Master Licko

Mr Eaves was based on the proportions of Mrs Eaves, but Master Licko took some liberty with his design. Where Mrs Eaves was statuesque Mr Eaves took on a stretched-out appearance. Where Mrs Eaves had sharp, bird-like features, Mr Eaves's became cruelly sharp, and elements of both the crow and the vulture fought together. And where Mrs Eaves had the usual number of limbs, Master Licko forgot himself completely and gave Mr Eaves three arms and eight legs. When Marianne, who had commissioned the Eaves's from Master Licko, came to the shop to collect them, she was appalled.
"This is a travesty of what I asked for!" she said, her voice going high-pitched as she waved her arms around agitatedly. Glendinning the butler hurried behind her, escorting motile statues out of her way. "I wanted a normal, human couple for my menagerie. I see them all the time on their television shows, and the men do not look like... that." She pointed for effect and her arm telescoped out nearly skewering Master Licko.
"How will they mate and have children?" she said.
Master Licko had been looking sheepish up until now, aware suddenly that his little design liberties had once again built up into a rather big liberty that was looking as though it might be expensive to retreat from, but when she mentioned children he turned pale.
"Glendinning!" he snapped. The butler, still wrestling with the statue of the Madonna in Heat which was reluctant to leave the Inspiration for David alone, looked up. "Glendinning, the specification for the Eaves's. Quickly now."
As it was, I had the specification to hand as I'd been expecting Marianne's upset, so I waved it at Glendinning who was being straddled by the Madonna who was trying to use him as a springboard.
Master Licko seized the specification from my hands and turned the pages quickly, skimming each in turn and muttering imprecations under his breath. Suddenly he stopped and read more slowly, turning the page, then turning back again. He looked at Marianne.
"There's no requirement in here for the Eaves's to be capable of reproduction."
"Well why would there be, silly? All humans reproduce. It's what most of their television shows are about." Not all though, as we knew. The religious collector had refused the Madonna in Heat precisely because she apparently was well-known for not reproducing, or at least, not like that.
"If it's not the spec, then I don't have to deliver it. It so happens," he raised a hand to forestall her fury, "that the base model I use is normally fertile, so they well be able to have children, but it's not a guarantee and you didn't ask for it."
"What do you say?" Marianne stared at me, her eyes white and vacant as always.
"Legal stuff, mostly, I'm Master Licko's lawyer-at-arms."
"I see. Well, he's still got too many legs! Pull some off him."
Master Licko licked his lips delicately. "They're quickened already. That means that they can feel pain."
"I don't care! Do it, or I'll refuse the order."
"I can't."
"He actually can't," I said smoothly. "The law states that once they've been quickened they have to be treated humanely."
"And what does humanely mean?" Marianne had an odd smirk on her face now.
"Legally, we use it to mean treat them the way they'd treat each other."
"Then you can pull his legs off," she said, tasting victory. "Because they're absolutely vile to each other much of the time. Just turn to channel 31 and see."
"The war-zone, sir," said Glendinning.
And so it was, after much argument and disagreement, that Mr Eaves was induced to stand on a land-mine and have almost six of his extra limbs blown off, bringing him a little closer in shape to Mrs Eaves and probably doing dreadful things to his sanity at the same time.

The genealogy room

When she finally recognised that the strange shape she couldn't smooth out of the wallpaper outlined a door she felt a wave of relief wash over her like a cool shower on a sweltering summer's day. The room was intended to be a bedroom for her brother, whose OCD tendencies had reached proportions that made it impossible for him to live alone, and she was certain that the shape in the wallpaper that merely kept her awake at nights would drive him into uncertain insanity. She lay down the hammer she'd sneaked from David's toolbox, glad she'd not needed to try hammering the shape flat, and went back downstairs to fetch a heat-gun.
David stopped her at the foot of the stairs, already holding his toolbox. His raised eyebrow was enough; she explained what she'd been doing and what she now intended.
"Oh Clara, what are we going to do with you?" he said. She had no idea what he meant, so she hadn't replied, instead drawing spirals on the carpet with the tip of her shoe. "Let's get this door uncovered then. And I hope for your sake that it's not locked by some long-lost key."
She'd smiled then, and it lit up her face with a radiance that almost concealed the dark circles under her eyes and the fatigue lines round her mouth. She'd waited almost patiently while David slit the paper along the doorway's outline and then gently lifted it off with careful, artistic flourishes of the heat-gun and a sharp-edged spatula. As he pulled the last long strip away, stepping backwards to avoid it dropping on his head, she scurried past him, fingers running over cherry-painted wood searching for a doorknob. There was none, but when she pushed her fingers into a depression near the left-hand side of the door it clicked softly, buzzed faintly, and swung very slightly towards her. She pulled it open gleefully.
David stopped folding the paper for a moment to look thoughtful, so she hurried into the new room before he could say more than "Solenoid?"
The other side of the door was no Narnia, it was barely more than a monk's cell. The walls were plainly plastered, there were no windows, and the floor was laid with slate. If she stretched her arms out, both her index fingers could touch the side walls. Then she realised that the room was much deeper than she could see, and started feeling her way forward.
A click behind her made her turn her head, and she saw David trying out a panel of three light-switches. The middle one brought the lights on, the bulbs concealed behind wall-panels of frosted glass.
At the far end of the room were two tables. Next to one was a pile of paper that came up to her waist. On that table lay a quill pen and a pot of fresh black ink. On the second table was a thin strip of paper with writing on, and then many more sheets of paper, written on and bound together.
When she looked, the thin strip of paper bore the name of her maternal grandfather who had died the previous winter competing in an extreme-ice-sculpting tournament. The other pages documented his life in astonishing detail.
She couldn't help herself. She picked a new piece of paper from the pile, wrote her brother's name on it with the quill pen and ink, and laid it in place of the thin strip with her grandfather's name. Almost immediately a piece of paper slid on to the pen's table, and the pen started to write, detailing her brother's activities. She looked first at it, and then at David.
"We have a genealogy room!" she said.

Harmony

She stands up from the Go board, scattering white and black stones carelessly across the carpet. Her head drops to her chest and she clasps her hands in front of her, demure as a china doll. She is wearing a white dress that falls to her ankles and wraps almost chokingly around her throat, with sleeves long enough to almost cover her fingers. In some ways she reminds me of a nun, but then I went to a religious school.
"Harmony," I say, and then I stop. I don't know what to say to her.
"Yes," she replies, not looking up. I open my mouth, hoping that the act will inspire me with words, but then I hear the familiar rattle and slither, and looking down I see the Go stones skittering across the carpet like water boatmen across the surface of a lake.
"Oh Harmony!"
I turn at the high-pitched cry of disappointment behind me, and there stands an elderly woman, tall and proud as the now-fallen Statue of Liberty. She gazes at both of us, her disapproval radiating like heat from a pizza oven.
"Sweet Mother Mary," I say, crossing myself. My knees shake a little, though I quickly control them, and a cold sweat breaks out on my brow. Mother Mary, sweet or otherwise, was my teacher at the Immolian School. She died thirty-one years ago.
"Harmony, control yourself. You were named for a purpose."
Mother Mary fades away.
Harmony still stands there before me, her head down-bowed, but the Go stones have stopped moving.
"Harmony?" I ask, not certain of what has happened.
"I have a purpose," she replies, and pushes past me.

The realignment halls

My footsteps raise small puffs of dust from the floor, and each puff of dust intensifies the smell of mould. It's gloomy in here, so it's hard to be sure, but I think the puffs of dust are actually greenish, and I'm a little worried that what I think is dust is actually just a thick layer of mould. Nonetheless, I've been told that this is the only way in, so this is the way I go. I pull my sleeve across my mouth and try to breathe shallowly, hoping that it will make a difference.
The room is narrow and long, and by the smoothness of whatever it is on the floor, hasn't been visited recently. This also worries me, as I only know of this place from ancient references. It's looking more and more likely that the realignment halls have been shut down or destroyed long ago, and the space is being reclaimed by Nature in her cthonic garb. I plod on anyway, clutching a tiny spark of hope in my heart. Even if the halls aren't in use any more I might be able to find something useful.
I reach the end of the room and stop, stymied by the wall in front of me. There's no obvious handle or way through, so I reach out, a little gingerly, and run my hand over the wall. It's smooth and dry, and nothing flakes away or bursts into sporeclouds. I relax a little, and use both hands to touch and probe all the wall I can reach. It goes up to the ceiling, about thirteen feet above me, so if the way in is up there I've no chance of finding it. The wall remains obdurately solid.
I shuffle over to the corner of the wall, pulling my sleeve back across my mouth again. Dust rises to the level of my knees, but I encounter nothing on the floor that might be a handle or lever. At the corner I check the wall that adjoins the one I want to pass. It's colder than my wall, but otherwise smooth and dry again; no secret panels, no touch-switches. Not even a neatly-printed white placard with instructions for seekers of enlightenment.
I shuffle across to the opposite wall. The flame of hope in my heart is guttering now. I reach it, again not finding anything on the floor, and reach out. Almost immediately I touch something yielding and fibrous. Spiderweb! I think, and I have to cruch my stomach hard and bend forward to stop myself screaming. I back up a little, staggering in my awkward pose, and make myself take a deep breath. Then another, and another, and then I can stand up again. It's the last thing I want to do, but I reach out again, and check out the spiderweb.
It's a bell-pull, a silken rope tied around a peg in the wall. My relief is so strong that I actually break out in a cold sweat on my forehead and my knees tremble, jellylike. I allow myself a tiny little chuckle at how stupid I've been, and then untie the bell-pull. It drops heavily to the level of my waist and hangs there, immobile in the stillness of the room.
I yank on it, tugging firmly, and almost immediately a line of light shines out of the middle of the wall as a door cracks open, and hangs very slightly ajar. The light is the soft yellow of the glowglobes used everywhere in Tal Mallan, and the flame of hope burns more strongly at last. I approach the door and, hopefully, the realignment halls.

Bath-house

The chick-shaw dropped me off outside the bath-house and skittered off again, claws rattling against the cobbled street. A few seconds later the driver's howl of fear reached me; the street was so steep that I thought I'd been horizontal coming up it at one point so going down again must be far worse. I always walked down the steeper hills in Tal Mallan, and occasionally I wondered why they'd been so perverse as to build on them.
I entered, and in the vestibule was a cedar desk as fragrant now as it had been when it was first cut. It stretched a good twenty feet and was pristinely empty, not even dust dared rest upon it. A young lady sat behind it reading a book, and I noted that there were fourteen columns of characters across the double page. Almost certainly that meant it was written in Haruspic, the language of the Haruspice-eaters. She closed the book before she looked up, and she smiled at me dreamily.
"I'd like a bath, please," I said, and she nodded. Standing up, she moved further along the desk and produced a register which she proffered. A pen was attached to it with a blue silk ribbon, and I signed where she pointed. Two towels then appeared from some hidden container, along with a discreet bill slipped on top of them. I read it; it was written in Elatinate, the common language, and swallowed as discreetly as she'd passed me the bill. I paid anyway, as I had reasons to be here other than the bath. She pointed to a door in the wood-panelled wall, and I departed the desk.
The changing rooms, or deshabillation as the Mallan called them, were simple: some large wardrobes with plenty of hangers, some stacked footlockers with heavy iron keys, and a low bench running the length of the room. I disrobed and hung my clothes up, putting my wallet and the sealed package under my spare towel in a locker. Then I passed through.
The bath room was a large, cedar panelled room with high, broad windows that started thirteen feet above the floor and went up to the ceiling. There were twenty four baths laid out in a rectangular pattern, each sunk mostly into the floor. A lip, raised about six inches all round, stopped the unwary from walking into the baths, but not from tripping over and falling in face first. I imagined, knowing the Mallan temperament, that that would be a cause of much hilarity. Fragrant steam billowed and gusted in the air whenever the door opened or closed, and I could smell meadowsweet, wild violet, gentian and Attic rose wreathing around me. Almost immediately I felt myself relaxing.
I slipped my towel off and stepped into the second bath in the third row. The bath-house had only two other occupants, so getting the bath I'd been told to take was thankfully easy. I'd had no idea what excuses I could have made for waiting for a particular bath to come free. The water was hot enough to make me catch my breath, but I acclimatised quickly, and soon the only evidence was the beading of sweat on my brow. I laid back, relaxed, and waited for my contact.

Blaize

She had a stripe of white hair that ran from her crown to her fringe, standing starkly in comparison to her otherwise raven-black hair. Her hair was long and she put it up into a loose bun under her tricorn hat, but when she let it loose, as she had done now, it fell down the back of her neck like a mountain cataract and swirled around her shoulders like the whirlpools of legendary Charybdis.
She was stood on the bonnet of the car, dressed from head to toe in tight-fitting black leather and had a black opera cape with red lining pinned tightly at her throat. She looked for all the world like the lead in a modern werewolf movie. She was casually pointed a loaded gun at the windscreen, and conversing with the driver.
"Your money or your wife," she said, and laughed pleasantly. The driver looked a little stunned.
"She's not my wife," he said. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.
"Oh dear," said the highwaywoman. "Then it looks like it has to be your money, doesn't it?"
"You can have her!" The driver was shaking, and the much younger blonde in the passenger seat looked unimpressed.
"Oi!" she squawked. "You can't give me away like tha--"
She was silenced by the highwaywoman stamping on the windscreen over her face and shattering it.
"Your money," she said, firmly, gesturing with the gun. The driver slowly, hesitantly, reached for his pockets, where presumably his wallet was. He pulled it out, and his hands were shaking.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have...?" he said, making one last attempt at keeping hold of his cash.
"Get out," said the highwaywoman, sighing. He and the woman in the passenger seat unbuckled their seatbelts, opened their doors, and climbed out. The highwaywoman shot the pair of them cleanly in the head, and jumped down off the car.
I left her rifling through their pockets, and headed off across country. I needed to get word out that Rebecca Turpin was on the loose once more.

Electrowife

Somewhere in the east the moon is rising. Strains of Saint-Saëns drift on the breeze, torn away from the ballroom and pulled outside. The clouds overhead swirl restlessly and the tops of the trees bend and rustle, sussurating like they have secrets to keep from me. I lean on the wrought-iron balcony, painted white by some lunatic designer employed by the equally insane Marchioness, and stare down into the rose garden below.
Of course, the Marchioness's favourite poet is Schiller, which I wholehearted agree with, so the rose garden is also a lion-court. Little steel trellises gate off entrances for robo-lions, and a larger exit is where the Marchioness's playthings hammer on the gate and claw in futile anxiety at the handle. Only two have survived so far, and one of them was thrown back to the robo-lions a week later. He wasn't so lucky the second time around.
The rose garden is blessedly empty at this time of the evening, and I can enjoy the proud flowers defying the increasing wind and the heady perfumes they release. I wondered once about husbanding them, breeding them to produce a perfume of almost narcotic intensity, but my plans were cut short by the Marchioness deciding that my money would be better spent on cybernetic enhancements for herself. Over the course of three years she went from being the woman I loved to a robo-frau; my electrowife.
I heard the mechanical click of the relays and know that someone, or something, robotic is approaching. I have laid them secretly all around the Hall so that she cannot sneak up on me, no matter how assiduously she oils her joints, nor how much money she spends on superconducting cable and noise-nullifiers.
She glides up beside me, silent as a corpse, and glitters brilliantly in the light from the windows above us.
"BzzztYou have left me with no-one to dance with" she says, her voice blurring at the start as it always does. I'm sure it's an error of some kind, but she insists that it is cosmetic, done for effect. I smile at her, and wave a hand at the garden below.
"I was enjoying the roses," I begin, but she cuts me off with a high-pitched feedback squeal, her way of indicating displeasure.
"BzzztThere are no lions tonight!"
"Robo-lions." I always correct her. It is important to remember that there is a distinction between robots and real people.
She squeals again, and tilts forward, leaning as far over the balcony as her metallic waist will allow.
"BzzztReturn with me."
I take her arm and she pulls me away, moving too fast for a walk and not fast enough for a run. I am being punished. I still smile though. I may not have been able to breed a narcotic perfume into my beloved roses, but I was still able to get them to produce a beautifully scented gas that rusts even the most advanced of robots. The robo-lions lying in decayed reddish pools of ferro-oxide proved my little experiment true.
I smile harder and sound cheerful. Freedom beckons once more.