Cohost Sapphic September 2024 writing prompt: 18 — Girls who are musical
“Deconditioning decomissioned pilots has so far proved…only of qualified success,” Baroness Kann says, in tones of smooth, monied, PR-coached sympathy. “Unless a significant breakthrough occurs in treatment options, it’s unlikely for any given individual to regain sufficient autonomous social function that they can lead an independent life.” She gestures outward, at the grounds of her estate. “Here, they can at least live in a quiet environment.”
“It is very beautiful countryside,” Patrika says politely. “How many pilots did you say you’ve — housed?”
The Baroness smiles. Her lipstick is dark; almost black, in some lights. It’s hard to tell whether it’s more red or purple. “Oh, I think you were looking for the word collected,” she says. “That’s what they say, isn’t it? The wicked Baroness, collecting those poor, damaged, pliant souls under her dominion. Hm?”
“I don’t travel in the kind of circles where your peers openly gossip about you,” Patrika says. Some distance away, she sees, there’s a figure climbed almost all of the way up a tree; seated in a high fork, branches clutched in either hand, feet kicking. The ex-pilot’s stare is palpable, even from here.
It’s a twist of the wrist that gives it away: a phantom Mark IV yoke imagined in the bark under those fingers, leg waldos in the seemingly aimless twitch of idle feet. The surprisingly subtle movements that would have had a hundred tons of war machine putting its foot through the mansion’s façade, over and over and over and over.
“The truth is,” the Baroness says, “sometimes they simply can’t be deconditioned; but they can be repurposed. After the fact, people are squeamish about what was done to the girls. After the fact, they’re willing to say, if you touch what’s in their heads again, why, that’s just the same as what was done to them in the first place! You monster! But for the ones who can’t be deprogrammed, there are kinder things to do than park them in a barracks and maintain them as perfect, obsolete, high-strung weapons systems, who will never see action or the outside again. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’m sure there are,” Patrika says.
Dinner is served — the two of them, in the echoing splendour of a dining hall designed for dozens — by silent and militarily-precise maids in starched and immaculate uniforms.
“I think,” Patricka says levelly, “people might gossip less if not for the fetishistic aspects in play, here.”
The Baroness lays down her knife and fork, dabs at her moue with a high-thread-count napkin.
“Many of them came here,” she says, “immediately after the shuttering of the pilot-tech divisions. There was — I’m sure you recall — a great deal of acrimony over their mere existence. People were seriously calling, in some quarters, for all of them to be liquidated. It took some time for anyone to have the political courage to affirm their legal humanity. The earliest dozen I took in, the military sold them to me as surplus equipment.” She picks up and swirls her goblet of wine. “And as you also know, I have personally invested a great deal in treatment technologies. These you see are treatment-resistant cases; they are comforted by having routines, clear-cut tasks, a disciplinary structure — and, yes, by uniforms. What would you prefer? That I keep them as a little private military academy? People gossip about the uniforms, yes, people love their gossip. Look around you: I am an old-fashioned woman from an old-fashioned line, in an old-fashioned, palatial estate. They have roles and uniforms and they have a clear belonging here, in this civilian context.”
Patrika neatly cuts a morsel of roasted duck.
“That,” she says, tone still even and unangered, “seems like a well-rehearsed post-hoc justification for putting them in roles subservient to you, which you find pleasure in.”
The Baroness chuckles, sips, picks up her cutlery.
“Well, perhaps someone unaccustomed to this environment,” she says, “would have found different solutions. I don’t claim otherwise. I simply defend myself against the claim that I’m a monster.”
After a quiet digestif in a sitting-room — a silent maid starting a fire in the fireplace against the chill of the drawing evening — the Baroness stands, rubs her hands together, and says, “Well. Shall I show you what you’re here to see?”
“Haven’t you been?”
“You’re here with a disapproving, puritanical glint in your eye, to root out my depravities,” the Baroness says cheerily. “Out here playing dolls, with my little collection of war detritus, brain-mutilated to the point of incapacity to refuse my little pecadillos, hey? So let me show you what it is they whisper about, because neither of us think that mere maid uniforms are what motivates people to whisper insinuations to the gutter press and sow the nuclei for torch-and-pitchfork mobs on my lawns.” She gestures. “After you.”
There’s a wing of the house with door after closed door. The faint sound of crying; repetitive noises that might be slow and heavy-footed pacing, or fist against surface; mouth-sounds without shape or form like the shriek-hoot-cries of infants.
The Baroness knocks, pauses, gently opens a door, ushers Patrika inside a bedroom. There’s a small table and chair; atop the table squats a nude woman, staring fixedly at an unremarkable point high on one wall.
“This is Elzie,” the Baroness says softly. “Rather, I’m given to understand her callsign was something with the initials L-Z. She didn’t, or wasn’t permitted, to retain her name, and the records were not detailed concerning anything prior to becoming what they are. Elzie underwent one of the earliest treatments aimed at deconditioning, within an experimental military programme. They attempted what they believed was a low-hanging fruit, removing the compulsion to comply with military uniform standards; unfortunately, their apprehension of the technology was — incomplete. I try not to fault them for what was undoubtedly a matter of knee-jerk military secrecy, a refusal to allow them access to the original data, but — all they actually succeeded in was to move the conditioning from compliance to aversion, and did untold damage along the way. Some days she can manage carefully selected garments; today is not one of them.”
Patrika stares at the ex-pilot, her jaw clenched.
“Of course, you’ll have heard scurrilous mutters, too vague to be called accusations, that I have brainwashed naked slaves attending my every whim,” the Baroness says. “May I have your hands, Elzie?”
The ex-pilot’s gaze pulls down sharply, and she holds her hands out in front of her, palms up, fingers splayed, looking expectant.
“Sometimes,” the Baroness murmurs, “all that can be done to maximise their comfort is to repurpose.” She reaches out, and with a flourish, taps one of Elzie’s fingers as though it’s a piano key; and Elzie responds by opening her mouth and letting out a pure musical note.
“Perfect pitch,” the Baroness says. “Unlike her name, they didn’t take it away. Probably they never noticed; irrelevant. Look at her smile.”
Elzie is, in fact, beaming. She jogs her hands a little, as if to prompt the Baroness for more, and the Baroness flexes her own fingers and rattles out a little tune, as if on a toy keyboard with unreasonably good tone.
“There,” the Baroness says, finally. “That’s what you came to see; as close as we get to communicating, except on very good days,” and turns back to Patrika; starts a little at the look on her face and her wet cheeks. “My dear—”
“Long Zone,” Patrika says, not looking at the Baroness. “I wasn’t mech programme, you understand; they trained some specialist infantry battalions for effective close-underfoot deployment alongside the machines.” She swallows, and is silent for long moments. “I wasn’t mech programme,” she repeats, quietly. “But her callsign was Long Zone. Dunno why.” She shrugs uncomfortably. “Her name was already gone by that point.”
The Baroness watches her, morphing through several different facial expressions.
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing,” she says finally, slowly, “to have someone about the place who — saw maid uniforms and asked whether one should have honest qualms about my motives. I do this for them, but....” She gives a rueful single-shouldered shrug. “No man is entirely his own pilot, hm?”
Patrika stares; not at her, but at Elzie, smilingly regarding her own fingers. “Not sure I’m the kind of saint you need,” she admits, and the Baroness chuffs out a genuine laugh.
“Who can afford to wait for one?” she says, and holds out her hand to shake. “Elzie, this is—”
She cuts off when the pilot turns her head, bird-quick, purses her lips, and begins to trill a mocking reveille.
