Pathspace: The Space of Paths

by Matthew Kennedy

  “Those were not included in the givens,” he said.

  “But they do happen. And in any real situation, the people evaluating this for me will include such factors if they are known or can be predicted. If I'm to be Governor, I won't be doing the scribbling – they will. So what's the point of my practicing it?”

  “People will supply you with numbers when they can be calculated, and estimates when they cannot, true enough. But how will you know that the numbers you are given are accurate? How will you be able to tell if budgets are padded, if estimates are exaggerated?”

  “I'll employ people who know their jobs, and replace them if they don't,” she said.

  “You'll still have to be able to do some of the estimating yourself,” he said. “You can't always afford to wait until they're proved wrong to replace them. When you order an army into the field, you have to know in advance what it will cost to keep them there.”

  “That's the job of the quartermasters,” she retorted.

  Chang sighed. “You're missing the point,” he said. “Suppose your army's quartermasters know that it will require one thousand bushels of grain to feed the troops for a month. Their knowing will mean nothing, if you only have five hundred bushels in silos.” He pointed at the chalk-covered board. “These numbers are made up. But in an actual situation they will be crucial. Ordering your army to do things it doesn't have the resources to do will only frustrate them and make them resentful. Politics has been called 'the art of the possible' for good reasons. To expect the impossible is to invite defeat.”

  She wished her mother would come in and interrupt this lesson, as she had done a few times in the past. Too much more of this and she would scream. She felt like screaming now. She knew there was truth to what Chang was saying. But falsehood also. The examples were arbitrary, not really as reasonable as they seemed. An army could forage. They could hunt. And of course they could obtain crops from the fields of the enemy, if they were in enemy territory.

  She felt as if they were asking too much of her and at the same time not giving her enough to do what they asked. In a real situation should would have to be able to trust her people, else she and they were doomed. Yet these exercises were to be done all by herself, as if she were alone on a battlefield! Madness.

  Furthermore, it wasn't the way her mother had been prepared for her rule. Why weren't they letting her spend time reviewing troops, touring installations, observing troop training exercises? It was as if her mother were trying to redo her own past, to make her daughter into the kind of leader she wasn't, a knower of all instead of a maker of decisions.

  Chapter 53

  Lester: “where three dreams cross”

  After Jeffrey left and closed the door behind him, Lester laid the metal tube on the floor of his cell and contemplated it, trying to decide what he should do. Doing nothing was not an option.

  He could refuse to cooperate, of course, but that would lead to his death at the hands of the Church executioners and wouldn't help Rado. It would be a gesture of defiance and nothing more, a pointless death that would accomplish nothing for him, nothing for the Governor, and something for the TCC (the discouragement of inquiry).

  He could cooperate with the Honcho: find a way to make whatever the ruler of Texas needed. This would prolong his life, at the cost of endangering his countrymen. He had a feeling that the Honcho's desires were connected with his aim to expand the Empire. He did not believe the Honcho was a monster, but it was clear that if he were willing to trade a human life for something, that something must be something he desperately needed for his dreams of conquest.

  Lester couldn't accept sacrificing himself for nothing, but he would despise himself if he aided a tyrant. There had to be a third way. And it had to involve escape for him, because he couldn't do anything to help Rado from inside this cell.

  While he thought these thoughts, he tossed the tube from hand to hand, feeling its weight, its solidity. Yet is was probably lighter than that apple he had seen Xander make float from his hand back to the table. He had no idea how the wizard had done that, but he knew that it could be done. Perhaps he would spend the rest of his life trying to figure out how.

  For now, he had to get to work on trying to make a swizzle. He had no doubt that the Honcho would not wait forever before consigning him to the merciless arms of the Church.

  Everybody who knew anything about swizzles knew that they sucked in one end and blew out the other. Another way of saying this was that in the middle, the working fluid moved in one direction. Air, water, or whatever was in front of that motion was pushed out of the way, and similarly the motion pulled more in at the back to make up for what was lost going out the front.

  No matter how he tried, however, he could not make the tube work by imagining the air in the middle moving along the axis of the tube. There was more to it than that. If his hand could somehow fit inside the tube, pushing it forward would do the trick, but only once, and then somehow he would have to get his hand back into its original position in the middle of the tube. Simply moving it backwards would negate the progress achieved – he'd push the air in the other direction.

  A rotor pump could get around this difficulty, he knew, by putting a sort of waterwheel in the middle of the tube, where the wheel would be turned by an external crank and its paddles would push the air forward, rather than the reverse that happened in a miller's waterfall. But somehow he had to accomplish that without altering the shape of the tube or installing a wheel. Somehow the motion had to be continuous, and in only one direction.

  He tried mentally pushing, mentally pulling, mentally squeezing the tube, and nothing worked. He was still at it when he heard a key in the door and the guard brought him dinner: a crust of bread, a cup of water, and a dubious-looking sausage.

  The guard, whose named he learned was Patrick, was a grizzled old veteran whose career was plainly winding down, to be assigned this duty. He liked being a prison guard about as much as Lester liked being in prison. After he swung open the door and put the wooden tray on the floor, he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from behind an ear and lit it from the torch he was holding with his other hand.

  “That's a stupid habit,” Lester told him.

  Patrick grinned a half-sneer at him. “Not as stupid as being in a prison cell,” he said. He took a long drag of smoke into his lungs without coughing, stared into Lester's eyes, and with studied indifference, blew a smoke ring at him. Then he turned with a laugh and took his leave.

  Lester stared at the smoke ring and stopped breathing, afraid to disturb it. After a moment, the gust from the slammed door struck it and it unraveled into wispy fragments. But he could still see it in his mind's eye. It was a collection of circular paths. The particles of smoke had gone round and round, not spreading out aimlessly, but following a rigid pattern.

  And in the center of that pattern all of the particle of smoke had been moving forward. They moved forward together as a circle, then the circle expanded, turned around, came back together, and moved forward again, over an over.

  It was exactly the configuration of pathspace he had been looking for.

  He ignored his supper and picked up the tube again. What he needed was a longer version of the smoke ring – a donut stretched to look like a cylinder, curving back on itself.

  He had been going at it all wrong! He'd been thinking linearly, imagining pushing the air in one direction down the length of the tube, when what he needed was for the air to go around the tube, like threads through the holes in a shirt button. Through and out the front and around and back in the back and through again. The unidirectional lines he'd been imagining inside the tube were only the straightest part of a path that curved around on itself.

  He visualized a circle of air in the center of the tube. Pictured it moving forward, tracing out a straight pathspace until it emerged, than spilling out over the end of the tube and curving back down the outside before curving back into the rear of the tub and returning to its
previous position.

  To see this better in his mind he held the tube with one end facing him, a few inches away. The circle tracing out the stretched smoke-ring path came toward him, curled back, slid away, bent in, entered the back, and came toward him again. Over and over again he imagined the pathspace, making the configuration clear in his mind, setting his intention and his expectation of it – trying to reshape the pathspace near the tube.

  And he began to feel a breeze blowing in his face.

  His heart raced. It was working! Not very strongly, but it was working! All by himself, he'd made a weak swizzle. He'd solved the puzzle, learned how to make one of the Gifts of the Tourists. Now all he had to do was make it stronger, and learn how to control it.

  Chapter 54

  Peter: “I see crowds of people”

  Music drifted from across lake Austin. The early Winter Cotillion was in full swing, with the debs and swains of various Houses strutting their stuff under the watchful eyes of senior Empire aristocrats. The Honcho leaned on the rail of his veranda and remembered a simpler time in his life, when his main worries revolved around the cut of his jacket, the proper form for acknowledging the interest of a débutante without seeming too eager, and the best way to filch half-consumed (yet many times refilled) glasses when their possessors were distracted by the nubility around them. Yes, there was a time when I believed that as the younger son, not even the Runt, that I'd be free to enjoy the idle life of an aristo: riding, drinking, dancing my life away until I joined the ghost riders. And then Frank rode rode off to reason with the Queen of Angeles.

  Katerina's hand touched his arm, rousing him from his reverie. “Remembering the good old days, before you met me?” she asked, smiling.

  He smiled back. “The 'good old days' began when I met you,” he said, reaching out to pull her against him. They'd both put on weight over the years, but she was still a fine figure of a woman. “I was thinking about Frank. His optimism is the real reason that I became Honcho, you know.”

  “Ah, poor Frank. My sister had high hopes for him, all dashed when that horrible woman sent back his head. A perfect example why women shouldn't be rulers.”

  He pretended surprise. “My dear, I'm, shocked. I remember a time when you used to point to her as an example that women can rule. You used to be quite a scandal in your family, with all your youthful insistence that women can be more than just mothers and wives. There were some in my father's circle who were glad I was only the second son, and not the heir apparent. They feared you'd make Texas a matriarchy.”

  She drew back her head, and laughed. “Small chance of that! Complaints about one's own country are common in the young, but they often fade in the illuminating discoveries about conditions in other regions. The Dixie Emirates, for example. Their women are even less free socially than we are here, I'm told. I'm glad not to have been born into one of those places.”

  “Not as glad that I am you weren't,” he said. “Your legs would be a lot harder to see in what they make their women wear. And your veil would get in the way,” he added, leaning forward to kiss her.

  “I don't see how they bear it,” she remarked when her lips were free again. “All that flowing linen must make them swelter terribly in Atlanta. I hear it gets beastly hot there.”

  “Oh, I don't know,” he said. “I've heard the robes wick away perspiration and use evaporation to cool the wearer.”

  “While they dry up like raisins. No thank you.” She shaded her eyes with one hand and peered across the lake. “Is Jeffrey there?”

  He frowned. “No. Perhaps he ought to be, but I asked him to join us for dinner.”

  “Oh, Peter,” she chided. “Not more talk about your war? He needs a wife.”

  “There'll be time enough for that,” he grunted. “But the needs of the Empire come first.”

  “Your needs, you mean.” She abandoned her peering and glanced at him sideways. “Do we have to fight Rado now? Why this need to expand? Why can't we be content with what we have?”

  He gazed out across the lake, but his eyes were turned inward, seeing only Frank's head in a box. “Because we can't,” he said. “We have a lot of territory, but most of it is practically desert, except for East Texas. We shouldn't have to be so dependent on trade for foodstuffs.”

  “You can blame that on your grandfather,” she said. “Inviting the Pope to move his Vatican here was a mistake, if you ask me. North Texas was a lot greener before his loyalists began confiscating all the swizzle pumps. Irrigation is a joke now, except for areas near rivers.”

  “I didn't ask you,” he said, his jaw tightening. Then he sighed. “But you're right. The grass extended much farther out from the lake when I was a boy. Sometimes I miss the sight of the whirligig sprinklers spinning out their water over the lawn, making rainbows in the sun. But of course grandfather had to set an example for the people. Without the pressure from the swizzles, they never spun again.”

  The door behind them opened. She turned. “Jeffrey! How dashing you look in your new leathers, and how cruel it is of your father to keep such a sight from all the girls across the lake.”

  “It's not always pleasant to feel like an earthworm among a flock of chickens,” he said. “I can always sense their mothers pointing me out to them, urging them to snap me up.”

  “So you think all mothers are terrible,” she noted. “You'd rather make war than love?”

  “Not all mothers,” he said. “Don't worry, you'll get your grandchildren soon enough.”

  “I'm glad you're here,” she said, “but you should really ride around the lake and encourage some swooning. It's a good day for getting some flagrante, and there are plenty of bushes.”

  He blushed. “Mother, sometimes I think you are still the scandalous girl my father married. Aren't you supposed to be rearing me to be a proper gentleman?”

  “Oh nonsense,” she said, making a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Proper is for peasants and priests. There's nothing wrong with being young and lusty. Do you think I married your father because he had power?” She shook her head. “It was because of the way he – “

  “Dear,” said the Honcho, “you'll shock the lad. Has Esmeralda been too zealous in refilling your wineglass today? Let's go and investigate what the cook has waiting for us.”

  She sighed at her son. “The oppression is inescapable, it seems,” she said, and glided into the house. Peter was about to follow her, but his son moved to intercept him and withdrew something from a pocket.

  “I just came from the prison,” he said. “Tale a look at this.”

  The metal tube was unremarkable, until he turned one end toward his face and felt the slight breeze it emitted. A swizzle! All thoughts of the cotillion, Frank, and dinner vanished. “He made this? I thought he was just an apprentice without a teacher.”

  “He's making progress,” said Jeffrey. “I know it's too small and weak for your needs, but it's progress, nonetheless. With more practice, he might be able to free you from any need to make a deal with Pope Ricky.”

  “Tell no one,” said the Honcho. “But bring him more material to work with. His Holiness may have to get used to disappointment, after all.”

  Chapter 55

  Xander “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker”

  Standing up was the hardest part. Once he had managed that he was past the worst. His chest still ached, but the wound was sealing, and the scab was beginning to flake off. He suspected, despite what Daniels had said, that there was still a little blood gurgling around in the bottom of his lungs, but he would ignore it. He'd learned it was best to let his body carry out its business without interference from his conscious worrying mind.

  Once out of the bed, he reclaimed his trousers, tunic and cloak. His staff was not in the room. Had it been left behind on the roof? He hoped not, rain and sun might split the wood eventually, and he much preferred holding the wood, especially in cold weather or on those disagreeable situations in which he was forced
to fly, when the air rushing through the pipe at its core would tend to chill the metal even more than usual.

  Now the trick was to evade his minders. He knew Daniels well enough, and vice versa, that he was certain the doctor had installed guards outside his recovery room. That would be comforting if he were the sort to cry out for assistance.

  Stepping into a corner, he reached out and wove pathspace, wrapping himself in darkness. If he could make them think he'd escaped, they might stop guarding the door.

  Huddled in his silence, he wondered how Lester was doing in Texas. While lying in the infirmary bed, recovering, he'd tormented himself with fears that the apprentice had been shot by soldiers, fallen victim to some foreign plague, or been executed by Church fanatics. The boy had real potential. It would be a terrible loss if he were killed. And then he'd have to start hunting all over again for an apprentice. There was no way he could start the school until he had a helper. Someone had to teach, and someone else had to find students. One person could not do both. Stay alive Lester! No matter what you have to do, stay alive!

  And he himself could not afford to just lie here until Daniels and the Governor were satisfied. No army would free the boy, deep inside Texas territory. His only chance, as Xander saw it, was an incursion by someone who could arrive unseen. There was no one but him who could pull it off.

  The sound of the door opening reached him. He began to edge toward it.

  Then the door closed, and he heard Kristana's voice. “Xander, I know you're still in here. What do I have to do to make you stay put? Do you want me to hide your boots and scatter broken glass on the floor? Stop hiding!”