Maybe it’s just the sleep deprivation. Florian has decided to cry almost constantly, and I’m fighting to stay awake and alert.
Maybe something is wrong with me. Maybe I’m going crazy. I keep thinking I see film characters in the corners of my eyes, but then when I turn of course there’s nobody there. And I haven’t been to the flickers in almost six months now…
I’d known new motherhood could be lonely, but this rang all my alarm bells. I made a note of the entry and forged on.
Today I went to see Jason. Florian’s father.
Well, now we were getting somewhere. Jason wasn’t the father, of course—but I only knew that because of Ferry. Flora would have had to make the best guess she could.
I couldn’t tell him about his son directly, of course—not before I knew what he’d want. So I told him about a script I was working on, a made-up one, where someone had a baby and the parents stopped updating their memory-books so the ship wouldn’t become aware of the baby’s existence. It was a great sacrifice they made, I said, very beautiful. Don’t you think that’s beautiful?
Horrible man that he is, helaughed.
“I know children are supposed to be a person’s legacy—but come on, Flora, memory-books are where the real immortality’s at. Listen, here’s how I’d write it…” And he made it one of his usual pieces, where the baby was a teenager forced to grow up too fast and the mother was addicted to memory cocktails and the father had to retromat a gun for some made-up reason. Jason’s never even held a gun before—he was a grocery store manager on Earth before Embarkation—so I don’t know why he’s so romantic about them. Granted, his scenarios are quite popular with a certain set—they can even be stylish, when someone with Anne’s talents is projecting them—but this only confirmedmy notion that as fun as it’s been, the affair has burned itself out.
He’ll have forgotten all about this conversation by next week. I’ll break it off then.
I set the diary aside. Flora had thought Jason was the father, and had all but told him so. Had he seen through her hypotheticals to the truth beneath? Had he discovered the baby and felt possessive, or jealous?
It was clear I’d have to have a chat with the man. After I spoke with Flora, of course.
I left everything in the apartment as it was—but I took the diary with me. It pulled down my jacket pocket, a weight made of secrets.
BACK AT THEPalace, the poster on the window was advertising a new flicker, starting in fifteen minutes:Alias Lady Danger, it read, all silhouettes and shadows. A skyscraper was somehow also a burning cigarette; another was the barrel of a gun; behind them all loomed a svelte woman in a silver frock, her red lips the only spot of color in the image.
Perhaps I deserved a little respite. I nodded to Flora and Anne, and settled in for the show.
Flora’s diary had been right: Anne really was a brilliant projectionist. The scenario itself was a bauble—but the faces, the costumes, the dialogue she put in brought it to life, as Flora’s fingers poured out a stream of glittering notes on the piano to keep the whole thing bobbing along.
In the flicker, a lady detective had to solve the murder of a wealthy industrialist and was torn between the industrialist’s dashing young heir and a quiet housemaid with a murky past.Standard stuff, but sharply and snappily done—at the end of the film the heir had been revealed as the killer, the housemaid had been revealed as the true heiress, and she and the detective waltzed off into the sunset together.
If only real life could be so easily and quickly resolved.
The night scenes did indeed try to flip to day—little stutters in the frames, like something fighting to get free. I squinted my eyes against them defensively. Anne cleverly turned one into a thunderstorm, which turned an otherwise cliché balcony love scene into something sinister and fraught. When the lights came up I leaned back in my chair and waited.
Flora went for the hoover. A tallish older man with hair like wings over his ears moved to the back, plucking the skimmer from Anne’s head. “I know just what the problem is,” he said eagerly, and pulled out a slim screwdriver.
Jason Ipcar could wait: I wanted to watch this technician at work.
The inside of a skimmer was all metal pins and memory-glass tubing. I could hardly tell where anything started or finished, but Winged Hair tightened something on one side, long fingers sure and steady. “You’re just too mighty for this poor device, Mother,” said the man I now guessed was Norris. “Your night scenes are so vivid that you set one of the connections loose.”
“Would imagining more contrast in the scene help any, if it happens again?” Anne asked. “I could always go a bit moreCaligariwith things. Or you could always teach me how to fix it myself.”
“And give up my secrets? Never,” Norris replied. Flora rolled her eyes and Anne laughed fondly; this had the cadence of an old and much-cherished argument. “Here,” the man said, resting the skimmer on Anne’s head again. “Give her a try.”
The projectionist glanced around; aside from myself, the rest of the audience had wandered back out onto the deck in search of food. She caught my eye and something defiant rose up in her face. “Would you like to see the night I found the baby, Miss Gentleman?”
“Why, yes,” I said, smiling serenely and ignoring the way Norris’s eyes widened and Flora’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of the baby. “What a good idea.”
The lights went down at a touch of the projectionist’s hand. And there on the wall was theFairweatherat night, its long decks quiescent, its solar lamps turned silver with imitation moonlight.
Flora’s secret apartment loomed onscreen like a Gothic manor, as a ghostly hand I presumed was Anne Godfrey’s reached out and keyed open the door with a touch. “You had access?” I asked.
“I took a chance that Flora would have programmed me into the lock,” Anne said.
“Of course I would,” Flora murmured.
There was the living room, a dark mass. Norris truly had repaired the skimmer, for the black was steady and unrelenting until Anne-on-screen toggled on the lights. “Gosh, that’s bleak,” Flora said. “Look how lonely I was without you, Anne.”
