Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (407 page)

The silence.

“So you do forgive me, right?”

Forgive
is not a word wolves know.

“Right?”

He won’t move or speak. Why should he?”

“These things happen, son. Things happen when people are stretched too far and their love is stretched too thin. Oh,
please
try to understand.”

There is a long silence while she thinks and Happy thinks.

Just when he’s beginning to hope she’s run out of words forever, she says in a voice so light that it floats far over his head, “Then you got lost. And everything changed. He got himself a nice new wife and moved to Hollywood. After everything I did to make him happy. The others grew up and moved away. Until you came, I didn’t have anything.”

Happy doesn’t expect to speak, but he does. The words that have been stacked in his head for years pop out like quarters out of a coin return.

“You didn’t look for me, did you.” It is not a question.

She sobs. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

He does.

After a while she goes away.

Happy slinks to the door and locks it even before he hears her stumbling downstairs, sobbing.

* * * *

“Can I come in?” Her voice is sweet. Just the way he remembers her. Even through the door, Susan is soft and he will always remember that body. He almost forgets himself and answers. Happy is stopped by the fact that except for the slip with the mother, he hasn’t spoken. There are too many words backed up in him. He can’t get them in order, much less let them out. He just doesn’t have the equipment.

Instead he hitches across the floor the way he did when he was two and sits with his back against the door, putting his head to the wood. Feeling her. He feels her outline pressed to the other side of the panel, her heart beating. Susan, breathing.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “I understand. I just want you to come out so we can be together and be happy.”

His fingers creep along the door.

“Happy,” she says, and he will not know whether she is talking about their future or using his name, which is his secret. “You know, you’re really a very lovely man. It’s a shame for you to be shut up in there when you could come out and enjoy the world!”

Swaying slightly in time with that musical voice, he toys with the lock. He can’t, he could, he wants to open that door and do something about the way he is feeling. With Susan, he won’t have to wonder how the parts fit together.

Like a gifted animal trainer she goes on, about his bright hair, about how lucky she felt when she first saw him; she is lilting now. “It’s sunny today, perfect weather, and oh, sweetie, there’s going to be a party in the garden!”

Then he hears a little stir in the hall. Someone else out there with her, breathing.

“A party in your honor. Cake, sweetie, and champagne, have you ever had champagne? You’re going to love it…” He does indeed hear music. Someone tapping a microphone. Voices in the garden. Behind Susan, someone is muttering. She breaks off. “Brent, I am
not
going to tell him about the people from Miramax! Not until we get him out of there!”

The brother. Happy shuts down. What else would he do after what Brent did to him? Things in this room, he realizes; Brent was that much older. Brent giving him a mean, sly look on his last night in this world he outgrew, letting their father hit the gas on the minivan and drive away without him.

After a long time, when it becomes clear that there’s no change in the situation, Susan gets up off her knees— he can feel every move she makes— and leans the whole of that soft body against the wood. He stands too, so that in a way, they are together. She says in a tone that makes clear that they will indeed lie down together too, “Champagne, and when it’s over, you and I…”

There is the sound of a little struggle. Brent barks a warning. “Ten minutes, Frederick Olmstead. Ten minutes more and we break down the door and drag you out.”

He does not have to go to the window to hear the speech Brent makes to the people assembled. He can hear them muttering. He smells them all. He hears their secret body parts moving. They are drinking champagne in the garden. Then it changes. There is a new voice. Ugly. Different from the buddabuddabudda of ordinary people talking.

“Thank you for coming and thank you for your patience. OK, Brent. Where is he?”

It’s him.

Brett whines, “I told you, Dad, I couldn’t…”

“Then I will.”

Another voice. The mother. “No, Fred. Not this time.”

There is a smack. A thud. Under the window, the father raises his head and howls, “Two minutes, son. I’m warning you.”

Happy’s hackles rise. His lips curl back from bared fangs as in the garden under the window the mother cries, “I told you never to come here!”

There is a stir; something happens and the mother is silenced.

Him.

He commands the crowd. “Give me a minute and I’ll bring the wolf boy down for his very first interview.”

* * * *

His father comes.

He will find that Happy has unlocked the door for him.

Big man, but not as big as Happy remembers him. Big smile on his face, which has been surgically enhanced, although Happy will not know it. Smooth, beautifully tanned under the expensively cropped hair, it is nothing like the angry face Happy remembers. The big, square teeth are white, whiter than Timbo’s fangs. Even the eyes are a fresh, technically augmented color. Blue shirt, open at the collar. Throat exposed, as wolves will do when they want you to know that they do not intend to harm you. Nice suit, although Happy has no way of knowing.

“Son,” he says in a smooth, glad tone that has sealed deals and gotten meetings with major players all over greater Los Angeles. “You know your father loves you.”

This is nothing like love.

Caught between then and now, between what he was and what he thinks he is, Happy does what he has to.

He knows what all wolves know. If you are male and live long enough, you will have to kill your father.

It doesn’t take long.

* * * *

Brent finds the door locked when he comes upstairs to find out how it’s going. He says through the closed door, “Everything OK in there?”

Although Happy has not spoken in all these days, he has listened carefully. Now he says in the father’s voice, “This is going to take longer than I thought. Reschedule for tomorrow. My place.”

There is a little silence while Brent considers.

Happy is stronger than Timbo now. Louder. “Now clear out, and take everybody with you.”

* * * *

It is night again. The mother knocks. Happy has mauled the body, as Timbo would, but he will not eat. There is no point to it.

“Can I come in?”

He allows it.

There will be no screaming and no reproaches. She stands quietly, studying the body.

After a long time she says, “OK. Yes. He deserved it.”

When you remember old hurts you remember them all, not just the ones people want you to. Therefore Happy says the one thing about this that he will ever say to her:

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“Oh, Happy,” she says. “Oh God.” She isn’t begging for her life, she is inquiring.

It is a charged moment.

There are memories that you can’t prevent and then there are memories you refuse to get back, and over these, you have some power. This is the choice Happy has to make but he is confused now by memories of Sonia. Her tongue was rough. She was firm, but loving. This mother waits. What will he do? She means no harm. She wants to protect him. Poised between this room and freedom in the woods, between the undecided and the obvious, he doesn’t know.

What he does know is that no matter what she did to you and no matter how hard to forgive, you will forget what your mother did to you because she is your mother.

* * * *

Copyright © 2007 by Dell Magazines, Inc.

(1935–2000)

Despite his talent both as a writer and artist, Keith Roberts is not well-remembered today, and has become something of a “writer’s writer.” Although he’s been influential on many writers, most of his work is out of print; even while he was writing Roberts’s work could be hard to find, given his suspicion of publishers and reputation for being difficult to work with.

A native of Northamptonshire, England, Roberts trained as an artist and worked as an illustrator and animator. He was closely associated with the magazines
Science Fantasy
and
New Worlds
, drawing covers and contributing stories to both and serving as associate editor on
Science Fantasy
in the mid-1960s.

Despite reclusiveness and a history of disputes with publishers, editors, and colleagues, Roberts’s talents were widely respected. He won four British SF Association Awards, and was a frequent award nominee.

The haunting and lyrical “Lady Margaret” later became part of
Pavane
, which links several episodes in the same dystopian alternate history. The story is set in present day England, in a world where Elizabeth I was assassinated and the Church restricts technology.

First published in Impulse 2, 1966 as “The Lady Ann.” Revised version published in
Pavane
, 1968

Durnovaria, England, 1968.

The appointed morning came, and they buried Eli Strange. The coffin, black and purple drapes twitched aside, eased down into the grave; the white webbings slid through the hands of the bearers i
n nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti…
The earth took back her own. And miles away
Iron Margaret
cried cold and wreathed with steam, drove her great sea-voice across the hills.

* * * *

At three in the afternoon the engine sheds were already gloomy with the coming night. Light, blue and vague, filtered through the long strips of the skylights, showing the roof ties stark like angular metal bones. Beneath, the locomotives waited brooding, hulks twice the height of a man, their canopies brushing the rafters. The light gleamed in dull spindle shapes, here from the strappings of a boiler, there from the starred boss of a flywheel. The massive road wheels stood in pools of shadow.

Through the half-dark a man came walking. He moved steadily, whistling between his teeth, boot studs rasping on the worn brick floor. He wore the jeans and heavy reefer jacket of a haulier; the collar of the jacket was turned up against the cold. On his head was a woollen cap, once red, stained now with dirt and oil. The hair that showed beneath it was thickly black. A lamp swung in his hand, sending cusps of light flicking across the maroon livery of the engines.

He stopped by the last locomotive in line and reached up to hang the lamp from her hornplate. He stood a moment gazing at the big shapes of the engines, chafing his hands unconsciously, sensing the faint ever-present stink of smoke and oil. Then he swung onto the footplate of the loco and opened the firebox doors. He crouched, working methodically. The rake scraped against the fire bars; his breath jetted from him, rising in wisps over his shoulder. He laid the fire carefully, wadding paper, adding a crisscrossing of sticks, shovelling coal from the tender with rhythmic swings of his arms. Not too much fire to begin with, not under a cold boiler. Sudden heat meant sudden expansion and that meant cracking, leaks round the fire tube joints, endless trouble. For all their power the locos had to be cosseted like children, coaxed and persuaded to give of their best.

The haulier laid the shovel aside and reached into the firebox mouth to sprinkle paraffin from a can. Then a soaked rag, a match…The lucifer flared brightly, sputtering. The oil caught with a faint wkoomph. He closed the doors, opened the damper handles for draught. He straightened up, wiped his hands on cotton waste, then dropped from the footplate and began mechanically rubbing the brightwork of the engine. Over his head, long nameboards carried the style of the firm in swaggering, curlicued letters; Strange and Sons of Dorset, Hauliers. Lower, on the side of the great boiler, was the name of the engine herself. The Lady Margaret. The hulk of rag paused when it reached the brass plate; then it polished it slowly, with loving care.

The
Margaret
hissed softly to herself, cracks of flame light showing round her ash pan. The shed foreman had filled her boiler and the belly and tender tanks that afternoon; her train was linked up across the yard, waiting by the warehouse loading bays. The haulier added more fuel to the fire, watched the pressure building slowly towards working head; lifted the heavy oak wheel scotches, stowed them in the steamer alongside the packaged water gauge glasses. The barrel of the loco was warming now, giving out a faint heat that radiated towards the cab.

The driver looked above him broodingly at the skylights. Mid-December; and it seemed as always God was stinting the light itself so the days came and vanished like the blinking of a dim grey eye. The frost would come down hard as well, later on. It was freezing already; in the yard the puddles had crashed and tinkled under his boots, the skin of ice from the night before barely thinned. Bad weather for the hauliers, many of them had packed up already. This was the time for the wolves to leave their shelter, what wolves there were left. And the
routiers
…this was their season right enough, ideal for quick raids and swoopings, rich hauls from the last road trains of the winter. The man shrugged under his coat. This would be the last run to the coast for a month or so at least, unless that old goat Serjeantson across the way tried a quick dash with his vaunted Fowler triple compound. In that case the Margaret would go out again; because Strange and Sons made the last run to the coast. Always had, always would…

Working head, a hundred and fifty pounds to the inch. The driver hooked the hand lamp over the push pole bracket on the front of the smokebox, climbed back to the footplate, checked gear for neutral, opened the cylinder cocks, inched the regulator across. The
Lady Margaret
woke up, pistons thumping, crossheads sliding in their guides; exhaust beating sudden thunder under the low roof. Steam whirled back and smoke, thick and cindery, catching at the throat. The driver grinned faintly and without humour. The starting drill was a part of him, burned on his mind. Gear check, cylinder cocks, regulator…He’d missed out just once, years back when he was a boy, opened up a four horse Roby traction with her cocks shut, let the condensed water in front of the piston knock the end out of the bore. His heart had broken with the cracking iron; but old Eli had still taken a studded belt, and whipped him till he thought he was going to die. He closed the cocks, moved the reversing lever to forward full, and opened the regulator again. Old Dickon the yard foreman had materialised in the gloom of the shed; he hauled back on the heavy doors as the Margaret, jetting steam, rumbled into the open air, swung across the yard to where her train was parked.

Dickon, coatless despite the cold, snapped the linkage onto the
Lady Margaret
’s drawbar, clicked the brake unions into place. Three waggons, and the water tender; a light enough haul this time. The foreman stood, hands on hips, in breeches and grubby, ruffed shirt, grizzled hair curling over his collar. “Best let I come with ’ee, Master Jesse…”

Jesse shook his head sombrely, jaw set. They’d been through this before. His father had never believed in overstaffing; he’d worked his few men hard for the wages he paid, and got his money’s worth out of them. Though how long that would go on was anybody’s guess with the Guild of Mechanics stiffening its attitude all the time. Eli had stayed on the road himself up until a few days before his death; Jesse had steered for him not much more than a week before, taking the
Margaret
round the hill villages topside of Bridport to pick up serge and worsted from the combers there; part of the load that was now outward bound for Poole. There’d been no sitting back in an office chair for old Strange, and his death had left the firm badly shorthanded; pointless taking on fresh drivers now, with the end of the season only days away. Jesse gripped Dickon’s shoulder. “We can’t spare thee, Dick. Run the yard, see my mother’s all right. That’s what he’d have wanted.” He grimaced briefly. “If I can’t take
Margaret
out by now, ’tis time I learned.”

He walked back along the train pulling at the lashings of the tarps. The tender and numbers one and two were shipshape, all fast. No need to check the trail load; he’d packed it himself the day before, taken hours over it. He checked it all the same; saw the tail-lights and number plate lamp were burning before taking the cargo manifest from Dickon. He climbed back to the footplate, working his hands into the heavy driver’s mitts with their leather-padded palms. The foreman watched him stolidly.

“Take care for the
routiers
. Norman bastards…”

Jesse grunted. “Let ’em take care for themselves. See to things, Dickon. Expect me tomorrow.”

“God be with ’ee…” Jesse eased the regulator forward, raised an arm as the stocky figure fell behind. The
Margaret
and her train clattered under the arch of the yard gate and into the rutted streets of Durnovaria.

Jesse had a lot to occupy his mind as he steered his load into the town; for the moment, the
routiers
were the least of his worries. Now, with the first keen grief just starting to lose its edge, he was beginning to realise how much they’d all miss Eli. The firm was a heavy weight to have hung round his neck without warning; and it could be there were awkward times ahead. With the Church openly backing the clamour of the Guilds for shorter hours and higher pay it looked as if the haulage companies were going to have to tighten their belts again, though God knew profit margins were thin enough already. And there were rumours of more restrictions on the road trains themselves; a maximum of six trailers it would be this time, and a water cart. Reason given had been the increasing congestion round the big towns. That, and the state of the roads; but what else could you expect, Jesse asked himself sourly, when half the tax levied in the country went to buy gold plate for its churches? Maybe though this was just the start of a new trade recession like the one engineered a couple of centuries back by Gisevius. The memory of that still rankled in the West at least. The economy of England was stable now, for the first time in years; stability meant wealth, gold reserves. And gold, stacked anywhere but in the half-legendary coffers of the Vatican, meant danger…

Months back Eli, swearing blue fire, had set about getting round the new regulations. He’d had a dozen trailers modified to carry fifty gallons of water in a galvanised tank just abaft the drawbar. The tanks took up next to no space and left the rest of the bed for payload; but they’d be enough to satisfy the sheriff’s dignity. Jesse could imagine the old devil cackling at his victory; only he hadn’t lived to see it. His thoughts slid back to his father, as irrevocably as the coffin had slid into the earth. He remembered his last sight of him, the grey wax nose peeping above the drapes as the visitors, Eli’s drivers among them, filed through the morning room of the old house. Death hadn’t softened Eli Strange; it had ravaged the face but left it strong, like the side of a quarried hill.

Queer how when you were driving you seemed to have more time to think. Even driving on your own when you had to watch the boiler gauge, steam head, fire…Jesse’s hands felt the familiar thrilling in the wheel rim, the little stresses that on a long run would build and build till countering them brought burning aches to the shoulders and back. Only this was no long run; twenty, twenty-two miles, across to Wool then over the Great Heath to Poole. An easy trip for the Lady Margaret, with an easy load; thirty tons at the back of her, and flat ground most of the way. The loco had only two gears; Jesse had started off in high, and that was where he meant to stay. The Margaret’s nominal horsepower was ten, but that was on the old rating; one horsepower to be deemed equal of ten circular inches of piston area. Pulling against the brake the Burrell would clock seventy, eighty horse; enough to shift a rolling load of a hundred and thirty tons, old Eli had pulled a train that heavy once for a wager. And won…

Jesse checked the pressure gauge, eyes performing their work nearly automatically. Ten pounds under max. All right for a while; he could stoke on the move, he’d done it times enough before, but as yet there was no need. He reached the first crossroads, glanced right and left and wound at the wheel, looking behind him to see each waggon of the train turning sweetly at the same spot. Good; Eli would have liked that turn. The trail load would pull across the road crown he knew, but that wasn’t his concern. His lamps were burning, and any drivers who couldn’t see the bulk of
Margaret
and her load deserved the smashing they would get. Forty-odd tons, rolling and thundering; bad luck on any butterfly cars that got too close.

Jesse had all the hauliers’ ingrained contempt for internal combustion, though he’d followed the arguments for and against it keenly enough. Maybe one day petrol propulsion might amount to something and there was that other system, what did they call it,
diesel
…But the hand of the Church would have to be lifted first. The Bull of 1910,
Petroleum Veto
, had limited the capacity of IC engines to 150 cc’s, and since then the hauliers had had no real competition. Petrol vehicles had been forced to fit gaudy sails to help tow themselves along; load hauling was a singularly bad joke.

Mother of God, but it was cold! Jesse shrugged himself deeper into his jacket. The
Lady Margaret
carried no spectacle plate; a lot of other steamers had installed them now, even one or two in the Strange fleet, but Eli had sworn not the
Margaret
, not on the
Margaret
…She was a work of art, perfect in herself; as her makers had built her, so she would stay. Decking her out with gewgaws, the old man had been half sick at the thought. It would make her look like one of the railway engines Eli so despised. Jesse narrowed his eyes, forcing them to see against the searing bite of the wind. He glanced down at the tachometer. Road speed fifteen miles an hour, revs one fifty. One gloved hand pulled back on the reversing lever. Ten was the limit through towns, fixed by the laws of the realm; and Jesse had no intention of being run in for exceeding it. The firm of Strange had always kept well in with the J. P. s and Serjeants of police; it partially accounted for their success.