"The ship had to move just slightly," I said. "To better adjust our orbit around Purth-Anaget."
"No," Armand hissed. "My descent profile has changed. You are trying to kill me."
"I can’t kill you," I told the former CEO. "My programming doesn’t allow it. I can’t allow a death through action or inaction."
"But my navigation path has changed," Armand said.
"Yes, you will still reach Purth-Anaget." Navigation and I had run the data after I explained that I would have the resources of a full share to repay it a favor with. Even a favor that meant tricking security. One of the more powerful computing entities in the galaxy, a starship, had dwelled on the problem. It had examined the tidal data, the flight plan, and how much the massive weight of a starship could influence a pod after launch. "You’re just taking a longer route."
I cut the connection so that Armand could say nothing more to me. It could do the math itself and realize what I had done.
Armand would not die. Only a few days would pass inside the pod.
But outside. Oh, outside, skimming through the tidal edges of a black hole, Armand would loop out and fall back to Purth-Anaget over the next four hundred and seventy years, two hundred days, eight hours, and six minutes.
Armand would be an ancient relic then. Its beliefs, its civilization, all of it just a fragment from history.
But, until then, I had to follow its command. I could not tell anyone what happened. I had to keep it a secret from security. No one would ever know Armand had been here. No one would ever know where Armand went.
After I vested and had free will once more, maybe I could then make a side trip to Purth-Anaget again and be waiting for Armand when it landed. I had the resources of a full share, after all.
Then we would have a very different conversation, Armand and I.
(2018)
DOLLY SODOM
John Kaiine
John Kaiine was born in 1967 and brought up in Roehampton in south west London. "There was a huge hospital," he writes, "Queen Mary’s. It shared its space with the Limb-Fitting-Centre, the first home of artificial limbs in England. My excellent mum and brother worked there and I was often brought home discarded artificial hands and arms to play with." The husband of Tanith Lee, with whom he occasionally collaborated, John Kaiine is a professional photographer and artist. His comic work includes My Closest Friend (1989), illustrated by Dave McKean. His 2004 novel Fossil Circus tells the story of four ex-psychiatric patients who are bequeathed a Victorian lunatic asylum by their psychoanalyst.
It is not raining, but that does not matter. Smith leaves the tram and crosses the street. He wears a white trench coat, carries a suitcase. He has no hat. Night has started, the lights have been lit. Detail is bleached out: his shadow lacks substance. He turns a corner, and there before him is The Years Hotel.
The door is ajar, always open. He climbs the iron steps and enters.
In the lobby there are cards on a platter on a tall wooden stand. Vellum cards, white, edged in black, bearing the legend CALL AGAIN. CALL AGAIN.
"Yes?" There is a man’s voice behind him. Smith turns. The Man with the voice wears an old boater; pallid strip of ribbon around the brim.
"Yes?" says the Man.
His mouth flaps, he shifts the suitcase from one hand to the other. Grey folded eyes, dull as dreams. He speaks, wiping fingers to his mouth: "I’ve a… I’ve a hankering for regret."
The Man says nothing. Stands there, looking. A bug skits about the light.
Smith cannot swallow. He should turn and walk away, should never have had those old thoughts. And then he remembers. He must ask. Request. "Hair," he says, "I like hair."
"Room 8. Top floor," says the Man.
Smith, toward the stairs.
Somewhere, someone breathes.
When he has his foot firm on the bottom step, he throws a fleeting glance round at the Man: Eyes in the shadow of the brim of his hat. Smith tells him, "I’m not proud of what I do."
The Man would laugh, but has forgotten how.
Smith climbs the stairs. The decorative dead haunt the walls: Faded red roses on withered wallpaper. He reaches the first floor, turns down a corridor, passing a door behind which he hears a rustling sound, a voice whispering, confetti in the mouth, repeating the word, "sorry," over and over. He hurries on.
On the second floor there is a room in which all that hangs in its wardrobe are flypapers.
He lingers outside a room, hearing the stroking of sepia photographs. The pornography of nostalgia. The passion for shadows. On the fourth floor he can smell burnt blossoms.
It is rumored that there is a room up on the seventh, full of moths, where one can spend frail moments wrapped in a silk shroud awaiting the delicate mouths of moths, nibbling… devoured by hours.
The top floor is webby. Dust has shattered mirrors. Clocks have drowned in the dampness. Room 8 stands before him.
Smith pulls the door open, steps in. It is a little room of dry plaster walls, there is a bunk, a wireless, a candle on a table, and in one corner there stands the Doll. The door flaps shut behind him. A burnt-out light bulb hangs from the ceiling. He lights a match, and soon there is candlelight burning in an old tin cup.
He hears movement in a room below, pipes rattling, water running. Someone weeps, prays, washing away life with soap.
He takes from the suitcase a stoppered vase full of rain. A stolen puddle. He produces other things also.
He approaches the Doll, crouches before it, will not let himself touch the porcelain smooth face or fragile white hands. It was an early model, almost antique, but then he liked the past, the old thoughts of rain and hair and…
The Doll is four feet in height, the usual perfect face of lips and lashes. The modest pigtail of coarse grey hair. She wears a blue dress, blue as eyes. And beneath, he lifts the hem, the garment of grey. Smith strips her, touching only clothing.
The Doll is naked now in her whiteness, with just the hint of shade in the rounds of her contours, and there, behind, between her legs is the simple aperture, the slot for the coin. Stamped above it, the ancient logo of RAMPION INC., and beneath, the word or command, "ENJOY."
He rummages through his pockets, pulls out a fist of copper pennies. Careful then, behind the Doll, dropping loose change into the slot. The coins clatter, collect internally. Little machineries grind softly, cogs whir and twitter, her hair begins to grow, coiling out from the hole in her head. The more money installed the more hair grows. He will not look, cannot. His hand shakes, he turns away, unknowingly brushing by her, nudging her into motion. She topples light, from foot to foot. Side to side. Unseen. Forward.
He switches the wireless on. There is the hum of old electricity. A machine warmth and cadmium yellow glow fill the room. He reads at names on the wireless tuner, remembering. "Brussels, Helsinki, Luxembourg…" A soft trumpet breaks in through static, and then a piano with crooner crooning, blending a melody. He removes things from the suitcase: Bible pages, torn, stained. A dried daisy chain.
He cannot hear the Doll as she teeters toward the door, coins rattling heavy inside her, buying the growth of harsh grey silk from her white hollow head.
Smith wants to look, to see her standing there, her hair about her, tumbling to the floor, but he will wait and concentrate on the music until he can wait no more and then he will turn and read from the fragments of Isaiah and Deuteronomy and he will drape the dead daisies over her eyes and…
The Doll has tottered into the door, nudged it open, continued out. A draft of air snuffing the candle’s flame. She has taken the light with her. There is only the dim orange glow of the wireless now. Wax smoke shifting in the gloom.