Year's Best SF 15 - By David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer Page 0,207

bit famous for a time. He invented the phonograph, you may recall?” The colonel shook his head. “In any event, I only spoke with him briefly when he secured his spot in the hall, but it appeared that he’d sunk his fortunes into electricity years ago, and simply couldn’t see a way out.”

“Electricity?” the colonel repeated, disbelievingly. “Why-ever for?”

Robinson shrugged. “Who can say? I tried to explain to him that there simply wasn’t any call for such things, not with prometheic steam engines and lights and automation and such, that he might as well try selling butter-churns. But Edison was not to be deterred. He had that wild-eyed look you see in religious zealots, you know the type? He was determined to find a way to make his…now what did he call them? Oh yes, his dynamos profitable.”

“That’s a ‘dynamo’ out front, I take it?” Rice asked.

The Machinery chief nodded. “Sad, isn’t it? Still, Edison wasn’t the only one. I’ve heard of a number of inventors and investors who’d hung all their hopes on electricity, in the years before prometheum really took hold. Most ended up going off into industries or trades, sooner or later. I even heard of one, a Serbian I believe, who became a writer of cheap fictions.” He looked back to the dead man on the ground, grimacing at the gruesome sight. “Clearly, though, Edison hadn’t been able to adapt. And it got him in the end. Unless I’m mistaken, he shows every sign of being electrocuted.”

One of the Guards stepped forward, and Chabane recognized him as the one from the Midway who was so quick with the racial epithets. “What do these dyna…dynami…dyna…” He shook his head. “What do these things have to do with this ‘Latter-Day Lazarus’ business? Was your man here intending to raise the dead with this electric thing?”

“If he was,” another Guard called from the rear of the shack, “I think he was doing it one piece at a time.” The Guard held aloft a severed arm, far too large to have come off any monkey.

“Jesus wept!” Rice spat, rearing back.

The Guards began muttering to one another, and Chabane distinctly heard several mentions of “grave-robbing” and “workmen’s bodies.”

“What?” Chabane said, stepping forward, for the first time making his presence known. “What did you say about the workmen’s graves?”

The others turned to him, most of them seeming to notice him for the first time.

“You’re that Jew’s Arab, aren’t you?” the colonel said, narrowing his gaze.

Chabane drew himself up straighter, and in perfect Queen’s English replied, “I am Kabyle, sir, and not of Arab descent, but I am presently in the employ of Mr. Bloom, if that is what you mean.” His hands at his sides tightened into fists, but he managed to maintain a calm exterior. “What was the mention of grave-robbing and the remains of the workmen?”

Rice glanced to Robinson, who looked as confused as Chabane, and then back. “It’s not public knowledge, and if the papers get word of it I’ll know where from. But some of the graves to the south have been disturbed, and the bodies laid to rest there have gone missing.”

“Would that include the Algerian who drowned in the lake?” Chabane asked.

Rice shrugged. “Only the Christian graves are marked, as I understand it.”

Chabane ignored Rice, and looked back to the barrels, from which the Guards were still pulling cadaver parts. There were severed hands and feet, a leg, two arms, bits of skulls, even a complete torso. He bared his teeth in a snarl, and turned to look down on the dead man on the floor. “My grandmothers always said that no one is to be lamented who dies during Ramadan, during which the gates of hell are closed and those of heaven always open. It doesn’t seem quite right that a man such as this should get into the gates of heaven uncontested, even if he was murdered.”

“Now hold on,” Rice objected, holding up his hands. “No one said anything about murder.”

“They didn’t?” Robinson asked, eyebrows raised.

Rice turned to the chief of Machinery, fixing him with a hard glare. “You yourself said this was an electrocution, right? An accidental electrocution?”

Robinson’s hands fluttered like caged birds. “I suppose it could have been,” he allowed. “But what about…”—he waved at the broken glass, the scattered tools, the splattered blood and viscera—“…all of this?”

“This,” Rice said evenly, “could well be simple vandalism. And vandalism is an entirely different order of magnitude to murder. Murder will get plastered over