The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 6 by Jonathan Strahan

Author:Jonathan Strahan [Strahan, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781597803465
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2012-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

On the way back to class, she’s quiet. But I’m buzzing.

“So what happened?” I say, dancing around her as we walk. “Did Steam Girl show the papers to her father? And then did they—?”

“No,” she says quietly.

“What? She didn’t show him the papers? How come?”

She hesitates a moment, as if trying to decide whether to tell me what comes next.

“There was one more thing,” she says at last. “On one of the papers. On the back, written in pencil, over and over.”

I wait, but she seems to have stopped talking, and we’re almost at her classroom.

“What was it?” I stand in front of the door. “Come on, you have to tell me! Or I won’t let you go to Maths.”

She gives me a withering look. “Alright, I’ll tell you. But....”

“But what?!” I’m desperate. The second bell is about to ring.

“Never mind,” she says. “It was a name. Her father’s name. His full name—Professor Archibald James Patterson Swift. Again and again.”

“Woooah!” I breathe. “So—what? Was he behind the factory? Did he have, like, a secret life where he slipped off to Venus and planned the destruction of Earth?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she hisses.

“It would be a good twist, though, wouldn’t it?” I say. “Y’know, the heroine’s father turns out to be the villain—”

“It wasn’t him,” she repeats, more firmly this time. “He’s a good man, who’d never do anything rotten like that. No matter what people say about him.”

“Why? What do people say about him?” Now I’m confused. Does the father have secrets, after all?

But the second bell rings and she pushes past me into the classroom and closes the door behind her.

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