cheerily, and stood in his chair to pour us both more champagne.
Lewis felt better after a while and lurched upright, just in time to hear
La Valse
by Ravel pulse into its opening chords.
“I wondered when they’d play that,” he groaned. “That’s Houbert’s favorite piece of music, you know. After
The Phantom of the Opera.”
The lights in the ballroom deepened to an ominous and weird purple.
“Well, it’s appropriate for tonight, anyhow,” said Mendoza. “The way it evokes glittering empires about to crumble. Music full of death. God, that’s spooky. Look at everybody!”
I peered out on the dance floor, and I swear I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand. Houbert had worked some trick of lighting, some perversely brilliant special effect, that gave the illusion of death masks on each perfect clockwork dancer who skimmed the ballroom floor in time to that terrible, beautiful music. Swooping and circling, they moved, so many skeletons in satin clothes.
No, wait. They weren’t
human
skeletons. Something was picking up the alloy frame in each of them, the machine that had replaced their mortal, breakable bones, the indestructible casing that held their brains and eyes. Was it some quality in the purple light that caused them to glow through the flesh?
No, not the light—or at least not the light alone. The champagne we’d all been given! He’d had it adulterated with something, some chemical harmless in itself, or we’d have detected it in the first taste. That was what was making our hardware glow.
Slowly I looked down at my own hands. Fine jointed mechanisms riveted to a pivoting frame that disappeared into my lace cuffs. I tried to look at Lewis and Mendoza without turning my head much. They were staring out at the dancers with haunted eyes; they hadn’t noticed that they too were part of the show, a dapper gentleman skeleton machine and a lissome skull-faced lady machine. And Latif? Well, he wasn’t glowing much, because less of him had been replaced, you see. Just a little machine, yet.
And as the music soared to its crashing close, a deafeningchime was heard—two, three, four. The chimes kept coming, and the clock was striking midnight. Happy Hellish New Year, 1700! Things like snakes began to fall from the ceiling, and of course they were only black streamers. Our Mayan waiters began to blow paper horns and crank noisemakers. The waltz ended, and the lights came up. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing, the classic soupy Guy Lombardo arrangement.
Lewis looked gray and tired. Mendoza was pale, shaking. I thought she must have noticed the ugly illusion at our own table—well, not illusion, after all—but she drew a deep breath and said very quietly:
“Oh, how I hate parties. Here we sit tonight, and do you realize how unlikely it is any of us four will ever be together in the same room again?”
Was it loneliness she was afraid of? I reached out my hand to clasp hers.
“Hey, kiddo, you’ll see
me
again. We’re going on the same assignment together, remember?”
She bared her teeth at me.
CHAPTER TEN
B UT WE FOUND OURSELVES ON the same transport the next morning, strapped into our seats and watching New World One drop away beneath us.
“It was time for you to move on anyway,” I told Mendoza consolingly. “It was stuffy. Decadent. Dull. Nothing should be decadent
and
dull.”
“Your father was a Moorish groom and your mother performed circumcisions on sailors,” she informed me.
“Hey, that’s okay. I know you’re not really sore. You’re going to love it in California.”
“I won’t be able to get a cocktail there for at least a hundred years,” she brooded. “And longer, for a Ghirardelli’s hot fudge sundae.”
“Well, you hated parties anyway.”
She just snarled and opened her magazine, shutting me out. I didn’t mind; do I ever mind? I’m only the guy who gave her eternal life, after all. I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. Forty winks after
Lewis felt better after a while and lurched upright, just in time to hear
La Valse
by Ravel pulse into its opening chords.
“I wondered when they’d play that,” he groaned. “That’s Houbert’s favorite piece of music, you know. After
The Phantom of the Opera.”
The lights in the ballroom deepened to an ominous and weird purple.
“Well, it’s appropriate for tonight, anyhow,” said Mendoza. “The way it evokes glittering empires about to crumble. Music full of death. God, that’s spooky. Look at everybody!”
I peered out on the dance floor, and I swear I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand. Houbert had worked some trick of lighting, some perversely brilliant special effect, that gave the illusion of death masks on each perfect clockwork dancer who skimmed the ballroom floor in time to that terrible, beautiful music. Swooping and circling, they moved, so many skeletons in satin clothes.
No, wait. They weren’t
human
skeletons. Something was picking up the alloy frame in each of them, the machine that had replaced their mortal, breakable bones, the indestructible casing that held their brains and eyes. Was it some quality in the purple light that caused them to glow through the flesh?
No, not the light—or at least not the light alone. The champagne we’d all been given! He’d had it adulterated with something, some chemical harmless in itself, or we’d have detected it in the first taste. That was what was making our hardware glow.
Slowly I looked down at my own hands. Fine jointed mechanisms riveted to a pivoting frame that disappeared into my lace cuffs. I tried to look at Lewis and Mendoza without turning my head much. They were staring out at the dancers with haunted eyes; they hadn’t noticed that they too were part of the show, a dapper gentleman skeleton machine and a lissome skull-faced lady machine. And Latif? Well, he wasn’t glowing much, because less of him had been replaced, you see. Just a little machine, yet.
And as the music soared to its crashing close, a deafeningchime was heard—two, three, four. The chimes kept coming, and the clock was striking midnight. Happy Hellish New Year, 1700! Things like snakes began to fall from the ceiling, and of course they were only black streamers. Our Mayan waiters began to blow paper horns and crank noisemakers. The waltz ended, and the lights came up. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing, the classic soupy Guy Lombardo arrangement.
Lewis looked gray and tired. Mendoza was pale, shaking. I thought she must have noticed the ugly illusion at our own table—well, not illusion, after all—but she drew a deep breath and said very quietly:
“Oh, how I hate parties. Here we sit tonight, and do you realize how unlikely it is any of us four will ever be together in the same room again?”
Was it loneliness she was afraid of? I reached out my hand to clasp hers.
“Hey, kiddo, you’ll see
me
again. We’re going on the same assignment together, remember?”
She bared her teeth at me.
CHAPTER TEN
B UT WE FOUND OURSELVES ON the same transport the next morning, strapped into our seats and watching New World One drop away beneath us.
“It was time for you to move on anyway,” I told Mendoza consolingly. “It was stuffy. Decadent. Dull. Nothing should be decadent
and
dull.”
“Your father was a Moorish groom and your mother performed circumcisions on sailors,” she informed me.
“Hey, that’s okay. I know you’re not really sore. You’re going to love it in California.”
“I won’t be able to get a cocktail there for at least a hundred years,” she brooded. “And longer, for a Ghirardelli’s hot fudge sundae.”
“Well, you hated parties anyway.”
She just snarled and opened her magazine, shutting me out. I didn’t mind; do I ever mind? I’m only the guy who gave her eternal life, after all. I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. Forty winks after
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