The Whenabouts of Burr

by Michael Kurland

  “Prison? No, that’s the Treasury of the Iztahatitipec Empire.” Hamilton led Swift down the staircase running down the center of one side of the tall ziggurat. At the bottom, in the dirt street, a four-man palanquin awaited. Hamilton mounted and motioned to Swift to join him. “It will hold two,” he said. “The bearers change frequently and are used to the load.”

  Swift climbed in beside Hamilton, and the bearers dog-trotted down the street. They tried to keep in step, but the ride was as rough above as it was heavy below. “Thank you,” Swift said, “I think.”

  “Now,” Hamilton said, “I am a very patient man. All of my colleagues will tell you that I am a very patient man. But even a patient man—a very patient man—has his limits. Why have you been following me?”

  “Tell me,” Swift said, “are you the real Alexander Hamilton?”

  “I live, I breathe, I spit, I am,” Hamilton said. “And I am the only Alexander Hamilton I know of. There are, of course, the innumerable doppelgangers in each of the time tracks where I was born. (Doubles-ganger?). But each of them—of us—is as real an Alexander Hamilton as any of the others. Our language is not prepared for the problems of parallel times. I am intimately concerned with the needs of the Alexander Hamilton confined in this body, although I intellectually recognize the identity of all Alexander Hamiltons. Does this in any way answer your question?”

  “Let’s try this,” Swift said: “Are you the Alexander Hamilton who signed the Constitution of the United States?”

  “I am he,” Alexander Hamilton said. He leaned back and looked satisfied. “That I shall always be.”

  Swift decided not to mention the alternate version of the Constitution, or who had signed it. They rode together in silence for a while, then stopped, tipped forward, and were put down.

  “We have, I assume, arrived,” Hamilton said.

  “Where?” Swift asked, climbing out of the palanquin and looking about. They were on a wooden jetty sticking out into the bay. Pulled up alongside the pier was a fat bireme; the prow, in the shape of an angry alligator, snapping its teeth at the sea waves. Two double-banks of naked, oiled rowers waited silently, with shipped oars, for the steady drumbeat to begin.

  “The ferry,” Hamilton said, indicating the craft with a wave of his aristocratic hand. “How is it that I seem to be answering all of your questions, while you are avoiding my only one?”

  “Ferry?” Swift asked.

  Alexander Hamilton sighed. “Come along,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to swim after the boat. We cross the bay to Xantitipetal—Oakland in your world—and the Intercontinental Coach.”

  “The Intercontinental Coach?”

  “Just come along,” Hamilton said. “Living it is so much easier than explaining it. And while we’re en route, perhaps you will tell me something of yourself; like why you’re following me.”

  They traversed the narrow gangplank onto the ferry, and followed the roped walk to the passenger deck at the rear. The ropes were cast off, and the warning beat of the drum started the oarsmen on their steady task. Nate Swift found himself fascinated by the rhythmic consort of the oarsmen, and the sullen expressions on their faces.

  “Why are you so fascinated by the rowers?” Hamilton asked.

  “I was wondering if they have a good union,” Swift told him.

  “They are convicts,” Hamilton said. “Guilty of crimes from unorthodoxy to murder. They get three days off their sentence for every day on the galley. Now sit down and enjoy the trip.”

  Swift sat down and tried to relax, but he felt as though he had just been told that the black powder in the barrel was cordite; now sit down on it and enjoy your smoke. “Forced labor always makes me nervous,” he said.

  “One of the results of progressive Democracy,” Hamilton said scornfully. “The great leveling process, until finally anyone who is superior is afraid to stick his head above the herd. Remember, my boy, the laboring classes were made to labor; do not try to make them think, it only makes them irritable and angry.”

  Swift stared at him, amazed. “I thought you were a Democrat.”

  “You thought what?” It was Hamilton’s turn to be amazed. “I’m a Federalist.”

  “I didn’t mean political party,” Swift said. “I meant, I thought you were in favor of popular democracy.”

  “I never was,” Hamilton said. “Never. Is that what they taught you?”

  “Well, you signed the Constitution; you were one of the heroes of the Revolution…”

  “Just because I objected to the methods of George the Third, that bumbling idiot, doesn’t mean I’m opposed to the principle of monarchy. Jefferson believes in the natural aristocracy of the Noble Farmer. Pah! Jefferson has never met any farmers. He thinks he’s a farmer because he owns several thousand acres of land at Monticello and his slaves grow things on it. Washington believes in the natural aristocracy of himself.”

  “You think some people are better than others? Some people are naturally fit to govern, while others should only serve? Some kind of a genetic split between master and servant?”

  “Not at all,” Hamilton said. “I believe in the natural baseness of Man. But the uneducated are too short-sighted to even know what their own self-interest is, and can be led by any knave with a golden voice. Burr is very popular with the masses. The educated have a better chance of seeing through the simpler sorts of deceit, and the rich or well-born are more able to resist the blandishments of the cruder sorts of bribery.”

  “Which is why these poor brutes should spend their lives rowing back and forth between Oakland and San Francisco?”

  “Xantitipetal and Tehetiltotipec,” Hamilton said absently. “No, not at all. But, whereas I can take advantage of this primitive Empire, it is quite beyond my ability to do anything to change it.”

  “I thought you were a god,” Swift said.

  “True,” Hamilton said. “Do you realize just how circumspect a god has to be? It’s all right to appear now and again and go about my mysterious godlike errands; but if I start expounding beliefs contrary to their dogma, the priests will quickly remember that even gods are mortal.”

  “I never realized what a heavy load it was to be a god,” Swift said, shaking his head.

  “But now to you,” Hamilton said, “and your philosophy of life.”

  “You mean, why was I following you,” Swift said.

  “Exactly,” Hamilton said. “You have a quick and incisive wit. Why?”

  “It’s a long story,” Swift said, “and it started with the Constitution of the United States.” And he went on explaining to Hamilton what had happened. “I had some doubts about telling you,” he said in conclusion. “But it suddenly occurred to me that if I can’t tell Alexander Hamilton what happened to the Constitution of the United States, then who can I tell?”

  “Well now,” Hamilton said, taking off his hat and waving it in front of his face, “isn’t that a hell of a thing.”

  “We thought that either you or Burr might know something,” Swift said. “That is, after we’d figured out about this parallel time business.” He didn’t mention how recent that was. “Do you think Burr—”

  “No,” Hamilton said, “I don’t.”

  “You think he feels strongly enough about it not to desecrate—”

  “Not that,” Hamilton said. “The other way around. You must realize that to those of us who drew up the Constitution, there is nothing sacred about the document itself; it’s merely the working copy. What we regard as sacred, if anything, would be the thoughts, ideas, compromises, and dreams that we put into drawing it up. And those can not be stolen as long as the words are known.”

  “You’re saying that to you the document itself was just a piece of paper,” Swift said. “Then who…?”

  “Obviously, someone for whom the symbol is more important than the idea,” Hamilt
on said. “Someone from Prime Time, perhaps; they’re the sort of crass, thoughtless nitwits who would do this sort of thing.”

  “What is this ‘prime time’ business?” Swift asked.

  “How can you not know that and still be following me around?” Hamilton demanded. “Never mind, we’ll get to it later. Right now, we must debark and catch our train.” The boat pulled up to the Xantitipetal dock, the oars were shipped, the lines were thrown, and the gangplank dropped. Hamilton and Nate Swift were the first passengers off, and they rushed to a taxi-stand row of palanquins at the foot of the pier. They boarded the lead palanquin, and the four bearers dog-trotted them a couple of miles to a large, open-air railroad station.

  “I thought these people hadn’t even invented the wheel,” Swift said, staring at the great, gadgety-looking locomotive and the overly ornate, but flimsy-looking passenger cars.

  “Their gods have done a lot for them recently,” Hamilton said. “Not only the wheel, but the steam engine, springs, iron, movable type, paper, and the grape.”

  “And in return they provide the labor to make everything work, right?” Swift said.

  Hamilton nodded. “Simplicity itself.”

  They climbed aboard one of the carriages, which seemed to have been reserved for Hamilton, and settled on the wicker seats. One of the palanquin bearers clambered up onto the roof and disappeared from view. “My man,” Hamilton explained, with a wave of his hand.

  “What service does he provide on the roof?” Swift asked.

  “He stays on watch for savages. He also runs errands.”

  “It must be hard to run anything across the roofs of these coaches,” Swift observed. Hamilton shrugged, disinterested.

  Two men opened the door to the carriage and deposited a large wicker basket on the floor. “Ah!” Hamilton said, rubbing his hands together. “Goobish parmisan,” he said to the two men, who bowed to him and retreated backward through the door. “Food,” he said to Nate Swift. “Want a bite?”

  It had, Swift realized, been a while since he’d eaten. A long while. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Wouldn’t want you to complain about the hospitality,” Hamilton said. “We’re going to be sharing this portable room for quite a while.”

  “Oh?” Swift said. “Where are we going? How long will it take?”

  “Manhattan,” Hamilton told him. “It should take about a week, barring wandering herds of buffalo blocking the track, or wandering savages burning the train.”

  “Sounds great,” Swift said. “Why?”

  “Because that’s where my business is,” Hamilton explained patiently.

  “I mean,” Swift corrected, “why such a laborious and time-consuming method of travel?”

  “What would you suggest?” Hamilton inquired. “The aeroplane is a bit beyond their level of civilization. You have no idea how much work it was to give them the ideas for iron rails and steam boilers. Benjamin Franklin was a great help in that. You should meet him in Manhattan. I assume he is one of your childhood heroes also; he certainly deserves to be. Why, that man has invented everything.”

  “He is,” Swift said. “But what I meant was: what about the gadget that brought us here, the transporter; why can’t we just travel by that?”

  “We can only go where It goes,” Hamilton said. “Don’t you know anything about the Prime Time, the It and all of that?”

  “I guess I’m just culturally illiterate,” Swift said.

  “Well, it’s very foolish to use a device without having a clear idea of what it is and how it works,” Hamilton said. He opened the top of the wicker basket and delved into its contents, pulling forth a stoneware jug of wine and a baked-clay chicken. “Pull that flap at the side of the window,” he instructed. “That leather thing. That’s right.”

  Swift pulled, and a folding table descended and unfolded itself between them. Hamilton put the comestibles on the table, and produced two stemmed glasses, two china plates, and two sets of silver. “Hm,” he said. He dove back into the basket, and came out with two linen napkins. “Crack open the bird,” he said.

  Swift picked up the clay chicken and examined it. Hamilton handed him a small wooden mallet. “Carefully,” he said. “Don’t get clay all over everything.”

  Swift put the bird on the table and gingerly tapped at it with the mallet. The clay cracked, shedding powder, slivers and chunks, then it neatly fell into two halves, and a baked chicken emerged.

  “Well done, sir,” Hamilton said. “You may dissect it.” And he handed Swift a small, triangular-bladed knife, quite sharp in edge and point. “I’ll have a leg, to start with.”

  While Swift carved the chicken, Hamilton opened the jug, sniffed suspiciously at the wine, poured himself a taste, sampled, nodded approval, and poured out two glassfuls. Then he reached back into the hamper, to pull out a folded-up paper bag with a large red S, and the motto Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends on the side. Opening it, he brushed the clay fragments into it, refolded and stuck it back in the hamper. “Neatness above all,” he said. “Civilized man must always strive for neatness; it’s the first thing to go.”

  Swift handed him a baked chicken leg, which he began to munch on reflectively. There was a series of sudden jerks, and the Intercontinental Coach began its Eastern Trek.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The cell they stuck Ves in was one they reserved for friendly prisoners, since he had agreed to talk. After spending a couple of hours in it, Ves was becoming increasingly glad that he was not classified as an unfriendly prisoner. If this was what they did for people they liked… four feet square it was, and five-and-a-half feet high. A two-by-four foot mattress of straw ticking took up half the floor, and sopped up the moisture which seeped through the floor and dripped from the walls. The only light came through the six-inch square hole in the door, which had three half-inch thick bars down and three across. “What the hell do you need the bars for?” he asked the guard who threw him into the cell. “No one can crawl through a six-inch square.”

  “Shut up,” the guard explained, slamming the door with more than necessary enthusiasm and catching his thumb in the bolt. Muttering threats, and words Ves was glad he couldn’t understand, he stalked away.

  Some hours later, two men brought him a pewter bowl of dinner. It was milky-colored and rancid-tasting, but there wasn’t much of it. A mug of well-aged water, perhaps a bit past its prime, but with a delicate bouquet, completed the repast. Then they came and took the utensils and pottery back. Then they left him alone.

  After an unknowable length of time alone; a time certainly greater than an hour and less than a week, a time after his first meal and before his second, the girl came to him. She was small, slender and dressed in satin; a red jacket trimmed with fur, red riding pants, and high, black boots; her hair was long and red (chestnut? brown? it was so hard to tell in the half-light). Her features were patrician, and her voice was soft and foreign and carried the inflections of the Orient. “Good mahr-nink,” she said, and it was like the trill of birds and the ripple of a slight waterfall.

  The guard let her into the cell, locked the door behind her and went away.

  “Good morning,” Ves said, sitting up on his damp mattress ticking. “It is morning? Welcome to my humble abode. I’ve heard of progressive penology, but this is the first example of it I approve of. How long do you stay? Do you do windows, or just light housework? Can you cook? My terms are generous: I offer Sundays off, every other Thursday, and a half-day Saturdays. I like my three-minute eggs done for no more than five and a half minutes; and my toast burnt on the top only, no use turning it over, because I can tell, you know; jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today. Am I babbling? You’re the first person I’ve had to talk to in weeks. Just this dumb guard who yells ‘shut up’ and hits his thumb on things; very unimaginative. Weeks.”

  “You’ve be
en in here since late this (she said ‘dees’) afternoon. It now about ten o’clock in the evening (she said ‘eef-nink’). But if it pleases you to bubble, go right ahead.”

  “Who are you?” Ves asked. “If they didn’t send you as my live-in maid, what are you doing here?”

  “Tovarich,” she said. “I glad you asked me that.”

  “What was that first word,” Ves asked. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” she said. “I your droog. I not one of them. I not the Russian you think.”

  “I’m prepared to think you’re any sort of Russian you like,” Ves said, edging away from her. “How did you get in here?”

  “Imperial Russia has friends among the guards; and I have friends among the officers,” she said. “You are to come with me.”

  “Who sent you,” Ves demanded, “and where are you taking me?”

  “Your droog Captain Richardson sent me,” she said, “and I am to take you to the nearest Eet. Unfortunately, it is some distance away.”

  “Oh,” Ves said. “Then you’re not a Russian; you’re Prime, like Richardson. You’re from the Directory?”