the dragon"s-blood. It had been early evening when he went into Louis"s Star Chamber thirty years before, heart beating with excitement at the coming confrontation- a duel of wizards, with a king"s favor as the stakes- and one he"d thought he"d win. He remembered the purity of the sky, the beauty of the stars just visible, Venus bright on the horizon, and the joy of it in his blood. Everything always had a greater intensity, when you knew life could cease within the next few minutes.
And an hour later, he thought his life had ceased, the cup falling from his numbed hand, the coldness rushing through his limbs with amazing speed, freezing the words I"ve lost, an icy core of disbelief in the center of his mind. He hadn"t been looking at the frog; the last thing he had seen through darkening eyes was the woman- La Dame Blanche- her face over the cup she"d given him appalled and white as bone. But what he recalled, and recalled again now, with the same sense of astonishment and avidity, was the great flare of blue, intense as the color of the evening sky beyond Venus, that had burst from her head and shoulders as he died.
He didn"t recall any feeling of regret or fear; just astonishment. This was nothing, however, to the astonishment he"d felt when he regained his senses, naked on a stone slab in a revolting subterranean chamber next to a drowned corpse. Luckily, there had been no one alive in that disgusting grotto, and he had made his way- reeling and half-blind, clothed in the drowned man"s wet and stinking shirt- out into a dawn more beautiful than any twilight could ever be. So- ten to twelve hours from the moment of apparent death to revival.
He glanced at the rat, then put out a finger and lifted one of the small, neat paws. Nearly twelve hours. Limp, the rigor had already pa.s.sed; it was warm up here at the top of the house. Then he turned to the counter that ran along the far wall of the laboratory, where a line of rats lay, possibly insensible, probably dead. He walked slowly along the line, prodding each body. Limp, limp, stiff. Stiff. Stiff. All dead, without doubt. Each had had a smaller dose than the last, but all had died- though he couldn"t yet be positive about the latest. Wait a bit more, then, to be sure.
He needed to know. Because the Court of Miracles was talking. And they said the frog was back.
The English Channel They did say that red hair was a sign of the devil. Joan eyed her escort"s fiery locks consideringly. The wind on deck was fierce enough to make her eyes water, and it jerked bits of Michael Murray"s hair out of its binding so they did dance round his head like flames, a bit. You might expect his face to be ugly as sin if he was one of the devil"s, though, and it wasn"t.
Lucky for him, he looked like his mother in the face, she thought critically. His younger brother Ian wasn"t so fortunate, and that without the heathen tattoos. Michael"s was just a fairly pleasant face, for all it was blotched with windburn and the lingering marks of sorrow, and no wonder, him having just lost his father, and his wife dead in France no more than a month before that.
But she wasn"t braving this gale in order to watch Michael Murray, even if he might burst into tears or turn into Auld h.o.r.n.y on the spot. She touched her crucifix for rea.s.surance, just in case. It was blessed by the priest and her mother"d carried it all the way to St. Ninian"s Spring and dipped it in the water there, to ask the saint"s protection. And it was her mother she wanted to see, as long as ever she could.
She pulled her kerchief off and waved it, keeping a tight grip lest the wind make off with it. Her mother was growing smaller on the quay, waving madly herself, Joey behind her with his arm round her waist to keep her from falling into the water.
Joan snorted a bit at sight of her new stepfather, but then thought better and touched the crucifix again, muttering a quick Act of Contrition in penance. After all, it was she herself who"d made that marriage happen, and a good thing, too. If not, she"d still be stuck to home at Balriggan, not on her way at last to be a Bride of Christ in France.
A nudge at her elbow made her glance aside, to see Michael offering her a handkerchief. Well, so. If her eyes were streaming- aye, and her nose- it was no wonder, the wind so fierce as it was. She took the sc.r.a.p of cloth with a curt nod of thanks, scrubbed briefly at her cheeks, and waved her kerchief harder.
None of his family had come to see Michael off, not even his twin sister, Janet. But they were taken up with all there was to do in the wake of Old Ian Murray"s death, and no wonder. No need to see Michael to the ship, either- Michael Murray was a wine merchant in Paris, and a wonderfully well-traveled gentleman. She took some comfort from the knowledge that he knew what to do and where to go, and had said he would see her safely delivered to the convent of the Angels, because the thought of making her way through Paris alone and the streets full of people all speaking French. . . . Though she knew French quite well, of course, she"d been studying it all the winter, and Michael"s mother helping her . . . though perhaps she had better not tell the Reverend Mother about the sorts of French novels Jenny Murray had in her bookshelf, because . . .
"Voulez-vous descendre, mademoiselle?"
"Eh?" She glanced at him, to see him gesturing toward the hatchway that led downstairs. She turned back, blinking- but the quay had vanished, and her mother with it.
"No," she said. "Not just yet. I"ll just . . ." She wanted to see the land so long as she could. It would be her last sight of Scotland, ever, and the thought made her wame curl into a small, tight ball. She waved a vague hand toward the hatchway. "You go, though. I"m all right by myself."
He didn"t go, but came to stand beside her, gripping the rail. She turned away from him a little, so he wouldn"t see her weep, but on the whole, she wasn"t sorry he"d stayed.
Neither of them spoke, and the land sank slowly, as though the sea swallowed it, and there was nothing round them now but the open sea, gla.s.sy gray and rippling under a scud of clouds. The prospect made her dizzy, and she closed her eyes, swallowing.
Dear Lord Jesus, don"t let me be sick!
A small shuffling noise beside her made her open her eyes, to find Michael Murray regarding her with some concern.
"Are ye all right, Miss Joan?" He smiled a little. "Or should I call ye Sister?"
"No," she said, taking a grip on her nerve and her stomach and drawing herself up. "I"m no a nun yet, am I?"
He looked her up and down in the frank way Hieland men did, and smiled more broadly.
"Have ye ever seen a nun?" he asked.
"I have not," she said, as starchily as she could. "I havena seen G.o.d or the Blessed Virgin, either, but I believe in them, too."
Much to her annoyance, he burst out laughing. Seeing the annoyance, though, he stopped at once, though she could see the urge still trembling there behind his a.s.sumed gravity.
"I do beg your pardon, Miss MacKimmie," he said. "I wasna questioning the existence of nuns. I"ve seen quite a number of the creatures with my own eyes." His lips were twitching, and she glared at him.
"Creatures, is it?"
"A figure of speech, nay more, I swear it! Forgive me, sister- I ken not what I do!" He held up a hand, cowering in mock terror. The urge to laugh herself made her that much crosser, but she contented herself with a simple, "Mmphm" of disapproval.