Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion by Jonathan L. Howard, Deborah Walker, Cheryl Morgan, Andy Bigwood, Christine Morgan, Myfanwy Rodman Page B

suddenly desperate to sit up, to see what was left of her under the sheet.
     
    “Yes.” The doctor coughed, rubbed his nose, apparently embarrassed. “You don’t have to worry about your other… little problem any more either, if you know what I mean. We’ve cured that too.”
     
    Angela felt the heat rush to her face, tightening the skin across her cheeks. “You know about that?”
     
    That had been the last straw, the thing that had finally sent her rushing out of the house that morning — this morning? A week ago? A month? — the letter from her doctor confirming that Howard had brought her an extra gift last time he came home from Rhodesia. The Frenchman’s Condition, they called it delicately, condemning her to years of discomfort, eventually insanity, and lingering death. She had had nothing to live for anyway, might as well make it quick. Then Howard would be free to live with his blackamoor molly-girl, and Angela would be with Charlotte.
     
    And now this doctor, with his kind blue eyes and amiable chuckle, he knew her shame, the scandal of it. If she could have moved, Angela would have crawled under the sheet to escape his sympathy. She managed to choke out her thanks.
     
    “Yes, well…” The doctor clapped his hands, suddenly all business once more. “It will take some time to get used to, I expect. The modifications… are you ready to see them?”
     
    “Modifications?”
     
    “There was a lot to fix.” He looked suitably humble. “I think we did the best job we were able to, under the circumstances. A lot of the procedure was experimental, so you must tell me if you feel any discomfort at all.”
     
    He slipped an arm around her shoulders, helping her to sit up, and she coloured at the intimacy. Only Howard had ever held her this close, cheek to cheek, breath against her neck. Did he hold his molly as tightly as he had once held her? The sheet still covered her from the neck down, tight as a shroud, and she could see the swollen humps of her arms and legs beneath it.
     
    The doctor withdrew, rummaged in the cupboard next to the bed, and poured Angela a snifter of brandy. She shook her head. “I never touch drink, doctor.”
     
    “I thought you might need it, for restorative purposes.” He set the glass on the side table, just within reach. He reached for the sheet at her throat, and Angela closed her eyes, not wanting to see the mangled ruin of her body, or what the doctors had done to it. She felt the sheet sliding down over her torso, and the cold air brushing across her skin.
     
    The doctor sounded proud. “You can look now, Mrs Porter.”
     
    She looked. She looked down at her arms and legs. Where her arms and legs had once been. Her body, clad in a white vest to protect what little dignity was left to her, was human from the waist upwards. They had saved that much. Below the mess of scar tissue around the bottom of her ribs her skin was smooth again, but with the smoothness and sheen of copper and brass, of rivets and steel plate.
     
    “Your legs should be perfectly functional. We tested them in the laboratory, on orphans…”
     
    Angela barely heard him. She groped for the glass by instinct, her fingers clumsy and awkward, knocking it to the floor where it shattered. She looked down, at the spreading puddle of brandy, at the hand that had knocked it flying. Bronzed, riveted, two fingers and a thumb horribly elongated, pinched together in a tight metal claw.
     
    It was then that Angela started screaming.
     

     
    “Mrs Porter? Your husband is here…”
     
    Angela had been staring out of the window. They had moved her from the hospital to a grand house in Hotwells. She could see the curve of the river from her barred window, but she couldn’t see the Suspension Bridge. She had been able to see it from the first room she was in, but her carers had moved her swiftly. They couldn’t stand the screaming.
     
    Now she could see the grey snake of the river, and the ships