by Ian McDonald
‘What could you do with one?’
‘What couldn’t you do? One thing that immediately springs to mind is that no secret over three years old is safe. Certainly the Pentagon, the White House, the CIA, and the FBI are open for business. But the big picture is rendering, what we would call a universal simulator, one that can get down to that level. What’s the difference between the real weather, and the rendering?’
Miracle Boy tried to imagine a hurricane that blows between worlds. He shivers. He says, ‘Do you think she might be in danger ?’
Captain Superb shrugs in his spandex suit.
‘Isn’t everyone these days? Everyone’s presumed to be guilty of something. Hell, they can cut you up just for a television show. But the gringos and the government guard their quantum technology very carefully; if she’s using an unlicensed machine, someone will be interested. Even at São Paulo U the quantum cores were so heavily monitored you had to have a security officer with you. You’ve got yourself a scary girlfriend, Sextinho. So who is she, this Quantum Girl?’
‘She’s called Fia Kishida.’
And it is as if Captain Superb has been struck by a White Event and been turned into a real superhero, for he flies off the bed. Miracle Boy sees him clearly suspended in midair. Captain Superb leans over Miracle Boy, spandex puffing and sucking around his mouth. He fumbles for the zips, pulls it down, shakes his graying, wavy hair out.
‘What did you say? Fia Kishida? Fia Kishida?’
JULY 22, 1732
‘So you’re the swordsman,’ the bishop of Grão Pará said as Luis Quinn touched his lips to the proffered ring. ‘Younger than I’d expected. And bigger. Most of the swordsmen I’ve met were small things, scrawny chickens of things. Effete. But then many big men are light on their feet, I’ve found.’
‘The sword belongs to another life, Your Grace.’ Luis Quinn regained his feet and stood, hands folded in submission. Bishop Vasco da Mascarenhas’ chamber was dark, furnished in heavily carved woods from the Tocantins, deep reds and blacks. The ornate putti and seraphs had African mouths and noses, índio eyes and cheekbones. The heat was oppression, the light beyond the drawn shutters painful.
‘Yours is a military order, is it not? Of course I cannot compel you, but it would be no bad thing for your society to be seen to be . . . muscular. Brazil respects power and little else. There are fellows here aplenty - big idle lumps, up from the captaincies to make their fortunes - who fancy themselves a rip with the blade. Yes, the very thing: I shall arrange a sport.’
‘Your Grace, I have foresworn—’
‘Of course you have, of course. Wooden swords, a good poke in the arse, that sort of thing. It would be good to show those arrogant turkey cocks a thing or two. Teach them a little respect for Church authority and keep them away from the índio girls. We get little enough novelty here, as you might imagine.’ The bishop rose from his ornate chair. Wood scraped heavily over stone. ‘Are you a man for the sport, Father? I tell you, there is a great game they have here, the índios brought it, played with a ball of blown latex, though the blacks have the best skill at it. It’s all in the feet; you’re allowed to use the head as well, but not the hands, never the hands. You steer it to the enemy’s goal purely by foot. A splendid sight. You’ll come with me to the cloister garden; the heat is intolerable indoors this time of the day.’
Bishop Vasco was a big man and not at all light on his feet. He sweated luxuriously as he ambled around the shaded garden. Decorative panels of hand-painted blue-on-white Portuguese tiles depicted allegories of the theological virtues. A fountain trickled in the center of the worn limestone flags, a sound as fragile and deep as years. Birds peered and whooped from the eaves.
‘I wish they had sent you to me, Quinn. Sometimes I wish Belém were a dog, that I might shake it by the throat. Carnality and lust, I tell you, carnality and lust. Lust for gold; not merely the Vila Rica gold, but the red gold and the black gold, especially in this time of plague and madness. You know what I speak of. Oh, for a dozen - half a dozen - stout mission fathers: even just one examiner from the Holy Office! That would set them about their ears. I have heard about your railing at the porters of the Cidade Baixa. That is exactly the type of thing we need here, Quinn, exactly. A tedious enough passage, I take it?’
‘Contrary winds and currents, Your Grace, but I am no sailor. I spent the time in prayer and preparation.’
‘Yes yes, my captains say it is faster and easier to sail to the Island of Madeira and then Belém than the uncertain seas off Pernambuco. Pray, what is it the Society requires so urgently it must have an admonitory sent from Coimbra? I am aware of the Frenchman - how could one not be, fluttering around the promenade like a butterfly with his fripperies and gewgaws.’
‘Your Grace, it is a matter of some delicacy within our Society.’
Bishop Vasco stopped in his tracks, face red with more than afternoon heat. He rapped his stick on the stones. Birds flew up in a clatter from the curved eave-tiles. Faces appeared in dark doorways.
‘Wretched Jesuitical . . . It’s that Gonçalves, isn’t it? Don’t answer; I wouldn’t make a liar of you. Keep your Jesuitical secrets. I have my own informations.’ He ducked his head; sweat flew from his long, curled wig. ‘Forgive me, Father Quinn. The heat makes me intemperate, aye, and this country. Understand this one thing: Brazil is not as other places. Even in this city the Society of Jesus, the Franciscans, and the Carmelites are in the scantest of communions with each other over the status; high on the Amazon, it is naked rivalry. The Holy Church is little more than an engine fed with the souls of the red man - and his flesh also. What’s this, what’s this?’ A secretary bowed into the bishop’s path and knelt, offering up a leather tray of documents. ‘Hah. My attention is required. Well, Father Quinn, I shall send with instructions for that diversion I mentioned. I may even risk a little wager myself. I very much look forward to seeing you in action.’
The bishop mimed a sword-lunge with his stick as Luis Quinn bowed, then, before objection could be mouthed, hobbled heavily after his white-robed secretary into the sweating shadows of the chapter.
The Ver-o-Peso roared with laughter as the red-faced youth in the torn shirt went reeling across the cobbles from the boot-shove to his arse. Red laughter, black laughter from the roped-off wagons and drays on the city side of the wide dock where ships and rafts from the high Amazon and Tocantins moored four deep. White laughter from the chairs and temporary stands set up on barrel and planking. From the street and the steps and all around Luis Quinn, the laughter of males. From the wooden balconies on the macaw-colored facades of the feitores’ houses and inns, immodestly open to heat and regard, the laughter of women. Luis Quinn stood victorious before the stone slave block. The young pretender had been dragged away by his friends to the jeers and fruit of slaves; a fat, arrogant son of a jumped-up cane-grower with pretensions to gentry, humiliated in two plays, spanked around the quadrangle like a carnival fool by the flat of Luis Quinn’s mock sword, jipping and whining before the convulsed audience. Then, the final boot: Out of my sight. Luis Quinn took in the faces, the wide, delighted faces. Many skins, many colors, but the open mouths were all the same: red, hungry. Looking up he saw eyes above fluttering fans and beaded veils. Luis Quinn strode around the ring, arms held high, receiving the praise of the people of Belém do Pará.
‘Some men wear their sins on their faces,’ said Bishop Vasco, lolling in his chair, sweating freely despite the fringed canopy shading him from the molten sun and the work of two boy-slaves with feather fans.
‘The women?’ said the royal judge Rafael Pires de Campos. A noble-brother of the Misericordia banished to a pestilential backwater, he was keen on any sport that might break the monotony of striving feitores. It was widely known in Grão Pará that Pires de Campos financed the bishop’s foray into private mercantilism, and that the Episcopal fleet had suffered repeated and expensive drubbings from Dutch pirates whirling down from Curaçao.
‘No, the
pride, man, the pride. Yes, I am quite sure that our admonitory there was quite the blade before he took his first Exercises. And that’s another fifty escudos. How did you ever imagine that fat bumpkin could beat the Jesuit? Cash or offset?’
‘Stroke it from the tally. Where is he from, the Jesuit? His accent is exceedingly rare.’
‘Ireland.’
‘Where is that? I don’t know of any country with that name.’
Bishop Vasco explained the geography and briefly the country’s repressive heretical laws. Pires de Campos pursed his lips, shook his head.
‘I am little wiser, Your Grace. But I do think it is a good thing your Jesuit there is leaving Belém soon. Cloth or no cloth, there are a few would cheerfully have him pistoled in his bed.’
Quinn washed his face and sweat-caked hair in glinting handfuls of water from a street seller’s cask. The sport was over; the people would have to wait for the next auction from the block. The crowd stirred, dusted itself, reached to close its shutters, its brief corporate life dispersed when a movement at the port end of the market sent a ripple of turning heads around the rope ring. Applause swelled to full-throated cheering as a slight, slender man entered the ring. His dress was formal to the edge of foppishness, European, overrefined for Brazil. Eccentrically, he wore green-tinted circular eyeglasses, a source of comment and hilarity among the spectators. The man bowed elaborately.
‘Father Luis Quinn?’
Quinn dipped his head. Water mingled with sweat dripping from his face; he stood in the arena, and under the terrible noon sun he realized how it had drawn the old hot joy high in him, like a tide, heat calling to blood heat. Cease now. But he could never walk away from a challenge from God or from a man.
‘Your service, Father. I am Dr Robert Francois St Honore Falcon, a geographer and geometer of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris and guest of this colony. I understand you have some facility with a sword. I myself trained with Master of Defense Teillagory himself in Paris and very much relish the opportunity to try my skill against yours.’
‘Very well, monsieur,’ Luis Quinn said in French. ‘It is especially pleasing to fight someone who can pronounce my name correctly. I trust you have no issue with being beaten by a priest.’
The crowd hooted its appreciation.
‘Do not think your collar will protect you,’ Falcon said, passing cane, hat, wig, and heavy coat to his slave, retaining his curious, soul-screening glasses. ‘I come from a family of notorious free thinkers.’
Luis Quinn raised his wooden stave in salute. Falcon picked up the discarded baton and returned the courtesy. Each man folded his free hand into the small of his back and began to circle. The Ver-o-Peso fell silent as if struck by an angel.
‘Another fifty on the Jesuit,’ Bishop Vasco said.
‘Really? I think this Frenchman may yet surprise him.’ Pires de Campos delicately dabbed his perspiring face with a scented handkerchief. ‘See?’ The encircling faces let out a great gasp and cheer as Quinn made a mistimed lunge that Falcon deftly sidestepped; Falcon rapped the priest across the back as he stumbled past. Quinn shook his head, smiled to himself, recovered. The two men resumed their circles in the afternoon heat.
‘Your man has been seeing off rapscallions all morning. The Frenchman is fresh as a nosegay,’ Pires de Campos commented, then found his fist clenched around his kerchief, throat tight to yell as Falcon made a series of dazzling feints that drove Luis Quinn across the ring before launching a flying fleche that had even breathless Vasco out of his chair. Tension turned to wonder to a thunder of amazement as Quinn threw himself back, under and away from the spearing staff. Both men fell heavily to the cobbles and rolled, Luis Quinn first to his feet. The tip of Quinn’s stick struck a point from the back of Falcon’s stockinged calf.
‘That would not count in Paris,’ Falcon said, rolling into his stance and dancing away from Quinn.
‘As you can see, we are not in Paris,’ said Quinn, and, laughing joyously, insanely, launched a flurry of cuts that drove Falcon back to the edge of the water.
‘Even for a Jesuit, that is subtle,’ cried Falcon, catching Quinn’s blade and turning it away. As space opened between the two combatants the little Frenchman leaped and kicked the priest in the chest. Quinn reeled back toward the center of the ring. The Ver-o-Peso was a circle of roaring voices.
‘Teillagory never taught that,’ Quinn answered. The two men faced each other once more in the garde. Action upon action, lunge and parry, circle and feint. The barbs and witticisms of the swordsmen devolved into grunts and gasps. Bishop Vasco’s knuckles were white as he gripped the golden knurled head of his cane. The cheers of the spectators softened into mute absorption. A true battle was being fought here. Luis Quinn circled in front of the dapper, dancing Frenchman. The rage flickered like far summer lightning, haunting clouds. Luis Quinn pushed it down, pushed it away. He flicked sweat from the matted tips of his hair. Tired, so bull-tired, and every second the sun drew the strength from him; but he could not let this little man beat him before these slaves and petty masters. Again the old rage called, the old friend, the strength from beyond comprehension, from beyond right and wrong. I will come. I have never failed you. All the sun of the square was gathered up and burning in his tight, nauseous belly. Luis Quinn saw himself bearing down on this prancing fencer, with one stroke snapping his ridiculous stick, driving him down, punching the tip of his wooden sword through his rib cage and out through his back, organs impaled and beating.
Luis Quinn snapped upright, eyes wide, nostrils flared. He unfolded his left hand from the garde position and let it fall. He lifted his sword to his face, touched his nose in salute, and threw the stick to the cobbles. Falcon hesitated. Behind that green glass, what do your eyes read? Luis Quinn thought. Falcon nodded, harrumphed through his nose, then swept his own sword into the salute and threw it down beside Quinn’s.
Whistles and jeers swelled into a thunder of disapproval. Fruit began to fall and burst fragrantly on the sun-heated cobbles. In the edge of his eye Luis Quinn saw Bishop Vasco’s slaves hasten him away on his litter. Some of his household remained, arguing strenuously with the retainers of a fidalgo in pale blue. You set me a test and I beat it, Luis Quinn thought. Brazil respects only power, but power is nothing without control.
Falcon gave a courtly bow. ‘So, Father, I look forward to our voyage together. We have much to explore.’
The pelt of derision falling around the duelists grew thin and failed as the spectators drifted away, the order of the enslaved day restored. The tropical fruits, crusting in the sun, began to smell nauseatingly and drew flies. One by one the ladies of the Pelourinho closed up their gelosias.
Dona Maria da Maia da Garna looked again from the lemon to the orange.
‘So tell me again how a piece of clock can tell us whether the world is pointed or flattened? Once more and I am sure I shall have it.’
Dr Falcon sighed and again set the little lead bob swinging in its gimbals. The dona persisted out of politeness to her educated guest; the other women had long since abandoned the demonstration and turned to their own small talk, which, though they saw each other daily, never seemed to stale. Five months Falcon had itched in social isolation in his rotting, rack-rented casa by the ocean docks, daily applying to bureaucrats and magistrates for a permission here, a docket there, only to be sent away with a demand for supporting applications, informations, and affidavits. Now the advent of a Jesuit had swept away all obstacles; the permits and letters of comfort arrived by special messenger that day, and the doors on polite society, barred so firmly, swung open. He suspected that as a geographer, a scientist, he was far less extraordinary a beast than as a Frenchman with a facility for the art of defense.
Dona Maria had indeed hoped for an after-dinner sport; a preto Bahian slave who knew the foot-fighting dance was ready and a space cleared in the sugar warehouse to try the thing. Thus far the only martial skill the Frenchman had demonstrated was a few Lyonnais wh
arf-side tricks with fish knives that anyone might learn down by the Atlantic dock. Instead she was watching a pendulum swinging tick-tock-tick-tock while he held a lemon in his right hand and an orange in his left.
‘The attractive force - the gravitational force - that acts upon the pendulum is directly proportional to its distance from the center of gravity that attracts it - in this instance the center of our Earth. My pendulum - your clock mechanism is too crude to display the variation, alas - will thus vibrate faster if it is closer to the center of the Earth, slower if it is farther away.’
João the foot servant stood solid as death by the dining room door, wearing the same stern face that he had when Dr Falcon had darted swift as a lizard around all the casa grande’s clocks, lifting his uncouth green glasses to leer into their faces. His eyebrows had lifted a wrinkle as Dr Falcon opened the case of the German long-case, the master’s prize and time-keeper for all the escapements of the house, and deftly unhooked the pendulum mechanism.
