James Carker, Personal Secretary
In which Surreal Tender has a visitor
[As promised, Surreal Tender, the technomancer. How you can be a technomancer in a steampunk setting is a conundrum. I expect Mr. Crowley will figure into the answer, or perhaps Mr. Tesla. That is, if we hear any more about her. I have no idea what kind of danger she’s in, do you?]
“Mr. Carker?”
He stood in the doorway, slender and elegantly suited. Hair pale to white. His spectacles gleamed, but she couldn’t see his other features well for the spill of sun through the smeary window. Dust motes drifted.
“The same, madam.”
She did not need to stand; this was her office, after all. Her gear hung on every wall and surrounded the workbench, which she kept cleared for action.
She’d taken the smaller table as a desk. She sat behind this desk on a swivel chair with a wooden seat. Her hipbones, leaded silver, could not feel the pressure any more than the steely, semiorganic muscles that surrounded them or the lunite filaments of her nerves. Standing would be beneath her dignity, but she did not mind that Mr. Carker must be taking in her booted feet extending beyond the table, crossed at the slender ankles — she was well over 6 feet tall.
“Please, sit.”
He pulled up the workbench stool, the only other seat in the room.
She picked up a typed document and examined it. “I’m not sure I understand your application. I didn’t advertise for a personal secretary.”
Out of the full sun, the man looked less imposing. He might be between 50 and 60 years old. His short, tight comb-back was silver as much as white-gold. He had a narrow face — maybe a little more width across the cheekbones — a lipless mouth, and a long nose. His glasses made his gray eyes large and liquid. She studied those glasses for a minute. No alchemy. Just glass, ground to a strong prescription. His eyesight must be terrible, she thought.
He let her look her fill. “And yet you answered my letter and set an appointment.”
“Don’t spar with me, boy, not if you want the position.”
“Boy, madam?”
“This — ” she touched her head with its close-shorn black hair, indicating the mind inside — “is 96 years old — old enough to be your mother, I’d wager. But this — ”
Here she indicated her body, an art nouveau sculpture human in general outline, but more greyhound than woman, more Wilhelm Binder cutlery than greyhound.
“I inherited this from my mistress, the engineer Diana von Birkhauser.”
“One hundred twenty-seven years old,” he murmured.
She looked sharply at him. Her orbital vibrated soundlessly — a moth’s-wing tickle, which she’d learned to ignore decades ago — as her quicksilver iris adjusted to regard him more narrowly.
“The chassis, yes. But it’s only been 50 years since we replaced my heart.”
“The great Samuel Binder.”
Engineer, physician — it had made all the papers. But old news now, too old for this boy to remember. He must have researched. Her kind — for there were others like her in the great city, falling into decrepitude as their engineers died and nobody trained to replace them — was now little more than a curiosity. A marvel in its day, of course —
She nodded. “You’re interested in more than an income, I think.”
“I can command a great deal more money than you can pay … if that was my object.” Mr. Carker looked almost as if he had smiled. “But I’m prepared to live modestly. Very modestly indeed.”
“What are your qualifications? — Oh, I’ve read your letter. No need to repeat your skill at the typing machine or the testimonials on your good character and discretion.”
Mr. Carker reached into the breast of that well-kept, well-laundered gray coat. He’d been living modestly some time, she reckoned. He pulled out a letter and held it out to her.
“I admire you,” he said, looking at the letter, not her face. “Or at least your kind; I know nothing about you personally. It’s — you’re — a boyhood fancy of mine. That’s the grossest impertinence, of course, I don’t contest it.”
She took the letter.
He lifted his head, met her gaze and held it.
“I was a junior clerk for von Birkhausen Laboratories before they went into receivership. It was my duty to sort and destroy the remaining records. I did not do so, or not completely. One ledger box I stole. Having leisure for boredom since my last employer died, I read through the contents of that box, unopened these 25 years. I have reason to believe you’re in mortal danger.”