Vicesteed

My second novel, Vicesteed, is a steampunk science fiction novel that is equal proportions locked-room murder mystery, exploration of how society forms identity, and high-octane quest for vengeance. Who can resist a science fiction story with sex, violence, romance, spaceships, androids, Victorian England, exploding clockwork sculptures, robots, and a locked-room murder? I'm currently working on the 2nd draft (or is it the third?) of Vicesteed.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Night mist swirled around Valinda's boots as she walked through the empty street. She heard a faint buzzing, barely audible, as the neon signs that lined the street flickered, died, and were reborn. The only other sounds were her stiletto boot heels striking the asphalt and the splash when she stepped in a dank puddle.

She looked up. At night, the overcast sky glowed with the pollution-tainted yellow light of the city, and during the day, the sun filtered sullenly through gray clouds that never lifted.

Her maquillage mask was tuned to “vulnerable.” Dark pigments absorbed the scattered light around her eyes, sinking them into darkness. Her tear duct implant released a minute amount of opiate to dilate her pupils. Her pupils falsely promised arousal, fear, fight-or-flight reflexes keyed high. A nano-army in her circulatory system suppressed flushed capillaries, leaving her skin wan. Red-stained titanium dioxide glistened on her lips.

Epinephrine rushed through Valinda's veins, dilating her bronchioles and making her heart race, preparing her for the performance which was to come.

She paused, tossed her luxurious blonde hair over an artistically bared shoulder, and cast a frightened glance behind her. She clutched her purse to her side. She vainly attempted to tug down her short red skirt. The street was empty of traffic, but she knew she wasn't alone.

Skeins of wire traced her bones and threaded through her veins, feeding her actions and reactions to an unknown veinjockey at the other end of the transmission. The sensory input was all one way, and it only imitated the twitches of her nerves, the odor molecules that tickled her nose, the chemicals that ran in her veins, the sights the vidlenses in her eyes recorded. When blood flooded her mouth, the rider would share the copper tang of blood and some of the pain.

The next day, Valinda would be the only one with a bruise across her jaw.

Suddenly, the streetlights blinked off, leaving her in muggy darkness. She gave a small whimper; in her training, she'd gotten high marks in non-verbal communication. The lamps shuddered back on.

A bright flare of light blinded Valinda. She felt herself rising up out of the darkness, floating towards the end of the tunnel. A choir of angels sang around her. She felt their warm welcome. She sensed her family nearby. Part of her knew it was only a bad drug interaction, but she didn't care. She strained to see their faces through the glare of white light. Her brain struggled to access damaged memories.

Murdock’s nuclear family hypothesis posits that the nuclear family...is the standard or idealized familial structure. Variations include the polygamous family and the extended family model, her wisdom chip chimed in.

The only memories she had left were recent: continuous dark and starless nights; the sour taste of vomit in the back of her throat; the sharp ache of needles penetrating her veins; and the cuts opening on her fingers as she punched out glass windows, one after another.

Valinda's past was dead, minced into an unrecognizable jumble by a Lizzie Borden veinjockey's ax. They'd told her that when she woke up with no memories, a ridged scar on her scalp, and a wisdom chip implanted in her brain.

The heavenly light winked out. Valinda's eyes blurred for a second, from tears or from the aftereffects of the Tunnel-of-Light drug. She was overdue for a system flush, but she delayed purging as long as she could. After each viceride, she would go in to have the rider dismounted, but that was it.

When her veins were overloaded, ghosts of externally-imposed fantasies kept company with her, inducing a bizarrely twisted form of what the wisdom chip called hypermnesia. They were all she had.

Shaking off her daze, she started walking again. She clasped her arms as if she were cold, though her circulatory system had been reinforced to support the constant influx of affect-altering drugs.

She glanced around as if she were lost. She took a few halting, half-running steps.

A low chuckle floated out of the darkness. Valinda clasped her hands together and backed away.

A burly man stepped out of the alley in front of her.

"Going somewhere, ladybird?" he asked.

Valinda gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she shrank back against the wall. Light glimmered over the liquid crystal surface of her nails. She began to plead with him to not harm her, while she tried to figure out who the other vicesteed was. Richard, she remembered. He was a new steed; he'd only been on a couple of other runs. He squatted down the street from her place.

Not all of her fear was acting. The phobia drugs they'd pumped into her for this ride were kicking in. Her skin felt like it was trying to crawl off of her, and the filaments of hair on the back of her neck stood straight up. Her heart began to race as she stumbled backwards down the street. There was a large chunk of concrete she'd noticed a few moments ago, perfect to trip over. When she fell, she let out a whimper and scrabbled away from Richard on her hands and knees. A part of her mind noted that she'd need to apply skin patches before she went to sleep tonight. Her palms and knees burned, and when she moved she felt the grit of silica inside the abrasions.

She gathered her skills and forced abject horror into her eyes. "Please," she begged, "please don't hurt me. I've got money." She fumbled towards her purse, which had landed a few feet away.

"I'm not interested in money." Richard leered and stomped on her hand. "Not when I've got you, luv."

That was neither necessary nor professional. This ride was supposed to be a simple mugging with a light beating. Richard seemed to have other ideas.

Valinda bit her lip, hoping it looked like she was frightened instead of trying to fight down anger. She heard the beat of her heart speeding and felt new energy flooding her veins. She wondered if she should try to run away. She eyed Richard. No, she'd better not. He wasn't as strong or as augmented as she was, and it would ruin her rider's illusion if she had to slow down to let him catch her.

Richard smiled, his lips twisting into a snarl. A glint in his eyes warned Valinda that his pleasure was not feigned. She wondered if he had volunteered to be a vicesteed simply because he liked it. She couldn't remember why she had.

She whimpered, trying to crawl away.

"And where do you think you're going?" Richard growled. She closed her eyes against the floating sparks of light invading her vision. Her brow furrowed as she tried to hold the drug bleedthrough at bay. This was not a good time.

"Closing your eyes isn't going to make me go away, luv," Richard said.

The bleedthrough heightened the truth that surrounded her: the rough grit of concrete beneath her palms; the cold air prickling her skin into goosebumps; the malice in the other vicesteed's smile; the damp kiss of the thick night fog against her face; and the fear that she knew was no longer drug-induced.

She tried to overcome the surges of adrenaline with sheer logic. This was scripted, this was expected, this was what she'd been told would happen.

She scrambled to her feet. She could outrun him easily.

The glare of the streetlights blinded her as she turned her head from side to side, trying to decide where she could run. There was no sanctuary for her on this street.

Richard wrenched her arm up behind her. While she hesitated, he'd closed the distance.

"Running won't do you any good," he murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her skin.

Valinda didn't move. Panic skittered through her. Her right arm was immobilized; she couldn't turn, and she couldn't escape.

Her shoulder joint throbbed. Even without added pressure, it pained her sometimes. After it had been dislocated, the nightingale had merely pushed it back into alignment, as her wisdom chip tried to respond.

She groaned, unforced tears coming to her eyes.

"Ah, you like that," Richard said.

He pushed her elbow up, forcing her arm into a more agonizing angle. All she could think of was the pain. Images cascaded through her mind as her wisdom chip tried to respond: a horse throwing a rider; a patient in traction, grinning at the camera; a diagram of the shoulder that muttered Latin incantations in her ear, Deltoideus, subscapularis, supraspinata, infraspinata; a short man with intense eyes standing on a scaffold, wearing a straightjacket.

Houdini smiled and took a bow. A chain was hooked to his legs and he was drawn into the air. He was the hanged man, and still he smiled. He writhed in midair, his body undergoing fantastic contortions, and then he was free. His grin looked forced. Smoke and mirrors. Magic. Scarves slid up sleeves and coins flipped across fingers and deftly palmed. Lock picks and amazing muscle control. Straightjackets and dislocated shoulders.

Tendrils of agony spread through Valinda's nerves when she tried to move her imprisoned arm. She shifted her weight and rammed her captured shoulder hard against Richard's chest.

The instant her shoulder became dislocated was trapped in time. She heard a popping sound and felt the grate of bone on bone as her shoulder left the socket. She turned to her right, floating queasily on endorphins. Richard looked shocked, as if her breaking the scenario was a worse offense than him nearly breaking her arm. He raised his hands, disclaiming responsibility. She couldn't let him get away with that. She threw a punch at him with all her strength. She felt the cartilage of his trachea give way beneath her hand. He let go of her arm. He clutched at his throat and fell to the ground, writhing on the dank cement.

The pain from Valinda's shoulder swamped her. She fell to her knees next to the choking vicesteed, holding her shoulder with her left hand. Richard's eyes were locked on hers as his face slowly turned red. She forced herself to stand. She looked around. The street was empty of anyone save herself and the man at her feet.

She turned and ran.

Chapter 2

Rosemary removed the sensorium mask from her face and set it aside. She pulled off the shining white gloves and laid them beside the blank, eyeless white mask. She stood up from the fainting couch and tried to unhook the corset. Her chest heaved as if she were running. Her fingers fumbled with the fastenings in her urgency to be out of the cursed thing.

It had felt so real, even though she knew it to be nothing more than a vivid dream fed to her through the sensorium device.

The violence she'd committed in the dream shocked her, and she did not understand the physician's choice of treatments. Her last session had been far more effective. After dreaming her hands mangled in steel gears, she'd avoided her clockwork automata for a full fortnight. At the memory, her fingers spasmed involuntarily and slipped on the fastenings of the corset. She swore under her breath, focusing on the frustration, trying to force the dream from her mind.

She did not understand why the confounded apparatus had been designed with its hooks on the back, where they were clearly impossible for the wearer to disengage.

To keep from thinking of her treatment, she planned how she would have designed the corset. She only purchased modern corsets with front hooks, but the sensorium corset was of a more traditional design. Even if conditions after the Rebirth War were truly so hazardous that having the fastenings on the front of the corset might damage a lady's childbearing apparatus, she thought there must be a better design.

She forced away the feel of a fog-ridden street by imagining an ornamental clockwork automata that unhooked the fastenings. She pictured a golden spider descending on a silver thread, grasping and unhooking, and smiled. Then she frowned. No, a spider wouldn't do. Too many ladies shied away from such creatures.

A recalcitrant hook stabbed her finger, making her lose her grip, and her pleasant dreams of invention. Angry tears pricked at the corners of Rosemary's eyes. She brought her hands to her eyes, pressing against them until the prickling feeling stopped.

She waited until she'd calmed, reached for the bellpull that hung discretely near the couch, and gave it a decisive tug.

"Your personal maid has left her quarters," a feminine voice informed her politely. "I project she will reach you in 3 minutes, plus or minus 45 seconds."

"Thank you, Matilda," Rosemary told the homechulus housekeeper. "That will be all for now."

"Yes, miss."

The air fell silent.

Rosemary sat back on the couch and peeled off the long, milky stockings that clung to her legs. After she had begun treatments for her unwomanly inclinations, she'd ordered her maid to remove all silk stockings from the wardrobe. She could not abide the sensation of silk on her legs. She had been forced to retire early on several occasions simply because she had to remove her stockings.

She ran her fingers restlessly across the back of the couch.

The treatment had seemed so real. She'd more than half expected there to be a body lying at her feet when she removed the mask.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and ignored the pressure of the sensorium corset against her ribs. Her toes clenched the edge of the couch like a parrot clinging to its perch.

"Matilda?"

"Yes, miss?"

"Why is Hannah taking so long?"

"It has been only four minutes," Matilda reproved her. "Doubtless she will have an explanation." The homechulus paused. "Do you wish me to advertise for a replacement?"

"No, Matilda. Thank you. That will be all."

The sound of a knock on the door to her boudoir made Rosemary straighten. She smoothed back her hair and rested her hands in her lap. She did not want Hannah to carry tales of her dishevelment.

"Enter," she said.

The door sprung open and Hannah walked into the room.

"I'm so sorry I was late, miss," she said. "I just glanced at the news broadsheet. Please, miss, don't dismiss me. There was an amazing story about the sensation at...."

Rosemary put up her hand to stop the flow of words. "Just unhook my corset, please."

"Yes, miss." Hannah dropped a curtsey and hurried to her side. "Your father wishes to see you in the parlor when you are presentable."

Rosemary sighed. Her father knew that she abhorred polite conversation after her treatments. The physician had warned him that would be the case. Within her, the familiar combination of love and resentment twisted. Naturally, the one time she wanted her father to disregard Dr. Portsmouth, he didn't.

Rosemary wondered exactly how specific Dr. Portsmouth had been when he described the course of treatment to her father. She would not be surprised if her father, in every other respect a man who drew his own conclusions from the facts at hand, had simply told Dr. Portsmouth to proceed as he thought best. He was a busy man. He had trade cargoes to arrange and investments to consider. Why should he concern himself with the small matter of his daughter's health?

She sighed. He did care. His decision to take more of an interest in her welfare made that plain. That the fruits of his interest had thus far been most unpleasant was not, she forced herself to admit, completely his fault. It had been her unwomanly behavior that had led Dr. Portsmouth to diagnose her with feminine hysteria.

The physician had taken her measurements, palpitated her internal organs, and consulted with his assistant automata. Previous cases of shock or trauma leading to unwomanly behavior were consulted, and he had decided on her course of treatment.

Rosemary hated Dr. Portsmouth.

Her father respected Dr. Portsmouth's opinion and called him in for every symptom of illness or ill-temper shown by his family. However, the servants complained about Dr. Portsmouth behind his back, and even Marjorie had said that she did not hold him in the fondest regard. From Rosemary's perfect sister, that had been the same as a confession of loathing. Rosemary turned her head to the side, so Hannah would not see the sorrow in her eyes.

Hannah eased the corset from around Rosemary's waist and set it beside the gloves, mask, and stockings. She opened the armoire and removed Rosemary's underthings, petticoat, dress cage, and a fine lilac dress that was carefully shaded to mute the red hue that marred Rosemary's blonde hair.

"Perhaps you'd care for me to bring up a broadsheet?" Hannah asked as she helped Rosemary into her garments.

"No, thank you."

More than anything else, Rosemary wanted to curl up into a ball and pretend that there was no outside world, but that would not be fitting behavior.

Hannah shook out the dress cage. Its ribs flexed and bowed into a bell. Rosemary stepped into the case and allowed Hannah to cinch it around her waist.

The lilac dress floated smoothly down over the cage. Rosemary hated the color of it, but her ladies' maid had been given her instructions by the master of the house: only colors suitable for a young girl, and only colors that did not draw attention to her hair. The quarter-mourning they were in made this even more difficult.

Rosemary walked out into the empty hallways of her father's town house, leaving Hannah behind to tidy away the sensorium apparatus. She and her father were the house's only inhabitant, aside from a handful of servants. Without her mother's homely touches and her sister's crystal laugh filling the air, it seemed abandoned.

Rosemary paused in front of the closed parlor door. She could hear nothing from within. After a breath as deep as her corset would allow, she pushed open the door.

The fireplace had been kindled, although the air outside held barely a hint of frost. The ruddy light of the fire played over the room, darkening the wallpaper's striped pattern, sending shadows to lurk at the feet of the furniture, and shooting dancing red glints through the glass her father held.

"Father," Rosemary said.

After a moment spent contemplating his glass of port, her father set it down on an end table and turned to look at her.

"Rosemary, dear," he said, "I trust the treatment has done you some good?"

Her fists clenched in her skirts.

"Thank you for your concern, father," she answered, trying to control the bite in her voice as she sat on the couch nearest the fire. "I feel quite fine."

"Good, good." He lifted a card from the table. "I received an invitation nearly a fortnight ago, to Lady Hasting's costume ball. It will be held four days from today. I have accepted."

"I'm sure you will enjoy it, father. Lady Hasting's brother may attend, and you can discuss your proposed trade expedition to the New Indies with him." She felt the warmth of the fire turning her face an unbecoming shade of pink. She knew it was improper to express interest in intellectual matters that were the domain of gentlemen. She didn't wish to embarrass herself, but sometimes she just couldn't help herself. "I have an idea that may prove of some use in that expedition--"

"The invitation was not for me alone," her father interrupted. "It was for you as well, and you will attend."

He paused, waiting for a response from her, but she fought down the hot words that rose to her tongue.

He picked up his glass tumbler and held it between himself and the fire, rolling it this way and that, watching the glints of light within the dark red liquid.

"After your mother and then your sister died--" He stopped. He took a swallow from the glass and set it back down. "After your sister died, when we withdrew from Society for a period of mourning, I did not," he waved his hand, "did not consider the necessity of your participating in proper society. And so now, five years later, we are reduced to this."

He looked at her. She refused to meet his eyes, but his gaze did not waver.

"I am very sorry for my lack of sympathy then. I felt that my grief would swallow me alive if I allowed it but an inch of leeway. And so I abandoned you to your own sorrow." He sighed.

Rosemary sat in shock. He had never spoken of their bereavement before. He had behaved as if Marjorie had never existed, except for holding Rosemary to the same standards her sister had so effortlessly achieved.

"If I had welcomed another woman, a family member, or perhaps if I had searched for a wife after the period of full mourning for your mother had passed, it might have been different."

"Father," Rosemary stammered. "Do not--do not blame yourself. I have felt no lack from not socializing as we did when Mother and Marjorie were with us."

Her hand rose to finger the pendant she wore, which held two thin braids of hair, one brown with red glints and one so blonde as to be nearly white.

Her cat, Munin, sauntered into the room. He looked up at her and mewed. A quiet click of her tongue brought him up to settle in her lap with a rush of orange and white fur. He kneaded her skirts gently for a few seconds; then he curled up with his head on his paws and closed his eyes.

"You were just a debutante. I regret that I forced you to withdrew into seclusion."

"You didn't force--" Rosemary begin to deny hotly, but her father raised his hand for silence.

"If you had been able to go out in society," he said, his words heavy, "you would not have formed an unhealthy passion for those...those toys you tinker with."

Rosemary bent her head forward, pretending to pay attention to the cat. The fall of her pale hair covered her face, hiding her rising anger. Her clockwork automata were not toys. If only she were allowed to continue their progression, everyone would understand that.

She wished with all her heart that she could dive into Society as gracefully as gentle Marjorie had, or feel the pleasure her mother had taken in everyday rituals: running the household impeccably; working on ornate needlepoint; writing long letters to friends who lived the length and breadth of Buckingham; and sitting with her father in the evening, perhaps reading a book of poetry, perhaps simply listening to and appreciating his account of the day.

Her anger subsided slightly as she considered her father. He loved her but didn't understand her. He thought she would be happiest molded into the feminine image of her mother and sister.

Whenever she tried to emulate their example, however, she failed as wretchedly as a quarter gear trying to slip over a three-eighths piston.

Rosemary ran her hand over Munin's back, smoothing down his fur and feeling soothed herself. "Father," she said, "I will attend the ball with you, but I am confused as to why you particularly wish me to attend."

Her father watched the fire for a moment before responding. "We were both invited; we should both attend. And I thought that you might find it simpler to ease into society while wearing a mask."

The blank white mask of the sensorium apparatus floated up into Rosemary's thoughts. She bowed her head over the cat on her lap and resumed stroking his back.

When he spoke again, her father's voice sounded unsure. "Lady Hasting's cousin's son will attend. I understand he is most amiable and but three years your senior."

She looked up. Her father was watching the fire, his tumbler of port cradled in his hand. A twinge of sorrow twisted her heart. She had never noticed how forlorn he looked when not occupied with business matters. She had been too involved in her designs at first, and then, when the treatments started, she had avoided him.

"I will go with you to Lady Hasting's costume ball. I will wear a mask and a completely proper costume. I will laugh, converse, and dance. I will even attempt to be pleasant to this amiable man." Rosemary forced a smile.

After all, it was a chance for her to prove that she was capable of partaking in Society. It was a chance for her to escape from her treatments.

"Thank you, child," her father said. He set his drink down and rose to take both her hands in his. "I know you have become unaccustomed to Society, but I hope this will be good for you."

"Yes, Papa." Rosemary had not called her father that since she was old enough to be out of leading strings, but she said it without thinking. She leaned forward a gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, surprising both of them.

"I know your treatments tire you, Rosemary," her father said after a moment, releasing her hands and returning to his chair by the fire. "And I have some letters from our New Indies trade delegation that I must consider. If you are feeling fatigued, you may retire."

The impulse to stay gripped Rosemary, the impulse to ask her father to tell her about how the trading voyage to the New Indies was going and what else weighed heavy on his mind.

She merely gathered Munin into her arms, nodded her head to her father, and walked to the door. She stood and watched her father. He had shifted until his back was mostly to the door. He read a letter by the firelight. A few other letters lay scattered on the table, along with calling cards and the invitation to the costume ball. His homechulus secretary sat quietly on the table, a motionless fat bronze cherub, awaiting its master's bidding.

It belonged there, Rosemary thought, and she belonged on the other side of the closed door. Often Rosemary would walk by the parlor to fetch a midnight snack from the kitchen, only to hear the murmur of her father's voice as he discussed the potential of certain new processes or apparatuses with guests. He had an open ear for every man who was an aspiring inventor in need of a patron, even those without so much as a calling card to their name.

She closed the door quietly; then she walked through the hall to her own chambers, mechanically petting the cat in her arms.

"Matilda?" she asked the air.

"Yes, miss?" The homechulus housekeeper was always awake, always listening. She had no doubt heard the discussion in the parlor and filed it away for future reference in case it came to concern the running of the house.

"I need to purchase a costume for a ball to be held in four days. I understand that this is extremely short notice, but please draw up a list of suitable establishments and give it to Hannah. We will be going out tomorrow."

"Yes, miss. Your father already informed me. You have an appointment at Selene's for ten o'clock. Robertson will drive the coach. His duties will require him to return to the house after he leaves you there, so that Nelson can have a break from his duties as footman, but he will return to escort you home again afterwards. Will there be anything more?"

"There is nothing more. Thank you, Matilda."