by Rich Horton
“You really haven’t another word to say about him?” Turpin had asked, interrupting his woolgathering.
Hamilton had feigned a moment’s thought. “How is he on the range?”
“Reasonable. You were only ever reasonable.” He hadn’t emphasised the you.
Then the Warden had clinked his glass with a spoon, and the ladies and the gentlemen and the trompe-l’oeil and the small deer had gone in to dinner.
Hamilton had been relieved to find that the younger version of himself had gone to the far end of the dining table that stood on a rise at the end of the hall. In any other circumstances, it would have been comforting to be back in this place, with the smell of polish and the candlelight, but as he looked out at the tables of undergraduates, he realised that something was missing. There would normally be numerous servants moving between the rows, delivering plates of food and refilling glasses. Suddenly, he saw just such a meal appearing beside one chattering youth, something which caused the lad no surprise whatsoever. Hamilton had been seated opposite Turpin, and now he looked back to him.
“Hidden service,” the senior man said. “Happens in a lot of places now. The servants move through an infinite fold, in effect an empty optional world, beside the real one. One more use for the new engines. And neater, you must admit.”
Hamilton didn’t feel the need to agree with such young opinions from his old mentor. He was now wondering if the man’s new smoothness of face was because this was also a younger version. But no, surely not, here was still the experience, the tone of voice he was used to. Turpin had seen that look. “One of the out of uniform men found it for me,” he said, as if he was talking about a carriage. “As soon as the great powers recognised that various of the engines that had fallen into our hands gave us access to optional worlds, outside the balance, the Palace felt it was our lot’s duty to start mapping them, to find out where all these open fold tunnels lead. Our regimental hunting parties have been going all over.”
Hamilton thought he understood now why he hadn’t been included in that effort. “Including another one of you?”
“Several. The original owner of this was only a Newton or so different to the original. Well, in physical terms. Where he came from, a lot of our conflicts didn’t happen, hence the smoothness of face. Our lads put him in the bag, and when they got back, connected his mind to an infinite tunnel. Like using a terrier to root out a fox. Once he was out, I moved in, using the same method. Should keep me going for a bit longer.”
Hamilton had found himself wondering at that statement. His balance had been thrown by the boy, and so he’d allowed himself the seditious thought, because it had felt not so dangerous then, that Turpin was seeking not, as he said, an extension of his service, but actually tactical advantage at Court. He was now more like those he served were. And never mind the distance that took him from his officers. “What if optional worlds start raiding us in the same way?”
“First thing we thought of. We seem to be unique, at least in all those options nearby. We’re the only ones who’ve encountered the Foreigners. Or they may even only exist in this world. If they do start popping over, we may have to start making treaties with optional Britains rather than raiding them.”
“And extending the balance into them?”
Turpin had raised his hands. Perhaps he felt this was beyond his duty or understanding.
“How can there be younger versions of people? How is there an optional world where . . . I’m . . . his age?”
“These worlds form in waves, I’m told.”
“Like the waves that interfere with each other in this world to create the heights and depths of the balance?”
“Presumably.” There had been that impatience with the matter of the balance once more. “Some waves are a bit behind us in time, some a bit forward.”
“And there are some options where there are chatty deer and pillars of birds? Or are those just fashions anticipating such stuff?”
“A little bit of both. There’s a rather large selection box, all told.” Turpin had leaned forward, as if wishing Hamilton would get to the meat of it. And Hamilton had been pleased that it hadn’t been him that had taken them there. “Listen, that younger you, he’s the first of his kind to be brought over. He’s got nobody’s mind but his own. He’s a whole chap, a volunteer from a world so like ours that there wasn’t an iota of difference.”
“Except no Foreigners?”
“Exactly.”
“And no balance?”
“Yes, yes!”
Hamilton had wondered if Turpin was planning on putting his mind in the boy’s skull. But he’d hardly have invited them both to a social occasion first. “If we can do all this now, and I didn’t know we could—”
“I’m telling you now under a seal. You’ll find, if you look, that your covers have already reacted to my tone of voice. You won’t be able to tell anyone any of this.” He looked suddenly chagrined at Hamilton’s startled look. “Not that you would, of course!”
Turpin’s manners seemed to have changed with his new body. That had been shocking too, a shock like one felt sometimes at things one had heard were said and done at Court. “If we can do all this now we’ve got their engines, why can’t the Foreigners open a tunnel at the blockade, pop up in Whitehall and have at us?”
“Good question. The great powers have been pondering that. Together.” Enough had been made public for Hamilton to understand that there was now a significantly greater degree of cooperation between the courts of the great powers of Europe. The arrival of the Foreigners had forced that, when the haphazard capture of the new engines in various parts of the solar system might otherwise have set the balance rocking. There, he suspected, was the hand of the deity in this. If it was anywhere. “The leading theory at the moment is that, for some reason, the Foreigners forbid, among themselves, the use of optional worlds. That it’s a principle of whatever mistaken religion they practice. Optionalism is perhaps just a side effect of what they use as propulsion, but so far we’ve only made sense of the side effect, and none at all of the propulsion.”
“Can we use it to surprise them?”
“Working on just that.”
This was far more the sort of conversation Hamilton had been used to with his commanding officer. He had found himself regretting his earlier reactions, understanding them, regaining control of himself. Tonight, whatever else it was, was surely planned as a test of his character, and so far he had just about stumbled through. What he felt about anything was as beside the point now as it had always been.
Turpin had spent the rest of dinner sounding him out about the myriad aspects of the shared defence strategies being adopted by the ‘grand alliance’ of great powers. There was some new addition to their ranks every day. Savoy, most recently. There were even rumours the Turks were going to join. Hamilton had wanted to ask where the balance was in all this. What was going to happen to it if every nation was on the same side? Was the arrival of the Foreigners and their engines, at the same time, the fatal shock, the final moment when the balance would collapse and resolve into some new social or actual reality, as experts in the matter had often hypothesised? Was that what was happening all around them now? He had always conceived of that moment as being grand, somehow, and not a matter of finding wild animals in the Warden’s rooms. Or was this just some particularly ferocious swinging of the pendulum, which would resolve itself, as it always had, into a gentler motion?
But Turpin, true to his new form, hadn’t mentioned the balance at all, apart from when he’d joined in the grace before the meal. Hamilton had half hoped one of the divines would strike up a debate on the subject. He had known, through the gossip of his maid, Alexandria, that all was not well amongst the clergy, that the next synod at York was going to be rough on His Majesty and his terrifying commonwealth of nations, but there was no sign of that here. These particular clerics were as content to swim amongst this stuff as that Herald had been.
All through the conversation, Hamilton had kept his gaze on his superior. He hadn’t wanted to be seen craning his neck to get a look at the younger version of himself. He had continued to affect nonchalance. And hoped he was not projecting affectation. The bell had rung, the students had started to exit, and the Warden had invited his guests back to his rooms for brandy. Turpin had announced that he wanted to talk to someone, and gone ahead.
As Hamilton had entered, the younger man had stepped straight to intercept him. Precious was with him. She had had an interested look on her face. Turpin had already got to the other side of the room, thank God, so there had been nobody to attempt some sort of crass introduction. But Hamilton had known his superior officer’s gaze would be upon him now. He still hadn’t known what was expected of him. But if this was a game, he was going to win it.
“Major,” said the youth. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this moment.”
“I wish I could say the same.” That had come out like an insult. So he had kept his jaw firm and damn well let it stand. “Where did they find you?”
The youth had seemed unperturbed. “Oh, in some dusty corridor of what one might still call reality.”
“This year’s model.” Hamilton couldn’t help but look at Precious rather than at his younger self. She was looking back at him too. He wondered in how many ways she was comparing them.
“Most people would be full of questions,” said the youth.
“It’s the nature of innocence to question, the nature of duty to accept.”
“And it’s the nature of age to be too sure of itself.” The boy had been ready to get angry if he felt he had to. He seemed very conscious of his honour. Sure he was being looked at too. Which was why Hamilton had poked him on the nose just then, to see his control, or lack of it. That rationalisation, horribly, had come to Hamilton only after the fact.
Perhaps that was the point of this, to see which of them displayed the most grace? Had the boy been told what fate might await him, if he failed whatever test this was? Could it be that Hamilton was, after all, being allowed to inspect his new . . . vehicle? Or was this his replacement? He couldn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. Hamilton had instead turned politely to Precious. She was petite, with long red hair set off by a green evening dress that . . . yes, the influence of the optional was here too, the dress had been, or still was, a sunlit meadow. To be in her presence wasn’t so much to see it as to be in the presence of it. She was used to being looked at, and sought it. Her freckles didn’t look girlish on her, but somehow added to the passionate seriousness of those eyes, which held an expression of tremendous interest, a challenge to the world that equalled that of her dress. She had a welcoming mouth. “So,” he’d said, “where did you meet me?”
She’d smiled, but she hadn’t laughed. “We were introduced at the College of Heralds. Colonel Turpin brought him to visit. But I note that we haven’t been.”
“You’ll have to forgive me. I assumed we had already shared . . . a degree . . . of intimacy.”
He’d wondered if she would bristle at that. But she had smiled instead of being offended. Still, it had been a forced smile. She wasn’t quite onboard for the anything goes of the new manners, then. Still a Herald at heart. Hamilton had found something he liked in her. Which should have come, he supposed, as no surprise.
“Why do you think,” the boy asked, “that Turpin wanted us to meet?”
“Perhaps he’s deciding on a suit, and wants to see both tried on.” He had looked back to Precious, as if suggesting she might be doing the same thing. She’d just inclined a fine eyebrow.
The boy had stepped between them then. He had decided on both a need to bring this intangible contest into the physical world, and a way to do it. “Tell me, Major,” he said, “do you play cards?”
The Warden, no doubt encouraged by Turpin, had quickly warmed to the notion of a game. The select crowd, who had doubtless now realised what they were looking at when they looked between Hamilton and his younger self, had been intrigued, had talked at the top of their voices about it. He supposed, as the cards were prepared and he’d looked again at the throng, that there were clusters of people like this across Greater Britain now, in the most fashionable salons, changing their shapes and their ages and their appearances and the balance be hanged, and from now on they would all be grabbing at the novel and the extreme like they were bloody Icelandic. Perhaps the blockade had done this. Perhaps they were all starting to dance as the ship went down.
The game, someone had decided, should be clock seconds. Neither he nor the boy knew it. Which again, Hamilton supposed, was no accident. They had each taken a hand of ten from a new deck, one of a series being placed on the table. Hamilton took a glass of comfort while he was at it, a Knappogue Castle, from the Tullamore distillery, a pure pot still whiskey. Nothing served here or at High Table would be the kind of thing that the covers in his head could shrug off. That was the whole point of evenings like this. To get at the reality, that had been the thought, he supposed, back when those invited here had been interested in that. So now he was accepting a disadvantage. The boy, of course, had had to do the same, and, despite Precious’ warning glance, had taken the same measure.
The idea was to form tricks of differing value by discarding cards and picking new ones from another pack. But the nature of what constituted a legal trick changed depending on the time, each ten minute arc on the Warden’s gilt bronze clock deciding the rules at that given moment. There was also a time limit of a few seconds on how long they could take to play a hand, so one couldn’t just sit there waiting until the terrain became favourable. So, Hamilton had realised as they waited for nine o’clock to chime on the chapel bell, one could either hold on to cards for long term advantage, or keep burning one’s fuel steadily, playing the averages instead of waiting for some huge coup. Time and meaning in this game were freakishly interconnected. A somewhat garish intelligent projection of the rules was thrown onto the wall behind them, startling the deer. The projection had all the washes of colour and blurred lines that suggested a courtier who was paying too much attention to His Majesty’s aesthetic tastes. It was said that the look of the ballroom at Hampton Court now changed depending on where you were in it, often just a blur of movement, as if it was seen from a carriage. Several ladies had already fallen as a result during one of the new dances, which had all struck Hamilton as being graceless gallops where the tempo was continually changing, people might collide at any moment, and it would be hard to tell where anyone was. They had been quick to blame their own shortcomings rather than question he whose perspective made all this. And well they should, of course that was the way they had to behave, what was Hamilton thinking? He had chided himself again.
They had taken up their initial hands. The boy had made eye contact with him again. No smile now. The obvious thing would be for Hamilton to underestimate him. He would not do that. That would be to lie about himself. He had let his eyes move upwards from his seated opponent, and linger, for a moment, where they should not.
“What are you looking at?” asked the boy, without turning to look.
“Nothing,” Hamilton had said, and had glanced back to his cards with a precisely calculated raise of his eyebrow.
In the first ten minute round, Hamilton had surged ahead, his opponent failing to score while he put down some obvious, simple tricks. The boy seemed to always be waiting for something that was just one card away. Hamilton had recognised that in himself. That had been something that the service had beaten out of him.
A cheer and the Warden chiming spoon on glass had marked the end of the round, and the boy had immediately thrown down what he’d had but couldn’t previously score from, putting him in the lead, and generating another cheer with the flourish of it. Hamilton had wondered if there were any in this crowd who were favouring him, or if to those who came to a party dressed as a mirage, the older version of an individual would be automatically the less inte
resting. He’d looked again to Precious, and thought he caught something in her expression. Why did he feel she wasn’t quite of that opinion? She was biting her bottom lip, her eyes large with the excitement of the game. He’d turned back to the boy. “You know your fables?” he said, to conceal something that was brewing in his cards. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
“Yes, the Greeks would be keen on this game.” And he’d thrown down the first of a series of quick payoffs, building up a steady lead, trying to force Hamilton to bet on something that might never happen. “It’s full of transformations.”
“Yet hardly classical.”
“What’s seen as classical changes with time, just like anything else.”
So he seemed to share the opinions that had made his arrival here possible. Or to be willing to join in the chorus, at least. But surely he might feel as if he were still a slave, a chattel taken by a raiding party from an invaded province? There was, after all, something of that in Hamilton himself. Hamilton had risked a glance at Turpin and decided to raise the temperature. “Shall we make it interesting?” Having heard how finely cut the boy’s accent was, he had let a little Irish back into his own.
“How much?”
Hamilton had tried to remember what would have broken his bank in his twenties. Not that much less than what would now. Or was that his memory distorting time again? He didn’t want to quote something that the boy would consider a trifle. Still, the value of money hadn’t changed much over the years, just his concept of what sufficed. “A thousand guineas?” The onlookers made shocked noises. Hamilton had realised his mistake immediately. It looked like he was bullying the boy. Precious was shaking her head at the young man, urging him to throw in his cards. “Or, no, perhaps not, let’s say—”
