Retreat, Day 22

Hello! If you’re new to this blog, this story is part of my Patreon campaign, which you can support here.

This story is a prequel to Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart; I’m working on a third involving Elspeth and Artemus. Other stories in this world include Rappacini’s Crow and Clockwork Fairies.

Snakes on a Train

Elspeth folded her hands in her lap, trying to keep her brows from knitting. She hated trains.

They were dirty, with bits of smut and coal blown back from the massive brass and aluminum steam engine pulling them along, and engrimed by successions of previous passengers.

They were noisy, from the engine’s howl to the screech of the never-sufficiently-greased axles as they rocketed along the steel rails with their steady pocketa-pocketa-pocketa chug seeping up through the swaying floor.

And they were oppressively full of people, all thinking things, all pressing down on her Sensitive’s mind, making her shrink down into the hard wooden seat as though the haze of thoughts hung like coal-smoke in the air and if she sank low enough, she’d avoid it.

She glanced over at her fellow Pinkerton agent, who returned her look with his own slightly quizzical if impersonal gaze. All of the curiosity of their fellow passengers was directed at him, perhaps the first mechanical being they’d ever seen, with silver and brass skin and curly hair, eyebrows, and moustache of gilded wire.

“They shouldn’t be keeping us back here,” she said for the third time in as many minutes. “If we’re his assigned bodyguards, they should let us up to inspect his compartment.”

“The porter said he’d tell them we were here,” Artemus said in precisely the same tone he’d used the first two times he’d said these words.

Elspeth sighed. Even as she did so, the porter entered the car and signaled to them.
“You go up two cars,” he said, and pointed.

They made their way through the creak and sway of a car identical to theirs, then the narrower corridors of a sleeper car. Artemus knocked on a doorway and they poked their heads into a compartment where their package stood with his daughter.

That package, one Joshua McCormick, was a short, brawny little man who held himself with a terrier’s alertness. His hair had retreated from the majority of his freckled brown scalp, but still tufted over his ears, which supported the frames of two brass-rimmed spectacles, the left one wider rimmed and more elaborate than the right. His daughter Belinda was unpacking McCormick’s trunk with an assistant’s familiarity. As Elspeth watched, she unfolded a trunk and set it against the wall so the myriad of tiny drawers and bottles it held were accessible, held in with straps against the train’s constant jostle.

Artemus said, “Sir, do you intend to undertake experiments here on the train?”

Professor McCormick shook his head, brows knitting. He folded his arms and glared over at his daughter. “Belinda. It’s true. I won’t be doing much on the train. If you unpack all of that, it’ll just be in our way.”

The daughter’s stiff shoulders told Elspeth of the daughter’s resentment. But she relaxed as the lack of emotions battering against her mind confirmed what they’d been told was a the case: the girl was a psychic null, whose thoughts could not be sensed and who would be able to withstand most mental powers.

It was one of the things she valued about Artemus – the absence of thoughts twitching her one way or another. She was looking forward to spending time with Belinda McCormick, if not her father’s roil of pride and greed and anger.

The Professor wheeled to address Artemus just as roughly. “I’ve told your superiors that your presence is unnecessary.”

Another thing Elspeth appreciated about Artemus as his ability to keep his voice modulated where Elspeth knew irritation would have wasp-whined her own tone. “I’m sure that’s true, sir. But there are definite and established dangers and not every train headed from Baltimore to Seattle has made it to its destination. Your expertise is important to the War Effort, and so we’ve been hired to make sure you get there as quickly and smoothly as you can. If you relax and let us proceed in our efforts, you’ll find the journey goes quickly and with a minimum of fuss.”

The Professor’s attention swiveled ponderously between the two of them.

“What sort of dangers have presented themselves?” he demanded, brows beetling in suspicion. “Not the made-up panics from the papers, mind you. The real dangers.”

“There have been instances of werewolves, which were responsible for the recent derailment of a train. And lizard-wizards, more than one.”

“Snakes?”

“That is the name some call them by, yes.” Artemus’s voice remained glassy smooth. “We have twelve hours before we reach Kansas City. I’d suggest you get settled and then go to sleep as early as possible. I’m told many people find the rattle of the wheels soporific.”

McCormick looked offended by the reminder of Artemus’s mechanical state. “And what are you? Is someone operating you remotely?”

“I’m automatous. This is my partner, Elspeth Sorehs.”

“A Hasidic.” The Professor’s eyes assessed Elspeth frankly, and his thoughts pawed at her. She forced down her reaction. He couldn’t know that what he was thinking was offensive. That was what almost all men did, thought in terms of what they would have been able to see if the fabric and stays were stripped away, how cupable her breasts, her thickly fleeced her thighs, this one no less than any other. She looked down at the floor.

“You will be in the cubby across the way?” the Professor addressed her.

“I will,” she said. “Mr. West…” She stressed the honorific and surname in a way that ratcheted the older man’s brows further upward. “Mr. West will be watching the corridor outside your cubby. He is unsleeping.” It would be a rare creature indeed that made its way past Artemus.

“The train will serve a late dinner in forty-five minutes,” the Professor said. “You will join us.” He turned and went back into the room where his daughter stood.

Elspeth rolled her eyes at Artemus. She stuck her head in their own compartment, eying the tiny bunks.

“Well, it’s snug,” she said. She sniffed at herself, ruefully noticing the sour tang to the fabric. That was the worst part of traveling, the lack of bathing facilities.

“There’ll be a bathhouse in Kansas City, and a four hour wait there, plenty of time,” Artemus said. “No need to act as though we were venturing into the heart of the wilderness.” His eyes glittered phlogiston-blue in what she’d learned to call his pranksome mood. “I’ll bet you that he says three things to offend you before the soup arrives. What do you think, my dear Hasidic?”

She sighed. “All in a day’s work,” she retorted. She retreated into the compartment. At least there was time to change before dinner.

She wore sea-green to the meal, a silk-cotton blend that maintained its shape better than most garments when traveling. When she saw Belinda McCormick’s pale brown silk taffeta, trimmed with Bruges, she wished she hadn’t bothered, particularly when the professor’s eyes flicked over her, assessing the color against the dark hue to her skin, pronounced after a month in Baltimore’s sun.

Swarthy little girl, but sometimes those burn the hottest, he thought with a mental picture that kindled fire in her cheeks.

The table’s center held a wire and ivory basket for a spray of fresh flowers and the condiments: cut glass containers of red and yellow and green sauce, tiny shakers of salt and pepper. She fixed her eyes on that. To her right, Belinda was a welcoming, quiet void. She found herself leaning and glanced over to find the girl looking at her with steady, inquisitive…invitation or naïveté? So hard to know, sometimes.

The other passengers spoke and chattered as they ate turtle consommé, a special Coast-to-Coast salad, and chicken-fried steak. Glasses of sherry were served round, though no one at their table took any. The Professor spoke primarily to his daughter, checking to make sure she knew the details of his trip, and what days and when he would be where. Artemus maintained his usual polite detachment.

Elpseth did the same. When a fat man lurched up from his table, at first she didn’t react, lulled by the train’s motion into a half-doze that barely noticed the warmth of his anger. Artemus, though, stood with immediate grace, interposing himself between the newcomer and McCormick.

“Necromancer!” the fat man spat at the Professor, who looked up but continued to chew his steak, placid-jowled and incurious as a cow. “Our President is not content to have sent the dead into the field against their own brethren, but now you assist Abraham the Unholy by raising the dead to bind them into machines.” He pushed at Artemus, who budged not an inch. “Whose soul is bound into you, demon-machine?”

“No one’s but my own, I assure you,” Artemus replied.

Someone at one of the watching tables laughed and the angry man blushed, taking a step back. The steward appeared, taking his elbow to guide him out. The situation stopped ticking with menace as Artemus returned to his seat. The windows rattled in their frames, coffee cups clinked in after-dinner saucers, and they sped on along the prairie.

Elspeth removed herself at one point, vanishing to the johnny-car and returning with cheeks flushed.

Artemus leaned over as she sipped coffee to murmur, “What happened?”

She leaned back into her chair, trying to look official as she whispered into Artemus’s aluminum-cast ear. “A woman wanted to know what you were like in bed, offered me money for you.”

“And?”

“And!? Should I pimp you out in order to make a little extra income along the way?”
He shrugged. “It’s all data.”

“You don’t even know what to do, let alone have the equipment to do it!”

He quirked an eyebrow. “I am given from certain “˜blue’ materials that digital and lingual stimulation is sufficient. It’s not as though the act would be about my own pleasure after all, other than the frisson of new experience. Still, I am told it is a valid way to persuade a witness or ally.”

His tone remained impersonal but his eyes flickered an amused blue. She jerked away from him and turned her attention to Belinda.

“What do you hope to do in Seattle?” she asked.

The girl toyed with the food on her plate. Elspeth thought she’d eaten a few bites at most, perhaps even less. “I will continue to act as my father’s assistant, of course,” she said hesitantly.

“Of course you will,” her father interrupted. His own plate shone; he’d used a roll to scrub the last of the gravy from the cold white china. He stared at Elspeth.

She doesn’t keep kosher, his undermind said. I wonder what else she is…unconventional in.

***

After dinner, Elspeth lingered, sniffing hungrily at the draughts of cigar smoke that wafted her way.

“Think it’s safe enough?” she overheard at her elbow. She craned her ears to listen.

“There was a werewolf attack last month, but since then they’ve put up silver,” the other man said. The deck of cards riffled before he dealt them out. They whispered across the white linen tablecloth.

“And Snakes?”

“Snakes?” The other man spat out a laugh. Black stubble hazed his jaw. He caught Elspeth’s eye and gave her a vulpine grin, sizing her up. Raising his voice, he said, “Snakes are what they use to scare passengers into behaving. Don’t go anywhere by yourself, because you might get et. That’s just a way to keep pretty ladies from getting lured into shadows for kisses from nice men.”

Elspeth refrained from joining the conversation. As a Pinkerton agent, she’d met plenty of supernatural creatures. She knew there were a few werewolves, or rather shapechangers, that lived in the wilderness in small families. She was less worried about Snakes, even though the semi-mythical creatures were blamed for nearly every disaster that claimed human lives.

In either case, this wasn’t like England, overridden with all manner of creature, including werewolves, fairies and vampires.

The Professor sat puffing a cigar, working it with tight jaws. When it finally had burned to an inch’s worth of stub, he caught Elspeth’s eye and nodded at her to follow him as he rose. His mind revealed nothing other than the last of the tobacco’s tang and a weary readiness for his bed.

She followed him through the several cars housing those unfortunate enough not to have the price of a sleeper, relegated to the hard wooden benches fastened to the walls. They smelled of sweat and cheese and garlic and stomach gas and she sensed herself perceived by minds sleep-clouded by motion and time spent staring forward waiting to arrive.

Outside the two compartments, the Professor paused.

Elspeth waited.

He looked everywhere but at her. “I want you to speak to my daughter.”

“About?” His embarrassment burned in her stomach, incandescent as lava.

“She has always lived with me. Her mother died when she was three. Our domestic situation has made her isolated in a manner that has warped her.”

“Such as?”

“She has become forward in unexpected ways,” he said. His pink skin deepened in tone and he wiped at his brow with a crumpled silk handkerchief.

“The suffrage movement appeals to many young women who feels their own lives are circumscribed,” Elspeth supplied. She’d seen this struggle before, including in her own family when she’d announced she planned to become a Pinkerton agent.

He shook his head. “There are many movements affecting the young nowadays. I was thinking more of the…” He hesitated, picking the words as carefully as making change out of a purse. “The movement that some people call Free Love.”

Elspeth tried to school her face into a lack of expression, but a brow crept upward despite herself.

“She wishes to practice Free Love?” she said, very carefully. Where was Artemus? But her partner had said he wished to check the rest of the train. She wondered if he was looking for the woman who had offered Elspeth money for a couple of hours with him.

The Professor’s hand flapped in the air like a trapped bird searching for windows of escape. “Tell her…tell her that things are not as simple as she would like to think when it comes to defying societal mores. For women there are consequences and they come when least expected or desired.” He sighed.

There was something in his mind around all this that made Elspeth uneasy, but she nodded. They exchanged slight bows and retired into their compartments.

Artemus was back within a half hour, ready to set up watch. Elspeth did not question him as where he had been. Her partner’s inability to sleep was a definite plus. It made simple sense to always have him be the one watching in the small hours of the night, when his human counterpart might fall prey to drowsiness.

So many pluses to partnering with him. Before him, she’d been assigned to a former Army colonel who had never quite gotten over the shock of working with a woman. For Artemus that had never been an issue, and chivalry was impersonal with him, a matter of his metallic brain and body outshining any human’s, gender notwithstanding.

They’d spent a week last spring in the Pinkerton Academy and she’d had a chance to speak with other female agents, despite how few and far between they were. Chloe Louisiana was a mulatto and former slave who always partnered with another woman, a half-Shawnee who’d been raised in England and whose name was Persephone Godschild. They were all united in their hate of the only other female agent present, a southern sharpshooter, Belle Cheatham, whose disdain they had all dealt with in the past.

“You’re lucky to have Artemus as your partner,” Chloe had said. She glanced over at Persephone, who’d nodded. The three of them had been sitting in a classroom, comparing notes and waiting for an instructor in ballistics to arrive.

Elspeth hadn’t understood. Back then she’d seen it as punishment, assigning the odd psychic to the only thing capable of dealing with her. She went back and forth on whether the assignment was punishment or praise. It felt like either with equal frequency.

***

She lay in bed. A thought occurred to her and she pulled herself out of the narrow bunk to press her face up to the cold glass of the tiny window. Outside the vast plains were silvered with moonlight and the train’s long shadow raced beside them. Faint clouds seined the starry sky and somewhere a wolf howled.

Artemus shifted in the hallway. He’d heard her, she suspected, and wanted her to know her he was there if needed, without saying it outright.

Another one of the little gestures that seemed so unmechanical.

She returned to bed and lay there. The train said chuggadiggity-chuggadiggity-chuggadiggity and she dropped into sleep counting the syllables of that complex beat.

***

Someone scratching on her door woke her. She gathered her wrapper around her nightgown and slid the door open.

Belinda, in her own wrapper, embroidered with pale blue flowers and uncoiling ferns. No Artemus in the corridor, but the light in the other room suggested he was there with the Professor.

“Do you smoke?” Belinda said in a low whisper. Her eyes sparked as Elspeth nodded, and she held up two cigarettes in a conspiratorial way. “They’re talking. We’ll go indulge.”

Outside, they sparked cigarettes alight with phosphorus matches in the doorway’s shelter before moving to stand on the swaying platform as the dark world hurtled past.

Belinda exhaled. The smell of the tobacco flickered in Elspeth’s nostrils. “You know what I want in Seattle?” she said.

Elspeth shook her head. It was so refreshing not to be able to pluck the answer out of the other’s head, mystifying and giddying all at once, trying to figure out answers from clues as fragile and fleeting as cigarette smoke.

“I want to have a friend. Maybe several,” Belinda said. She reached out with her free hand and scraped the back of her index finger along the soft flesh of Elspeth”˜s inner arm.

Elspeth’s heart jumped in her throat. In her mind, the Professor’s voice said, …the movement that some call Free Love. She didn’t react to the touch and after a long moment, Belinda leaned back against the railing and took another puff from her cigarette.

Elspeth had opened her mouth to reply when something lunged out of the night, a snarl of claw and tooth and gray fur striking from the ground to land between them.

Belinda recoiled, colliding with the glass of the door even as Espeth’s foot snapped out to catch the beast in the throat. She thanked her Pinkerton training, all the work she’d had to do to prove herself.

With a gabbled whine, the creature fell away. Elspeth grabbed Belinda and pulled her inside the car.

In its confines, the younger woman swayed, hand at her throat, eyes wide and fixed on Elspeth as her knees buckled.

Elspeth stooped to the floor as well, feeling the rocketing rails underneath through her shinbones, grappling Belinda to her.

Belinda’s lips tasted of tobacco. Her heart hammered against Elspeth as Elspeth drew her into the compartment and the narrow, moon-washed bed.

***

She woke tangled in Belinda’s arms to the sound of knocking on the door. Artemus’ characteristic shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits.

“What is it?” she called.

“The Professor.”

She gestured quiet at the wide-eyed Belinda as she pulled on her nightgown. “What about him?” she called through the doorway.

“His doorway is locked but he’s not answering.”
#
Artemus looked to her before fingering the lock. He was not supposed to pick mechanisms unless there was a human present.

She hoped that Belinda would have the sense to wait until they had entered the other cabin before making her way out of Elspeth’s compartment.

The lock clicked open and Artemus’s hand fell away. He flipped the handle open and swung it inward cautiously, as though afraid of waking the Professor.

Who was unwakeable, lying as he did in a pool of crimson and surprise, face agape.

As they stood there in the doorway, Belinda appeared behind them and gasped. “Papa!”

“I must ask you to stand back, Miss McCormick,” Artemus said. “Elspeth, would you take her to a quiet place close by?”

“Like my cabin?” Elspeth said.

“That would do, certainly.”

Elspeth escorted the wide-eyed, shocked Belinda back into the cabin and petted and soothed her for a few moments before returning to Artemus’ side in the other compartment.

He stood frowning in the middle of the compartment. “I don’t see it.”

“See what?”

“The professor was carrying the formula for his work to the War Ministry.”

She looked around the tiny space. “It’s not here?”

“He has his case there, and another trunk full of presents. I believe for his host’s children.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I took the liberty of opening them. One is a puzzle, another a set of fables, and the third a board game, “˜Snakes on a Train.'”

“So the killer must have taken the formula.”

“Belinda is the most likely suspect.”

Elspeth hoped Belinda would remember the brief story Elspeth had coached her in. “She went for coffee to the dining car but found it closed. He was alive when she left.”

Artemus’s expression ground into disapproval. He didn’t like activating that portion of his face’s mechanism, she knew, preferring to keep it a bland and unthreatening smile.

“I don’t think it was her,” she said firmly, and left it at that, hurrying on to say, “I think it’ll be someone who gets off at the next stop.”

“When is that?”

“For a major stop, one that is more than fuel? A day or so.”

***

Summoned, two wide-eyed porters helped drag the body back several cars, wrapped in a blanket and supported as though it were an under-the-weather passenger, back to the refrigerator car.

After that, the Pinkerton agents canvassed the train to find the individuals planning on getting out at Kansas City. A young married couple, the Emersons, planning on joining Mrs. Emerson’s brother’s homestead nearby; a school-teacher headed into the Territory; two traveling sales-men, one in patent sun hats and soaps, and the other in tin-ware; two former soldiers headed to get jobs as cattle drovers; and a veterinarian who had just purchased a practice in Kansas City in the mail.

Neither Artemus nor Elspeth could extract any reason why any of these individuals would have reason to kill the Professor.

Artemus’ expression was still disapproving. “The daughter…”

“It’s not her,” Elspeth said. “I think it’s a wolf. We saw one when we were out there. One could jump onto a platform and come along a corridor.”

“And have hands to open the door?”

“Were-wolves,” she pointed out. “Shape-changers. Skilled ones can manage half-way forms.”

“If there were such a creature then it is long gone,” Artemus said.

“Let’s question everyone,” Elspeth said. “The man who called him a necromancer, for example.”

That man turned out to be a Portland bound minister, Alexander Knolle. Roused from his own sleeping car and questioned as to how he knew what McCormick had been doing, he pointed out that it had not been much of a secret, since McCormick had spoken in several lyceums in the Baltimore and DC area in the week previous to boarding the train.

“He bragged on it,” the fat man said sweating but adamant, gaze trembling between the two. “On how his formula help suit machinery and morbid flesh to each other. Morbid flesh, that’s what he called it. Dead things. I fought in the war last year. I know what comes of that.” He shuddered and retched.

***

The next night, Artemus spent on the platform watching for wolves.

Around two in the morning, Elspeth went out with him. The stars stretched overhead, brilliant as diamonds, lights that seemed close enough to reach up and pluck one.

“Is Belinda settled?” Artemus said over the rush of the wind and the rattle of the train.

“For now,” Elspeth said. She titled her face away from him, knowing he’d be able to read any rush of heat to her cheeks. She said, over her shoulder, “When we were first assigned together, I didn’t like it. Now I wouldn’t have any other partner.”

She wasn’t sure whether or not he was aware of Belinda’s scent clinging to her, of the phantom pressure of hands that clenched at her skin. Perhaps he’d think her blushes the result of her verbal confession. Either way, she wanted him to be reassured. “There’s no one else I’d rather have.” Silence stretched between them and she said, struck by it, “Can you say the same?”

“I am used to you,” he said, but she thought some other emotion glinted far below the living light of his eyes.

Someone knocked on the partition. Belinda, pressed up against the glass.

“Someone’s in with papa’s things,” she said. “I heard them knocking about.”

They crowded in, Artemus first. The heavy musk of wolf musk hung in the air. Where they had searched through the Professor’s things but kept them in order, someone else had executed no such caution, but rather flung drawers open, tumbled cases on the floor, and dumped belongings out onto the floor. The puzzle pieces lay underfoot mixed with a scattering of tea bags and the delicate bones of some bird’s wing, mingled with some reptile’s coiled spine.

“Looking for something.” Artemus picked up a copy of a book and laid it on the bedspread.

“But what?” Elspeth said.

“The formula still.”

“So it’s whoever killed him but they still don’t have the formula.” Elspeth looked around the compartment. “Either because it’s here hidden among his belongings, or because he’s hidden it elsewhere on the train.”

“Or because he never had it,” Artemus pointed out.

Disappointment clenched at Elspeth’s gut. “What makes you think that?”

“It seems as possible as anything else,” Artemus said. He looked around at the mess. “Someone believes it’s here, at any rate.”

“If it’s a werewolf, they’ll surely try one last time before we hit the next town,” Elspeth said. “How is he or she managing to keep up with the train?”

“They are supernatural creatures, endowed with uncanny amounts of speed and endurance,” Artemus said. He didn’t add that one of his appeals for the Pinkerton Agency was his ability to match those uncanny abilities.

***

They waited in the darkness. Artemus was braced in the cupboard space; Elspeth crouched near the door. Belinda was bundled in Elspeth’s bed again with orders to bar the door and not come out for love or money. After those instructions had been given, the two Pinkertons had taken up position. They didn’t speak.

The hours jolted by, the train slowing and speeding up. If she were the wolves, she’d wait for one of the curves where the train would be forced to deaccelerate, she thought. Even as it occurred to her, the axles squealed as they leaned left.

She tilted her head, listening, but also extending her other sense outward, searching for thoughts. There. ? where ? was not the thought of any passenger but the frustration of someone looking for a specific thing, returning to search again. river/camphor/dust flared in her senses and said they were familiar, long familiar.
She heard a sound she couldn’t decipher, lost between the outer and the inner perceptions.

“They’re trying to get into your room,” Artemus said, moving to the door.

She followed after him in the darkness, wishing they’d told Belinda to wait elsewhere.

Sparks flared, a shot rang out.

Artemus shouted.

She struck a light in the silence to see him holding a lean and ragged wolf by the paw/wrist. Green eyes glinted, considering her. The toothy jaws opened and croaked out, “Hnake. Here. Kill Hnake.”

She looked at Artemus, but his gaze confirmed her own senses. Sincerity.

They backed into the other tiny bedroom, debris and puzzle pieces crunching underfoot.

“You’re looking for a Snake,” Artemus said. “You sensed it, presumably.”

The heavy muscle dipped in a nod. This close, Elspeth found that every instinct of her body screamed to get away. The green eyes blinked in amusement, considering her.

“It’s Belinda,” Artemus said.

“This again?” Elspeth said. “I know you don’t like her.”

“That has nothing to do with anything. She’s the Snake. She’s taken the actual daughter and disposed of her along the way. As a master illusionist, she’s able to cloud your mind and make you think she’s just a null.”

Elspeth ran through matters in her head. The sheer weighty reluctance of doing so convinced her that Artemus was right. Something was very wrong with Belinda.

“Something more,” Artemus said. He knelt and picked up a handful of puzzle pieces. “Look at the backs.”

She turned over the carved wood with dawning realization. “Pencil marks on the back. It’s his formula.”

Artemus’ blue eyes shuttered. “If the knowledge goes to the War Ministry, they will make machines from fallen soldiers. So will anyone else who learns it.” He methodically plucked puzzle pieces from the floor. “They are very flammable, these pieces.”

This was why they assigned a human to the mechanical, to think out questions of judgment and justice. In theory. But it seemed he no longer needed her.

She took the pieces from his hands and shoved them in the waistband of her shirt. “If we just throw them out, there’s still a chance someone could find and reassemble them.”

He nodded. “The engine is three cars up.”

***

But when she reached the engine, Belinda was there.

“Ahhhh,” the young woman breathed out regretfully as she saw Elspeth’s face. She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “I take it the jig, as we say, is up?”

Elspeth took a few steps forward, looking at the door to the boiler, small and square and securely shut.

Before she could move again, Belinda’s form blurred and interposed itself. Elspeth felt the hard muscles against her own.

“Would you like?” the voice buzzed, half out loud, half in mind. Like to see what I really look like?

She breathed out assent and the golden curls shimmered, gave way to a hood of shimmering scales, purple and pine and scarlet, and eyes that stared at her tenderly. She was enfolded in coils, and Belinda’s mouth hovered over the vein that pulsed in her neck.

I will not touch your blood, the voice said in her head, not for all the world, beloved, but oh, if I did, it would be right here — the teeth dipped and grazed the skin in a circle of freezing pleasure that ran from that point down to her very core, where it warmed and made her loins heavy with desire — right here — and the lips caressed the skin as though licking some flavor from them.

Even as that pleasure burned, Elspeth grappled the door open and threw the puzzle pieces in to flare up in a cascade of sparks. Even so, the arms held onto her waist, the warm breath caressed her shoulder. It is a bad thing for anyone to hold, and there will be other power, given time, the internal voice hissed, and suddenly nipped, not breaking the skin but making her gasp aloud with the intensity of the pleasure.

The orgasm shook her, drove her off her feet, and the arms released her to let her slide against the wall as the Snake backed away, green eyes amused and regretful.

We will meet again, you and I.

The door opened and the figure was gone, fallen out into the dark night.

***

“It is,” Artemus said, “something that we can explain to the War Ministry. The professor died telling no one the formula. It died with him.”

“You don’t want to say that the emissary of a group of magical shape shifters killed him for it”? Elspeth asked.

Artemus shuddered. “We would face questioning for weeks.” The amusement faded. “We’ll have to find the group ourselves.”

“If they don’t find us first,” she said. She heard the voice again, beloved, and shook her head to clear it.

She looked to Artemus.

We will meet again, you and I.

And what will happen then?

No matter how many words I write, I cannot hope to put the magnificence, the splendor, the kindness, the warmth, the sheer amazeballs neatness of the trip. So here are some incoherent notes, jotted down in haste because otherwise I will just keep procrastinating on the writeup and it would be a shame to do so.

General Notes and Context:

I was originally invited by the heads of the China World Science Fiction society, Renwei Dong, Haijun Yao, and Wu Yan, to attend the Chinese Nebula Awards ceremony in Beijing, through the kind offices of Ruhan Zhao. Later the invitation was extended by the company Xinhuanet for Wayne and I to then spend a week in Chengdu. It was our first trip to China; getting the visas got complicated and down to the last minute wire but finally everything arrived two days before the actual departure.

Arrival in Beijing and the Chinese Nebulas

We left September 7th and arrived in Beijing on the 8th, where Jingbo Chen and Ruhan picked us up at the airport. We had dinner that night with Mr. Dong, Ms. Song, and other members of the association. The next day, we went to Qinghua University that evening, and I gave a speech on what is new in American SF for the first of several times. This was my first chance to meet our terrific interpreters. They were awesome and just amazing in their ability to listen and speak at the same time. Phenomenal. Plus one had an English accent, was constantly gravely polite even when being thwarted in her duties, and reminded me of a Chinese David Tennant.

On the 10th, we had numerous panels and discussions at the National Library, along with a terrific banquet that night. We stayed at the National Library Hotel, which had a wonderful bookish modern but still traditional vibe, and had breakfasts most mornings there. This was interesting because it was in the same cafeteria with the government workers and was our first real introduction to the phenomenon of Chinese breakfast. The location was great, however. The ceremonies were held nearby in one of the actual library buildings, and started with a red carpet walk and the signing of a wall. There were several hundred people at the actual ceremonies (I think).

On the 12th Kelly took us and Crystal Huff, the Finncon co-chair who was also part of the Chinese Nebulas, to a lake reservoir and the Mungtian site of the Great Wall. It was everything I’d hoped and more, and a site that lives up to a writer’s imaginings is a rare one indeed. That evening we had dinner with Crystal, Kelly, Kelly’s boss Richard Lee, and her co-worker Martin at Huo’s restaurant, where we had Peking duck and other amazing foodstuffs. The wonderful floor show included noodle making, dough balloons, tea pouring, and a woah-wait-how-did-they-do-that face changing show. Afterwards we walked around a little bit, then took the subway (where Wayne enchanted a suspicious toddler) to see the Birds Nest and Olympic Park by night. The subway was a quicker way to get around than taxi most of the time and was very easy to use.

We were treated very well. I found that SF is currently very hot in China. Overall, recent wins by Cixin Liu have drawn significant attention to SF in China. In all of this, I am speaking primarily about science fiction, rather than fantasy, since the Chinese see the two genres as very distinct from each other. There has also historically been tension between science writing and science fiction, which is the past has been perceived as being aimed at children, or at least that is something that came up multiple times over the course of the visit.

Nowadays, that’s very different. Numerous groups in China are working on putting together Worldcon bids and I would suspect the question is not so much whether or not we’ll see a Worldcon bid from China in coming years so much as which city will host it: Beijing, Chengdu, or Shanghai. Several people, including the World Science Fiction Society, said that they’d love to see SFWA’s Nebulas hosted over in China if we’re ever interested in doing that. Crystal Huff had been sponsored by the first group as part of their effort to research what would be needed to run a Worldcon.

One of the things that I really noticed at the ceremonies and the signing that occurred the next day: the Chinese fans really love science fiction. I sat next to Cixin Liu at the signing and some of his fans were vibrating with the joy of interacting with him to a point that I might have reserved for Paul McCartney when I was a teen-age Cat. They were adorable. They also — and the writers as well — skewed considerably younger than the overall crowds I see at the usual Nebula or other American gatherings. Many of these folks are the future, and I’m pleased to get a chance to interact with so many of them.

The next day Kelly and Martin took Wayne, Crystal, and I in for interviews and to meet with the head of CEPIEC, who went with us for a delicious lunch. Afterwards we went with Martin over to Beiha Park, where we went boating, and then strolled the grounds, viewing the last of the lotus blossoms. We were lucky to be there for the Autumn Festival, so we ate lots of kinds of the traditional moon cakes, and Kelly brought us a big bagful of them when we set off.

Mr. Dong made sure we were well taken care of throughout our visit to Beijing and that we had everything we needed. Sean Gao very kindly postponed his flight back to Chengdu in order to accompany our hapless selves, which was good, because we needed his linguistic intervention a couple of times as we bewildered someone.

Chengdu and Xiuhuanet

In Chengdu, we were met by Tulip, who was our interpreter, and JingJing of Xinhuanet and her assistant Annie. They took us to the hotel and then out with Sean to what turned out to be the first of AMAZING meals. SO DELICIOUS. SO DELICIOUS.

They planned a lot of stuff for us, which really made this the trip of a lifetime, particularly since often we got behind the scenes level tours (and often a meal). Luckily for me, Tulip furnished a detailed itinerary of our many and varied activities, so I can be extremely precise here:

September 15th:
Wuhou shrine, Jinli street
Jinsha site museum/Huang longXi ancient town

Our very first stop was the Wuhou shrine. Here was my first encounter with Zhuge Liang, an early paragon of wisdom whose shrine this is, although it shares space with the temple of Liu Bei (a Chinese emperor). Very green and serene and historic, and very informative, since Tulip, a well-traveled and experienced guide, turned out to be a font of interesting Chinese history. From there we walked over to the bustle and noise of Jinli street, which featured all sorts of crafts and foods, including displays of silkworm cocoons being unspun and the silk threads being processed to make into comforters. JingJing bought us all spicy peanut candy; next time I’m trying some of the spun sugar candy, like the phoenixes we saw being displayed.

Lunch! And then to the ancient town, which was in a fruit-growing area, with piles of grapes, figs, and kiwis for sale along the road. The town was very cool, and featured more kinds of crafts, this time including some freshwater pearls and nifty masks carved from bamboo root. This was where I picked up a new mask for my collection and took some of my favorite pictures, including the one of children chasing bubbles.

September 16th
Panda base in Dujiangyan city
Dujiangyan irrigation program
Hexiang mountain villa

Pandas! No cuddling them, alas, but lots of looking and learning about them, all in beautiful surroundings and taken around by a nice guide who answered all sorts of questions. After that, Dujiangyan, which was super cool and much more interesting than the phrase “irrigation program” might imply. For one thing, it was built in 256 BC and still controls water for over 5000 square kilometers of farmland not via a dam system, but by dividing and channeling the water via ingenious means of long wicker baskets filled with stones, called zhulong, which ended up making the Sichauan district the most productive in the country.

Lots of greenery, in many ways a shrine to water and very beautiful. Here we met Zhuge Liang again, and had our photo taken with him, a tradition meant to evoke his genius in the person touching his hand. After that we headed to a new hotel, the Hexiang mountain villa, a hotel built to evoke an old Chinese palace, which had a lot of beautiful carvings. There was a wedding going on there the same night, with a ton of people; it looked like a gorgeous place for a reception.

September 17
Qingchen Mountain
Afternoon – Taiguli street
Watching Sichuan opera

In the morning, we watched a little tai chi being staged in the courtyard then ate breakfast at the hotel before heading to Qingchen Mountain, the birthplace of Taoism, and learned a good bit about both Taoism and Buddhism on our trip up the mountain. Very green and clean, with a beautiful lake halfway up.

Back in Chengdu that evening, we strolled through one of the shopping districts, Taiguli Street, which was full of international goods and high fashion store. After dinner, we headed to watch a show that included plenty of opera along with some other wonderful staged stuff, including a reiteration of amazing mask dancers.

September 18
Sanxindui site museum
Evening speech at Southwest Jiaotong University

Another amazing trip, this time to see bronzes from 4000 years ago, in a very cool museum. The director was kind enough to have lunch with us after we’d had a guided tour of the museum’s two buildings. The relics are beautiful and when we got back to the hotel later, we realized there was a full-size replica of one of the museum’s “money trees” in its lobby.

That night, after yet another terrific dinner. I made a speech at the local university to a crowd of perhaps 50 or 50 students, who asked all sorts of interesting questions, and who also very sweetly brought me flowers, a beautiful arrangement of lilies that made the hotel room very fragrant. Tulip did a great job coping with all the demands on her vocabulary; she hadn’t encountered much science fiction before and we even had her buying The Three-Body Problem by the end of the trip.

September 19
Wuhou district Sci-fi town
Xinhua.net and interview
Dinner – hot pot!

In the morning we went for a tour of The Wisesoft virtual reality studio, and learned a lot about the Wuhou District, in a meeting that included Jing Gong, Director of the Chengdu Wuhou District Broadcasting Press and Publication Bureau, After that we went to Xinhua.net, where I did a couple of interviews and spent some pleasant time with JingJing’s boss Dawei Hou, and Vice President, Jiangying Shen.

Dinner was Mongolian hot pot! The next morning JingJing brought me a bunch of hot pot makings and then an early morning trip through Chengdu streets followed by tearful farewells at the airport.

Things I Learned about Chinese SF

Some writers I want to point to so I have their names stuck here for future reading. Many of them were there at the Nebulas.

Que A, Shu Bao, Liu Bing, Zhang Cao, Xia Chao, Hongyu Chen, Qiufan Chen, Jingbo Cheng, Bessie Gu, Bo Jiang, Ni Kuang, Xingshi Liu, Yang Lu, Xe Lv, Xiong Mo, Hu Shaoyan, Han Song, Jinkang Wang, He Xi, Xinghan Xiao, Wang Xiaoda, Jian Wu, Huang Yi, Ran Zhang, Wenjing Zhang, Jun Zheng, Zinghzi Zhou

In all of this, I should mention that more than anyone else, Ken Liu has really led the way and shaped SF decades to come by bringing so much attention to Chinese SF. Cixin Liu (who gave me a copy of his third book that I am looking forward to finishing this week) may be Da Liu in China, but surely Ken deserves his own descriptor.

Traveling Tips for Other American SF Writers Visiting China for the First Time

Wifi is everywhere, but the Internet can be frustrating. Facebook and Twitter are censored in China; Wechat is a Chinese version of Facebook that is very popular. I started the trip with just a couple friends on Wechat and now have several dozen. (I am Catrambo on Wechat; feel free to add me.) One implication of the Facebook/Twitter ban is that if you have plug-ins from either social network on your website Chinese readers will have to use a VPN to access your website, which is why I’ve removed the Twitter plugin from my site. It is pretty easy to get a VPN connection through various applications however.

An important note for Americans: water is different there. You cannot drink tap water (I would be careful even using it to rinse after brushing one’s teeth) and sometimes where American restaurants routinely provide water, Chinese establishments will not. For example, I got in the habit of taking a bottle with me to breakfast in Beijing, because the only drink provided there was hot milk, along with a lot of tasty but very dry food.

The food is GREAT — particularly if you are willing to be adventurous. Stuff I ate there that I’ve never had in America included two variations on chicken feet, pork brains and throats, duck guts, tiny eels — and that’s just what stood out. In Chengdu in particular, it was amazing, but spicily yummy. Jing Jing was very kind about buying all sorts of treats for us: spicy nuts, ding-ding candy, fruit, and more. She even brought me Mongolian hot pot makings, and I’m trying that tonight, after a trip to Uwajimaya. If you are a very picky eater or have dealbreaker food allergies, you may want to make sure you’ve got an emergency supply sufficient for a few meals with you.

Along the same practical lines, a friend told me they were worried about the toilets. Well, they are a different mode than we see here in the US, but anyone who’s survived toilets someplace like a concert or a county fair is probably going to be able to navigate the worst of it. I dunno. What one is doing remains much the same worldwide. You should remember to carry a few tissues with you; you’ll need it maybe one in three times.

People are super nice overall. Schoolkids in particular want to test out the English they’re learning in school and will Hello how are you and/or ask for a photo with you. While out sightseeing, I noticed people noticing us but it never felt obtrusive or creepy and they would often smile and exchange greetings. This is a point where people’s mileage may vary considerably — I am usually in the midpoint between introvert and extrovert, but have found that the SFWA presidency has nudged me over to extrovert by about 20 points.

Generally the degree of enthusiasm most American SF writers not familiar with the culture will feel while in China will depend greatly on their ability to operate outside their comfort zone and willingness to be a little flexible, patient, and find misunderstandings funny rather than frustrating. My happiness with the trip is shaped from how much I fell in love with the language and culture as I prepped for the trip, and I know this has been a life-changer in at least a few ways. For one, I’m much more aware of Chinese SF and likely to seek it out. For another, I’m keeping up with my Mandarin study/practice. And finally, I know some of the friendship I made during the trip are ones that will last and deepen in coming years.

Overall, I came away from this trip filled with a great deal of joy and optimism for the future. I was reminded that while there may be all sorts of weird convulsions in the day to day course of things, humanity continues to plod onward and that the motion is generally upward, even when the speed of that trend may not be all we’d hoped. A lot of the casual sexism, racism, and classism I saw as a child or teen is gone, even though sometimes it seems as though it keeps trying to manifest in new shaggy-haired forms. Now China is opening up and with it even more new voices. Fabulous!

Will I go back? Yup. In fact, I’ve already pencilled the Chinese Nebulas in on my 2017 calendar and if I can make it sooner, I may, because I really did enjoy the folks and the sights and everything to the point where I was saddened to leave, plus there are a bunch of things I missed that I want to go back for.

Some resources for additional reading:
An article about SF World, China’s Science Fiction publication
SF fan and news organization Future Affairs Administration associated with Guokr Publishing.
World of Chinese magazine. Article on the history of Chinese SF.
Article on the Three Generals of Chinese SF
Life Week Magazine