The Blackberry Walk

Chapter 13 From behind the door, I heard the squeak of chair legs pushing back against a metal floor. This was followed by the rustling of movement, and that slight trepidation felt whenever one knocks on a strangers door. Who will come out? Any pick from an array of possibilities could live behind this heavy door. Miss Böhme could be a young maiden - she is a ‘miss’ after all - some kind of Grail Maiden perhaps: in which case I ought be careful what I imbibe. Or Miss Böhme could be a crone, wasting her days in these lonely woods - perhaps a witch of some sort, a sorceress at peace with the steel nature around me. I didn’t have a clue. Behind this door was formless ghost of who knows what kindnesses or horrors, until she be cast by my senses. “I’m on my way”, spoke a voice from behind the door, speaking in what’s popularly called a Robocop voice. A modulated voice, no ordinary human voice! Was she speaking with some kind of voice changer, like some kind of anonymous political extremist streamer - hardly likely, there’s not a soul around. That said, those who do end up come knocking here could be unsavoury characters - but what would a voice modulator achieve? As this gyroscope of thoughts span, Miss Böhme approached closer to the door, and I heard a still fainter ‘fvvv fvvv’ sound. ‘Servos’, I thought. That is the sound of servos. And then it dawned on me - how hadn’t it before, on this metal world - that Miss Böhme is no human, maiden, crone, or otherwise: no, she’s an android. The door opened, and I was greeted with a smile. At a still glace, one could never tell Miss Böhme was anything other than human. Her face was young, pale, and white; her eyes green; her hair whispy, flaxen-blonde, a light fringe and maigami. Her manner of dress was ornate, vaguely Edwardian, with white lace frills accenting her pastel green blouse; this blouse was tucked-in to a white ankle-length pleated skirt. She tilted her head ever-so-slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Postman, how-de-do. The Conductor called ahead about your coming.” Her smile beamed brighter than Mercury’s surface. Oh, how my heart would have skipped a beat, should her voice not have sounded like a kidnapper in a hostage negotiation. I smiled back, though, owing to my human form, unable to match her in her smile’s levity. “It’s a pleasure to meet you also, you must be Miss Böhme?” “Yes indeed, that would be I,” she smiled again, somehow besting her previous smile. “Come on in, it must be awfully chilly out there.” It wasn’t the least bit chilly, I was sweating buckets owing to the harsh sunlight, and likely a little sunburnt to boot. The mood, though, was a little too rosy to make any noise of disagreement. I followed her lead into the cottage, and the decor inside was quite beautiful. The copper logs I saw outside were inside raw and unplastered, creating quite a homely and cosy space. The floor was a beige sort of colour - the material was hard to place. The walls were well-adorned with collected knick-knacks, small gizmos like thermometers and barometers, framed portraits, all tapestries, and a few taxidermies. To what extent these metal theria were taxidermied and not simply ‘killed’ and stuck to a wall, I cannot comment: the ecology of Mercury continues to bemuse me. The furniture too was quite beautiful. Copper-log cut, crafted, and polished, looks an awful lot like stained, varnished wood, only without the pattern of wood; and this cut copper formed coffee tables, sideboards, and cabinets. There was an armchair and a sofa too, knitted out of what must’ve been the steel wool worn by the sheep in the yard who I’d earlier seen grazing. “Please take a seat,” Miss Böhme said, gesturing to the sofa. I looked at the woven steel fibres of the sofa with suspicion. Isn’t steel wool sharp? Gingerly I lowered my weight onto the metal fibres, down, down, until I felt comfortable permitting them to bear my weight. Then I leant back into the sofa so that it too would carry my weight. All good there too, so far no lacerations. I then touched with caution the cushion beside me, and gave it a slight squeeze. “The fabric should be plenty safe for Carbons,” my host said with a slight giggle. The giggle with her voice came out more like a cackle, however. And she was right: the result of the slight squeeze test came back positive, and I let myself properly relax into the sofa. It was quite comfortable, in fact. “Would you happen to want tea? It is a special mineral brew, very good for Carbons, so they say.” I replied in the affirmative, and a little while later Miss Böhme set down a pewter mug on the coffee table. “Do let it first cool,” she warned me. She then sat down in the armchair to my right, leaning forward and looking at me quite intensely, a look of excitement in her eyes. At first, I was a little stunned. She clearly was waiting for me to say something, to do something- and then it hit me. I’d somehow forgotten the reason I’d made this journey to begin with. I reached into my decrepit work backpack, and took out the small parcel. “Miss Böhme, I’ve come to deliver this to you,” I said with an outsized importance. Her eyes lit up just a little - quite literally. I handed the parcel over, and she began to unwrap it. Beneath the brown wrapping paper was a box which she proceeded to open with a blade; and inside that box was a small, shiny metal sphere with a few perforations on the front, and a couple of rainbow cables coming out the back. She took the device out of the box and held it dearly. Her green eyes lit up ever-more, like emeralds under torchlight. “I’ll return in but a moment,” she said, servos whirring as she dashed into another room. This is what I heard from the room. The clicking of a ratchet. The the clank of bolts placed onto a thin metal surface. The snip of wire cutters. Then, a little later I heard a heavier metal object being placed onto the surface; but this object then rolled off the surface, as if it were some larger metal ball. This subsequently fell off the table and hit the floor, bouncing with the noise of a Newton’s cradle. Then, a few ‘clip’ noises; a few more clicks of the ratchet once more; and then the door opened. “My voice hath returned!” cried Miss Böhme, pirouetting, her voice as sweet as a 6 A.M. summer’s morn. Chapter 14 One couldn’t help but smile seeing Miss Böhme so happy. It was infectious, her joy. “I am so happy, oh I am so happy!” she sang. “It has been three years since my voice began to deteriorate: three years! Do you know what that is like for a lady?” “No, I could never,” I replied, unable to match her enthusiasm. “That’s an awfully long time to have to wait.” “Indeed it is.” A hint of melancholy tinted her voice. “Today, my people are today few and far between. Such parts can only now be acquired from Martians.” A scowl, though slight and fleeting, passed through her visage. “But that’s just how it is.” Her joy return, and her eyes smiled once more, “Oh am I ever-so-happy! How is your tea?” I was taken a bit off-guard by her comment, since between waiting for the tea to cool and listening to the strange noises through the door, I had forgotten all about it. So, with just the necessary touch of haste, I righted my faux-pas and took a sip. The pewter was still warm to the lips. The taste of this tea was like nothing I had ever drank before. It had a kind of salty taste - not too strongly of table salt, mind, but of the heartiest mineralised water, like the kind of water so flavoursome many would be put off. I had tasted something similar before, drinking fresh groundwater from the Karoo when visiting family in South Africa, but this was something different still; stronger, somehow. I felt my anxieties calm, my mood soften, my legs, fatigued from the journey, lighten with renewed vigour. “This tea is incredible.” Miss Böhme replied with a smile which could launch a thousand ships. “Where does this tea come from? We have nothing like this on Earth!” With this question, her expression darkened a little. “Earth,” she repeated with melancholy, “oh, how I wish I could visit Earth, what a noble people.” An uncomfortable pause passed. A noble people? Rarely have us humans been so complemented. She continued, “This tea is a Martian invention. It’s a grand concoction of Martian minerals, some common with Earth, others not. It’s meant to feel calming and invigorating for Carbons, is it working its magic upon you?” There she was, mentioning these Martians again. “Very much so, I feel incredible.” Another pause. “It’s unusual to hear someone praise us homo sapiens so highly, so often mankind is painted as a bunch of war-hungry brutes.” To this, Miss Böhme responded with a true belly laugh. Not a kind one though, but one tinged with a contempt for my naivete. “That’s because young man,” she said with a teacher’s pity, “you have never met a Martian. Should you ever have the misfortune, you’d discover how loving and kind a creature man is. You’d realise mankind has love in droves. Despite bouts of hate and war, they are compassionate, charitable, and are kind to the sick and the weak. Man is made in the Creator’s image. Nothing like the Martian...” She shuddered at their mention. And in her shuddering one could hear the squeaking of a belt drive. All this talk had gotten me thinking. I had managed to extract little from the Conductor in the way of context or exposition. Miss Böhme, it appeared, was the first person I had met with command of English who may well explain the oddities of this journey of mine. “Miss Böhme,” I began with a more formal tone, “I was wondering if I could ask a couple questions. As an Earthling, I knew little of the cosmos before my journey. One morning I was travelling to work on EMR, and the next moment I was travelling through space with a ghostly conductor. First I visited the Moon and now Mercury; and I’ll doubtless be visiting far more places in the Solar System. May I pick you mind a little?” Miss Böhme straightened up a little at the formality of my tone. “I’ll answer what I can. But I must say, in short time you’ll have visited far more of the cosmos than I, so I won’t be able to answer much.” I smiled, glad for her cooperativeness. “Right then, my first question is who is EMR? And they a trustworthy institution?” There was a pause. Miss Böhme looked a bit confused at my question. “EMR is EMR, East Midlands Railway. They exist on Earth too, do they not? You must’ve taken their space service.” What? Is that it? I was expecting some parallel organisation sharing the same initials at the very least. The answer irritated me a little, but I did my best not to let it show on my face nor leak through my voice. “East Midlands Railway, as in of the East Midlands of England.” “Yes indeed, the East Midlands is an awfully important place in the cosmos. In fact, I once lived in the East Midlands.” I leaned in a little in astonishment. “Really?” “Yes, I used to make lace in Nottingham. Many of us Mercurians did in times gone by, we were proud of our craft. That was of course before we were put out of business by those machines.” She turned up her nose a little. I had to take a long hard blink. What? “Were you and your fellow Mercurians then... Luddites?” A smirk passed onto her face, that same kind of smirk seen when an American Boomer recalls the Summer of Love. “Yes, indeed, I’m surprised you know of our cause, young man, it was an awfully long time ago in human years... No doubt it is not around today.” I shook my head. Miss Böhme, wistful, continued, “It was a little later that Midland Railway began work on the Lunar Line, which in time went on to connect the whole Solar System. I believe work concluded about eighty years ago.” To this, I just nodded and nodded like a bobble head. What exactly was I to say? “I also wanted to ask about the Martians you mentioned-” “No, I very much wouldn’t like to talk about that,” she interrupted firmly, placing special emphasis on the final ‘that’. Her hands were shaking a little as she fiddled nervously with a small toy between her fingers. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to bring up something you didn’t want to talk about.” With this, her expression softened again, and her hands lay at rest. “It is fine, all is well. You weren’t to know.” And then after a pause, she continued, “Humans like you are able to apologise from the heart and admit mistake. This is where you and the Martians differ.” She wore a pedogogical expression and looked quite pleased with her parable. “A different question then, the Conductor of the EMR train, who is he, and where is he from?” Miss Böhme tilted her head to the side slightly, and wore a puzzled look. “He’s one of the conductors of that service, he always has been.” Right, but he isn’t a ‘Carbon’ like me, I wanted to reply. Between the appearance of a space train in Victorian England and the existence its ghost conductor, Miss Böhme seemed to have a remarkable sense for, “It Has Always Been That Wayism,” a philosophy of accepting things are as they are without curiosity nor inquiry. Quite inpenitrable. But just as I was preparing a more tailored question, a phone rang. A traditional phone, with a traditional brass bell. Miss Böhme walked over to the sideboard, and picked up the gorgeously lathed brass receiver putting it to her ear. “Hello.” “Yes.” “Yes.” “Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem.” “Indeed, I’ll send him on his way.” “Thank you ever so much, I’ll send him on his way now then” “No, it is a pleasure, I shall speak to you again soon. Buh-bye.” She put the receiver down and turned to me. “That was the Conductor. He says you should begin making your way back now to catch the train. “I see.” I was disheartened that I couldn’t have asked more questions, but alas, what can be done. Awfully suspicious timing from the Conductor though, phoning just after the discussion arrived at his past... “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you young man, and thank you ever so much for my parcel. Oh, one moment.” She pottered back to the kitchen momentarily and returned. “Here are a few of those teabags, do take them with you.” The tea bags were enclosed in a small drawstring bag woven from steel wool. “Thank you ever so much. It’s been a pleasure meeting you also, Miss Böhme.” And with that, I set off back on my journey, this time following the map without detour.