Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

not justly last. The room then; yes, I thought that was it, I leaned back on the trays and looked heavenward, or at the narrow quadrangle of the ceiling, the room, cupboard and greater part, held sanctuary, quiet space. Not like a church but anyway still calm air that if broken by my passion in this way would never be the same again. I saw it quite clearly, every time I returned to the cupboard as I must almost every day of my work here, it would be the cupboard where I kissed Tom (and where either Tom kissed me back, or Tom pulled back shocked a little, or Tom reacted badly – this I did not think would be likely) and forever after I would lose my peace in here, lose the tranquil security, lose the absence, utterly, of violent images. It might already be too late for that, even the idea of a sexual frisson was sharp to the touch, and I moved as if frightened of the space suddenly sidestepping out into the room, which was equally calmer than me in its inhuman, padded way but more space and the instance between the two of us, whatever it was, was –

‘Oh good, it’s finished scanning the object, nearly there on the materials,’ I said.

‘Does it take long after that?’ said Tom, looking around.

‘A little bit, it’s not a speedy process, it’s an accurate one,’ I said.

Quietness, the supreme quietness of a soundproofed room, only with two of us in it, firmly apart, waiting for a device to finish processing.

‘Are you willing to give your life to this?’ said Tom.

‘What a strange question . . .’ Though it was not phrased as a question. I tried to keep querulousness out of my voice. The proof was coming, soon, though, the thing that would make Tom realise. The epiphany of the copied good.

Not the Thing Itself

After a while the printer made the sequence of beeps that meant it was done and to take the replicated object out of the creation tray and put it into the finisher, which generally snipped around and freshened edges that needed freshening. I made sure to do this so that Tom did not see the slightly ugly object before it was truly done.

Then the process was finished.

‘There,’ I said putting the replicant into his hand. ‘Tell me if you can see a difference,’ I said, passing him the original.

‘No soundbox inside, though it almost feels like it tried to make that, since it’s the same weight,’ he said, holding them one in each hand, judging, ‘I can’t see anything else.’

I took the copy and looked into its eyes. The glitter swirled; the printer had even added a liquid into the cavity of the eye so that it would do so, judging how to do it I did not know – from some minute motion of the original during the scanning process? If the printer made a copy of a clock it would not be expected to keep time, the mechanics all being on the inside, and beyond the knowledge of the scanners, beyond the power, but this, it could do, it could try to get the slightest movement on the surface to run true. I felt a thrill – some hidden ability in my machine had revealed itself, late at night during this illicit use, as if it only would under these circumstances. I thought of a copied clock with hands that moved by some impossible means, though they wouldn’t, there had to be something. Then of the Northern Lights moving like fairy skirts, something I dimly understood as beams moving sinuously along unseen currents, and then of clocks with little spirits inside, turning the pieces. Fey magic. In short I did not think of Tom at all, until he clapped me on the back and said we needed to get home.

The Sky Falls and My Heart Is Glad

Up the stairs and down the front steps of the drab university building, crossing the small square and turning down the back alley where the leaves lay in their long piles, perfect for kicking – I was so elated, I didn’t care what Tom thought, I launched myself at the leaves and kicked them, though they were damp and fluttered down in an unsatisfying way. I had clapped the copied kelpie under my armpit, while Tom had the original – I noticed him holding it in one hand by the head, and tried hard not to work this into some symbol of Tom’s mood as it pertained to myself, instead to be carefree, to kick another big mouldy clag of leaf litter, while all we passed through was flattened to a dingy orange in the street lights. We travelled in our strange moods through first the alley and the back lanes running homewards, until we reached the start of the area of town were we lived, where it was partially student-stuffed tenement flats, then opening up into elegant roads, single family occupancy almost-mansions, or offices or nurseries. We chose the mews streets, the dimmer parts, as if still moving towards a secret plot, needing to go unseen.

‘It’s hailing,’ said Tom, holding out one hand. The hail came in a sudden rattle down upon us a second later.

‘I didn’t think it’d be cold enough,’ I said, having to raise my voice. A piece hit Tom in the eye.

‘Ow, fuck!’

‘Oh, quick, in here, there’ll be shelter,’ I opened a garden gate. Huge trees here in a garden backing a grand house not yet broken up, I think. We sheltered under the thick arms of a beech and listened to the din. The hail danced off the branches and landed around us, the ground quickly turning white, there were so many of them, small though, the size, when I stooped to pick one up, of nothing comparable. Buckshot, though what did I know what buckshot looked like? Certainly not small and whitely melting. Larger hailstones were cracking off the