The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology]

by Edited By Ian Watson

  “Who made these?” he said, softening the excitement he felt into a semblance of mild curiosity.

  She gazed up at him. “My husband.”

  “Really? I like them very much. Does he have a distributor?”

  She didn’t seem to know what he meant.

  “That is . . . does anyone else sell these pieces?”

  She shook her head. “This is all he makes, right here. When he makes more, I sell those.”

  In the distance, he heard Mickelson shouting his name. The dermatologist came running over the marble plaza. “Grant, I’ve got a cab!”

  Grant gestured as if to brush him away. “I’ll meet you later, David, all right? Something’s come up.”

  “What have you found?” Mickelson tried to look past him at the blanket, but Grant spun him around in the direction of the taxis - perhaps a bit too roughly. Mickelson stopped for a moment, readjusted his clothes, then stalked away peevishly towards the cars. So be it.

  Smiling, Grant turned back to the woman. His words died on his tongue when he saw what she was doing with beads she’d been stringing.

  She had formed them into a noose, a bright rainbow noose, and slipped this over the head of a tiny brown doll.

  He knew that doll, knew its tough leathered flesh and pierced limbs, the apple cheeks and teeth of rice. The cross from which she’d taken it lay discarded on the blanket, next to the jewellery that suddenly seemed of secondary importance.

  While he stood there unspeaking, unmoving, she lifted the dangling doll to her lips and daintily, baring crooked teeth, tore off a piece of the leg.

  “What. . . what...”

  He found himself unable to ask what he wished to ask. Instead, fixed by her gaze, he stammered, “What do you want for all of these?”

  She finished chewing before answering. “All?”

  “Yes, I ... I’d like to buy all of them. In fact, I’d like to buy more than this. I’d like to commission a piece, if I might.”

  The squaw swallowed.

  “My husband creates what is within the soul. He makes dreams into metal. He would have to see your dreams.”

  “My dreams? Well, yes, I’ll tell him exactly what I want. Could I meet him to discuss this?”

  The squaw shrugged. She patiently unlooped the noose from the shrivelled image, spread it back onto its cross and pinned the three remaining limbs into place, then tucked it away in a bag at her belt. Finally, rising, she rolled up the blanket with all the bangles and bracelets inside it, and tucked the parcel under her arm.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  He followed her without another word, feeling as though he were moving down an incline, losing his balance with every step, barely managing to throw himself in her direction. She was his guide through the steaming city, through the crowds of ragged cloth, skins ruddy and dark. He pulled off his customary jacket, loosened his tie, and struggled after her. She seemed to dwindle in the distance; he was losing her, losing himself, stretching into a thin strand of beads, beads of sweat, sweat that dripped through the gutters of Arnoldsburg and offered only brine to the thirsty . . .

  But when she once looked back and saw him faltering, she put out her hand and he was standing right beside her, near a metal door. She put her hand upon it and opened the way.

  It was cool inside, and dark except for the tremulous light of candles that lined a descending stairway. He followed, thinking of catacombs, the massed and desiccated ranks of the dead he had seen beneath old missions in Spanish Florida. There was a dusty smell, and far off the sound of hammering. She opened another door and the sound was suddenly close at hand.

  They had entered a workshop. A man sat at a metal table cluttered with coils of wire, metal snips, hand torches. The woman stepped out and closed the door on them.

  “Good afternoon,” Grant said. “I . . . I’m a great admirer of your work.”

  The man turned slowly, the metal stool creaking under his weight, although he was not a big man. His skin was very dark, like his close-cropped hair. His face was soft, as though made of chamois pouches; but his eyes were hard. He beckoned.

  “Come here,” he said. “You like my stuff? What is it that you like?”

  Grant approached the workbench with a feeling of awe. Samples of the man’s work lay scattered about, but these were not done in copper or brass. They were silver, most of them, and gleamed like moonlight.

  “The style,” he said. “The . . . substance.”

  “How about this?” The Indian fingered a large eagle with spreading wings.

  “It’s beautiful - almost alive.”

  “It’s a sign of freedom.” He laid it down. “What about this one?”

  He handed Grant a small rectangular plaque inscribed with an unusual but somehow familiar design. A number of horizontal stripes, with a square inset in the lower right corner, and in that square a wreath of thirteen stars.

  “Beautiful,” Grant said. “You do superior work.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Do you know the symbol?”

  “I ... I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. An old Indian design, isn’t it?”

  The Indian grinned. Gold teeth again, bridging the distance between London and Arnoldsburg, reminding him of the jerked beef martyr, the savage Christ.

  “Not an Indian sign,” he said. “A sign for all people.”

  “Really? Well, I’d like to bring it to all people. I’m a dealer in fine jewellery. I could get a very large audience for these pieces. I could make you a very rich man.”

  “Rich?” The Indian set the plaque aside. “Plenty of Indians are rich. The tribes have all the land and factories they want - as much as you have. But we lack what you also lack: freedom. What is wealth when we have no freedom?”

  “Freedom?”

  “It’s a dim concept to you, isn’t it? But not to me.” He put his hand over his heart. “I hold it here, safe with the memory of how we lost it. A precious thing, a cup of holy water that must never be spilled until it can be swallowed in a single draft. I carry the cup carefully, but there’s enough for all. If you wish to drink, it can be arranged.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Grant said, recovering some part of himself that had begun to drift off through the mystical fog in which the Indians always veiled themselves. He must do something concrete to counteract so much vagueness. “I’m speaking of a business venture. A partnership.”

  “I hear your words. But I see something deeper in you. Something that sleeps in all men. They come here seeking what is lost, looking for freedom and a cause. But all they find are the things that went wrong. Why are you so out of balance, eh? You stumble and crawl, but you always end up here with that same empty look in your eyes. I’ve seen you before. A dozen just like you.”

  “I’m an art dealer,” Grant said. “Not a - a pilgrim. If you can show me more work like this, I’d be grateful. Otherwise, I’m sorry for wasting your time, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Suddenly he was anxious to get away, and this seemed a reasonable excuse. But the jeweller now seemed ready to accommodate him.

  “Art, then,” he said. “All right. I will show you the thing that speaks to you, and perhaps then you will understand. Art is also a way to the soul.”

  He slipped down from the stool and moved towards the door, obviously intending Grant to follow.

  “I’ll show you more than this,” the Indian said. “I’ll show you inspiration.”

  * * * *

  After another dizzying walk, they entered a derelict museum in a district that stank of danger. Grant felt safe only because of his companion; he was obviously a stranger here, in these oppressive alleys. Even inside the place, which seemed less a museum than a warehouse, he sensed that he was being watched. It was crowded by silent mobs, many of them children, almost all of them Negro or Indian. Some sat in circles on the cement floors, talking quietly among themselves, as though taking instruction. Pawnee, Chickasaw, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche .
. . Arnoldsburg was a popular site for tourists, but these didn’t have the look of the ruddy middle-class traveller; these were lower-class ruddies, as tattered as the people in the street. Some had apparently crossed the continent on foot to come here. He felt as if he had entered a church.

  “Now you shall see,” said the jeweller. “This is the art of the patriots. The forefathers. The hidden ones.”

  He stopped near a huge canvas that leaned against a steel beam; the painting was caked with grease, darkened by time, but even through the grime he could see that it was the work of genius. An imitation of da Vinci’s Last Supper, but strangely altered ...

  The guests at Christ’s table wore not biblical attire, but that of the eighteenth century. It was no windowed building that sheltered them, but a tent whose walls gave the impression of a strong wind beating against them from without. The thirteen were at table, men in military outfits, and in their midst a figure of mild yet radiant demeanour, humble in a powdered wig, a mere crust of bread on his plate. Grant did not recognize him, this figure in Christ’s place, but the man in Judas’s place was recognizable enough from the numerous busts and portraits in Arnoldsburg. That was Benedict Arnold.

  The Indian pointed at several of the figures, giving them names: “Henry Knox, Nathaniel Greene, Light-Horse Harry Lee, Lafayette, General Rochambeau—”

  “Who painted this?”

  “It was the work of Benjamin Franklin,” said his guide. “Painted not long after the betrayal at West Point, but secretly, in sadness, when the full extent of our tragedy became all too apparent. After West Point, the patriots continued to fight. But this man, this one man, was the glue that held the soldiers together. After His death, the army had many commanders, but none could win the trust of all men. The revolution collapsed and our chance for freedom slipped away. Franklin died without finishing it, his heart broken.”

  “But that man in the middle?”

  The Indian led him to another painting. This was much more recent, judging from the lack of accumulated soot and grease. Several children stood gazing at it, accompanied by a darkie woman who was trying to get them to analyse the meaning of what was essentially a simple image.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Several hands went up. “The cherry tree!” chimed a few voices.

  “That’s right, the cherry tree. Who can tell us the story of the cherry tree?”

  One little girl pushed forward. “He chopped it down and when He saw what He had done, He said, ‘I cannot let it die.’ So He planted the piece He cut off and it grew into a new tree, and the trunk of the old tree grew too, because it was magic.”

  “Very good. Now that’s a fable, of course. Do you know what it really means? What the cherry tree represents?”

  Grant felt like one of her charges, waiting for some explanation, innocent.

  “It’s an English cherry,” the teacher hinted.

  Hands went up. “The tree!” “I know!” “It’s England.”

  “That’s right. And the piece He transplanted?”

  “America!”

  “Very good. And do you remember what happened next? It isn’t shown in this painting, but it was very sad. Tinsha?”

  “When His father saw what He had done, he was very scared. He was afraid his son was a devil or something, so he tore up the little tree by the roots. He tore up America.”

  “And you know who the father really was, don’t you?”

  “The . . . king?” said Tinsha.

  Grant and his guide went on to another painting, this one showing a man in a powdered wig and a ragged uniform walking across a river in midwinter - not stepping on the floes, but moving carefully between them, on the breast of the frigid water. With him came a band of barefoot men, lightly touching hands, the first of them resting his fingers on the cape of their leader. The men stared at the water as if they could not believe their eyes, but there was only confidence in the face of their commander - that and a serene humility.

  “This is the work of Sully, a great underground artist,” said the jeweller.

  “These . . . these are priceless.”

  The Indian shrugged. “If they were lost tomorrow, we would still carry them with us. It is the feelings they draw from our hearts that are truly beyond price. He came for all men, you see. If you accept Him, if you open your heart to Him, then His death will not have been in vain.”

  “Washington,” Grant said, the name finally coming to him. An insignificant figure of the American Wars, an arch-traitor whose name was a mere footnote in the histories he’d read. Arnold had defeated him, hadn’t he? Was that what had happened at West Point? The memories were vague and unreal, textbook memories.

  The jeweller nodded. “George Washington,” he repeated. “He was leading us to freedom, but He was betrayed and held out as an example. In Philadelphia He was publicly tortured to dispirit the rebels, then hung by His neck after his death, and His corpse toured through the colonies. And that is our sin, the penance which we must pay until every soul has been brought back into balance.”

  “Your sin?”

  The Indian nodded, drawing from the pouch at his waist another of the shrivelled icons, Christ - no, Washington - on the cross.

  “We aided the British in that war. Cherokee and Iroquois, others of the Six Nations. We thought the British would save us from the colonists; we didn’t know that they had different ways of enslavement. My ancestors were master torturers. When Washington was captured it fell to them - to us - to do the bloodiest work.”

  His hands tightened on the figure of flesh; the splintered wood dug into his palm.

  “We nailed Him to the bars of a cross, borrowing an idea that pleased us greatly from your own religion.”

  The brown hand shook. The image rose to the golden mouth.

  “First, we scalped Him. The powdered hair was slung from a warrior’s belt. His flesh was pierced with thorns and knives. And then we flayed Him alive.”

  “Flayed ...”

  Grant winced as golden teeth nipped a shred of jerky and tore it away.

  “Alive . . . ?”

  “He died bravely. He was more than a man. He was our deliverer, saviour of all men, white, red, and black. And we murdered Him. We pushed the world off balance.”

  “What is this place?” Grant asked. “It’s more than a museum, isn’t it? It’s also a school.”

  “It is a holy place. His spirit lives here, in the heart of the city named for the man who betrayed Him. He died to the world two hundred years ago, but He still lives in us. He is champion of the downtrodden, liberator of the enslaved.” The jeweller’s voice was cool despite the fervour of his theme. “You see ... I have looked beyond the walls of fire that surround this world. I have looked into the world that should have been, that would have been if He had lived. I saw a land of the free, a land of life, liberty, and happiness, where the red men lived in harmony with the white. Our plains bore fruit instead of factories. And the holy cause, that of the republic, spread from the hands of the Great Man. The king was dethroned and England too made free. The bell of liberty woke the world; the four winds carried the cause.” The jeweller bowed his head. “That is how it would have been. This I have seen in dreams.”

  Grant looked around him at the paintings, covered with grime but carefully attended; the people, also grimy but with an air of reverence. It was a shame to waste them here, on these people. He imagined the paintings hanging in a well-lit gallery, the patina of ages carefully washed away; saw crowds of people in fine clothes, decked in his gold jewellery, each willing to pay a small fortune for admission. With the proper sponsorship, a world tour could be brought off. He would be a wealthy man, not merely a survivor, at the end of such a tour.

  The Indian watched him, nodding. “I know what you’re thinking. You think it would be good to tell the world of these things, to spread the cause. You think you can carry the message to all humanity, instead of letting it die here in the dark. But I tell you ...
it thrives here. Those who are oppressed, those who are broken and weary of spirit, they are the caretakers of liberty.”

  Grant smiled inwardly; there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I think you underestimate the worth of all this,” he said. “You do it a disservice to hide it from the eyes of the world. I think everyone can gain something from it.”

  “Yes?” The Indian looked thoughtful. He led Grant towards a table where several old books lay open, their pages swollen with humidity, spines cracking, paper flaking away.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said, turning the pages of one book entitled The Undying Patriot, edited by a Parson Weems. “It may be as Doctor Franklin says ...”