The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (108 page)

And he was.

It had turned out that the horse had missed an inncoulation against miniscule poisoning. Its body was a terrible mess, random mechanisms developing out of its flanks and dying, with that terrifying smell, in the moments when Hamilton had held her in his arms, and had had to round on the man running in, and had imposed his authority with a look, and had not been thrown down and away.

Instead, she’d raised her hands and called that she was all right, and had insisted on looking to and at the horse, pulling off her glove and putting her hand to its neck and trying to fight the bloody things directly. But even with her command of information, it had been too late, and the horse had died in a mess.

She’d been bloody angry. And then at the emergency scene that had started to develop around Hamilton’s front door, with police carriages swooping in and the sound of running boots –

Until she’d waved it all away and declared that it had been her favourite horse, a wonderful horse, her great friend since childhood, but it was just a bloody horse, and all she needed was a sit down and if this kind military gentleman would oblige –

And he had.

He’d obliged her again when they’d met in Denmark, and they’d danced at a ball held on an ice flow, a carpet of mechanism wood reacting every moment to the weight of their feet and the forces underlying them, and the aurora had shone in the sky.

It was all right in Denmark for Elizabeth to have one dance with a commoner.

Hamilton had got back to the table where his regiment were dining, and had silenced the laughter and the calls, and thus saved them for barracks. He had drunk too much. His batman at the time had prevented him from going to see Elizabeth as she was escorted from the floor at the end of her dance card by a boy who was somewhere in line for the Danish throne.

But she had seen Hamilton the next night, in private, a privacy that would have taken great effort on her part, and after they had talked for several hours and shared some more wine she had shown him great favour.

“So. Is God in the details?” Someone was walking beside Hamilton. It was a Jesuit. Mid thirties. Dark hair, kept over her collar. She had a scar down one side of her face and an odd eye as a result. Minuscule blade, by the look. A member of the Society of Jesus would never allow her face to be restructured. That would be vanity. But she was beautiful.

Hamilton straightened up, giving this woman’s musculature and bearing and all the history those things suggested the respect they deserved. “Or the devil.”

“Yes, interesting the saying goes both ways, isn’t it? My name is Mother Valentine. I’m part of the Society’s campaign for Effective Love.”

“Well,” Hamilton raised an eyebrow, “I’m in favour of love being—”

“Don’t waste our time. You know what I am.”

“Yes, I do. And you know I’m the same. And I was waiting until we were out of earshot—”

“Which we now are—”

“To have this conversation.”

They stopped together. Valentine moved her mouth close to Hamilton’s ear. “I’ve just been told that the Holy Father is eager to declare what happened here to be a potential miracle. Certain parties are sure that our Black Eagle man will be found magically transplanted to distant parts, perhaps Berlin, as a sign against Prussian meddling.”

“If he is, the Kaiser will have him gently shot and we’ll never hear.”

“You’re probably right.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t think miracles happen near our kind.”

Hamilton realised he was looking absurdly hurt at her. And that she could see it. And was quietly absorbing that information for use in a couple of decades, if ever.

He was glad when a message came over the embroidery, asking him to attend to the Queen Mother in the buttery. And to bring his new friend.

The Queen Mother stood in the buttery, her not taking a chair having obviously made Parkes and his people even more nervous than they would have been.

She nodded to Valentine. “Monsignor. I must inform you, we’ve had an official approach from the Holy See. They regard the hall here as a possible site of miraculous apparition.”

“Then my opinion on the subject is irrelevant. You should be addressing – ”

“The ambassador. Indeed. But here you are. You are aware of what was asked of us?”

“I suspect the Cardinals will have sought a complete record of the moment of the apparitition, or in this case, the vanishing. That would only be the work of a moment in the case of such an . . . observed . . . chamber.”

“It would. But it’s what happens next that concerns me.”

“The procedure is that the chamber must then be sealed, and left unobserved until the Cardinals can see for themselves, to minimise any effect human observers may have on the process of divine revelation.”

Hamilton frowned. “Are we likely to?”

“God is communicating using a physical method, so we may,” said Valentine. “Depending on one’s credulity concerning miniscule physics.”

“Or one’s credulity concerning international politics,” said the Queen Mother. “Monsignor, it is always our first and most powerful inclination, when another nation asks us for something, to say no. All nations feel that way. All nations know the others do. But now here is a request, one that concerns matters right at the heart of the balance, that is, in the end, about deactivating security. It could be said to come not from another nation, but from God. It is therefore difficult to deny this request. We find ourselves distrusting that difficulty. It makes us want to deny it all the more.”

“You speak for His Royal Highness?”

The Queen Mother gave a cough that might have been a laugh. “Just as you speak for Our Lord.”

Valentine smiled and inclined her head. “I would have thought, your Royal Highness, that it would be obvious to any of the great powers that, given the celebrations, it would take you a long time to gather the Prime Minister and those many other courtiers with whom you would want to consult on such a difficult matter.”

“Correct. Good. It will take three hours. You may go.”

Valentine walked out with Hamilton. “I’m going to go and mix with my own for a while,” she said, “listen to who’s saying what.”

“I’m surprised you wear your hair long.”

She looked sharply at him. “Why?”

“You enjoy putting your head on the block.”

She giggled.

Which surprised Hamilton and for just a moment made him wish he was Lord Carney. But then there was a certain small darkness about another priest he knew.

“I’m just betting,” she said in a whisper, “that by the end of the day this will all be over. And someone will be dead.”

Hamilton went back into the Ball Room. He found he had a picture in his head now. Something had swum up from somewhere inside him, from a place he had learned to trust and never interrogate as to its reasons. That jerking motion Elizabeth had made at the moment Sandels had vanished. He had an emotional feeling about that image. What was it?

It had been like seeing her shot.

A motion that looked like it had come from beyond her muscles. Something Elizabeth had not been in control of It wasn’t like her to not be in control. It felt . . . dangerous.

Would anyone else see it that way? He doubted it.

So was he about to do the sudden terrible thing that his body was taking him in the direction of doing?

He killed the thought and just did it. He went to the Herald who carried the tablet with dance cards on it, and leaned on him with the Queen Mother’s favour, which had popped up on his ring finger the moment he’d thought of it.

The Herald considered the sensation of the fingertip on the back of his hand for a moment, then handed Hamilton the tablet.

Hamilton realized that he had no clue of the havoc he was about to cause. So he glanced at the list of Elizabeth’s forthcoming dances and struck off a random Frenchman.

He scrawled his own signature with a touch, then handed the plate back.

The Herald looked at him like the breath of death had passed under his nose.

Hamilton had to wait three dances before his name came up. A Balaclava, an Entrée Grave (that choice must have taken a while, unless some Herald had been waiting all his life for a chance at the French), a Hornpipe for the sailors, including Bertil, to much applause, and then, thank the deus, a straightforward Waltz.

Elizabeth had been waiting out those last three, so he met her at her table. Maidservants kept their expressions stoic. A couple of Liz’s companions looked positively scared. Hamilton knew how they felt. He could feel every important eye looking in his direction.

Elizabeth took his arm and gave it a little squeeze. “What’s grandma up to, Johnny?”

“It’s what I’m up to.”

She looked alarmed. They formed up with the other dancers.

Hamilton was very aware of her gloves. The mechanism fabric that covered her left hand held off the urgent demand of his hand, his own need to touch her. But no, that wouldn’t tell him anything. That was just his certainty that to know her had been to know her. That was not where he would find the truth here.

The band started up. The dance began.

Hamilton didn’t access any guidelines in his mind. He let his feet move where they would. He was outside orders, acting on a hunch. He was like a man dancing around the edge of a volcano.

“Do you remember the day we met?” he asked when he was certain they couldn’t be heard, at least, not be the other dancers.

“Of course I do. My poor San Andreas, your flat in Hood Mews – ”

“Do you remember what I said to you that day, when nobody else was with us? What you agreed to? Those passionate words that could bring this whole charade crashing down?!” He kept his expression light, his tone so gentle and wry that Liz would always play along and fling a little stone back at him, knowing he meant nothing more than he could mean. That he was letting off steam through a joke.

All they had been was based on the certainty expressed in that.

It was an entirely British way to do things. It was, as Carney had said, about lives shaped entirely by the balance.

But this woman, with the room revolving around the two of them, was suddenly appalled, insulted, her face a picture of what she was absolutely certain she should feel. “I don’t know what you mean! Or even if I did, I don’t think—!”

Hamilton’s nostrils flared. He was lost now, if he was wrong. He had one tiny ledge for Liz to grasp if he was, but he would fall.

For duty, then.

He took his hand from Princess Elizabeth’s waist, and grabbed her chin, his fingers digging up into flesh.

The whole room cried out in horror.

He had a moment before they would shoot him.

Yes, he felt it! Or he thought he did! He thought he did enough –

He grabbed the flaw and ripped with all his might.

Princess Elizabeth’s face burst off and landed on the floor.

Blood flew.

He drew his gun and pumped two shots into the mass of flesh and mechanism, as it twitched and blew a stream of defensive acid that discoloured the marble.

He spun back to find the woman without a face lunging at him, her eyes white in the mass of red muscle, mechanism pus billowing into the gaps. She was aiming a hair knife at his throat, doubtless with enough mechanism to bring instant death or something worse.

Hamilton thought of Liz as he broke her arm.

He enjoyed the scream.

He wanted to bellow for where the real Liz was as he slammed the imposter down onto the floor, and he was dragged from her in one motion as a dozen men grabbed them.

He caught a glimpse of Bertil, horrified, but not at Hamilton. It was a terror they shared. For her safety.

Hamilton suddenly felt like a traitor again.

He yelled out the words he’d had in mind since he’d put his name down for the dance. “They replaced her years ago! Years ago! At the mews!”

There were screams, cries that we were all undone.

There came the sound of two shots from the direction of the Vatican group, and Hamilton looked over to see Valentine standing over the corpse of a junior official.

Their gaze met. She understood why he’d shouted that.

Another man leapt up at a Vatican table behind her and turned to run and she turned and shot him twice in the chest, his body spinning backwards over a table.

Hamilton ran with the rout. He used the crowds of dignitaries and their retinues, all roaring and competing and stampeding for safety, to hide himself. He made himself look like a man lost, agony on his face, his eyes closed. He was ignoring all the urgent cries from the embroidery.

He covertly acknowledged something directly from the Queen Mother.

He stumbled through the door of the buttery.

Parkes looked round. “Thank God you’re here, we’ve been trying to call, the Queen Mother’s office are urgently asking you to come in—”

“Never mind that now, come with me, on Her Royal Highness’ orders.”

Parkes grabbed the pods from his ears and got up. “What on Earth—?”

Hamilton shot him through the right knee.

Parkes screamed and fell. Every technician in the room leapt up. Hamilton bellowed at them to sit down or they’d get the same.

He shoved his foot into the back of Parkes’ injured leg. “Listen here, Matty. You know how hard it’s going to get. You’re not the sort to think your duty’s worth it. How much did they pay you? For how long?”

He was still yelling at the man on the ground as the Life Guards burst in and put a gun to everyone’s head, his own included.

The Queen Mother entered a minute later, and changed that situation to the extent of letting Hamilton go free. She looked carefully at Parkes, who was still screaming for pity, and aimed a precise little kick into his disintegrated kneecap.

Then she turned to the technicians. “Your minds will be stripped down and rebuilt, if you’re lucky, to see who was in on it.” She looked back to Hamilton as they started to be led from the room. “What you said in the Ball Room obviously isn’t the case.”

“No. When you take him apart,” Hamilton nodded at Parkes, “you’ll find he tampered with the contour map. They used Sandels as the cover for substituting Her Royal Highness. They knew she was going to move around the room in a pre-determined way. With Parkes’ help, they set up an open-ended fold in that corner – ”