Washington's Dirigible (The Timeline Wars, 2)

by John Barnes

“Not a problem at all, sir, the Royal Hanover is a busy vessel at such times, and I’ll have no time—I’ll see to that.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The toughest part of the whole thing was finding a good time to go over the side on the side away from the gangplank; when there was finally a chance to do so quickly and quietly, I had been pacing around nervously there for half an hour. At least this time I had been able to change back into my rags, and had swiped the equivalent of a GP bag from my counterpart so that my scholar’s clothes and weapons stayed dry. The water was not just cold but filthy—London’s system for handling sewage was to let the rain wash it out of the streets and into the river, and the city was huge by the standards of the day, and, of course, though steam was coming in, there were still large numbers of horses.

  I dragged myself out underneath a pier, nearly retching from the smell, and began to look for some stairs or a ladder up, preferably farther away.

  There was a loud clatter and some shouting; after a bit I heard my own voice, bleary, raw, hungover, and in a rage. The note I had sent had fetched a detachment of Royal Marines with the note that I was wanted for murder in Boston, and had added debt-skipping to the list of offenses. Moreover, it had added that I was a dismissed Royal servant “still trading on His Majesty’s name for financial credit.”

  My badly hungover doppelgänger was being arrested; he would be in jail for a while, and given how much I’d spent on his account, would undoubtedly be remanded to debtors prison. I had little doubt that he’d break out of there in short order.

  Meanwhile, I was free and armed. Unfortunately, I also stank, and the little bit that had been returned to me from the ship’s safe wouldn’t get me far. Still, it should cover a room at an inn, a meal or two there, and the most urgent need—a bath and a shave at a barbershop. Getting all of that should take the rest of the day, but I was no longer in quite the hurry I had been in.

  A little shopping allowed me to find a place where the bathwater was fresh and hot and the soap newly made and soft—a big consideration if you visit any version of the eighteenth century, believe me. It’s not to be assumed that you will get bath-water that hasn’t had other people in it, or get it warm, let alone that you will get any kind of soap that you want touching your skin. But this place was quite nice—they’d been hoping to get the sailors off the Royal Hanover and had been beaten out by a special price reduction on used hot water down the street—and very willing to make a deal.

  It takes a little getting used to, to take a bath in front of everyone who happens to be in the barber shop, but once I got past the modesty issue (which I did by ignoring it till it went away), it was marvelous to sink into hot water and take a good stiff brush to my skin. There had been baths available at a very high rate on shipboard, but though the Closers were paying for it, I had not wanted to take the chance of being out in public, out of disguise, in such an exposed position for so long. So I had had no bath since the one in Boston almost three weeks before, and I’d had a couple of saltwater swims and a good dunk in sewage in the interim, not to mention wearing the same clothes through much of the time. I was good and ready for this bath, and it was about as wonderful as experiences come.

  Afterward, dressed, clean, and relatively presentable, I set out to see what the biggest city in the world had to offer. For an art historian, the effect was very strange, for much of what there was to see in the city was still something you’d recognize from Hogarth, Rowlandson, or Gainsborough, but in three dimensions, with full color, and vividly noisy and smelly—but at the same time there were great thumping steam-driven factories, small Sterling-cycle cars rolling in the streets, a few electric trolleys, and in the great squares, electric lights just coming on. It was a scrambled mixture of everything; as I watched, the Great George, first of the Royal Navy’s new dirigibles that were eventually to cross the Atlantic, passed over the town—the newspapers on the ship had said it was due to begin field trials. There were telegraph offices in all the better-off districts, and it was very much like seeing bits of London in the 1920s wander into a collage of the London of Tom Jones and the London of Sherlock Holmes. Every so often I’d note some landmark from my own time—St. Paul’s, or the Tower, or one glimpse of Westminster far away—but mostly it was as confusingly different as Boston and New York had been.

  There were a dozen Whigs that Washington and Adams had told me to look up, and after I had strolled around a little, just for the pleasure of being off the ship and somewhere relatively safe, I stopped a boy and asked him what street I was in. His accent practically screamed “Cheapside”—it was the old Cockney accent, not the one you hear today but the one that you find in Dickens’s novels—but I managed to gather that I was on Threadneedle Street.

  A moment later I felt like a complete fool, when I passed the Bank of England, a landmark at the time and so much a part of London that it was like having been on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., standing in front of the White House, and asking where you were. Oh, well, fortunately this was a century in which lunatics and the feeble-minded were turned out to wander around, when they weren’t being beaten, tortured, or exhibited to amuse the gentry. No doubt the kid merely thought I was one of them.

  That realization, anyway, allowed me to know where I was going at once; the coffeehouse where I stood the best chance of meeting any of the people I was looking for (and where I could at least get a newspaper and see what was currently going on) was very near St. Paul’s on Ave Mary Lane, a place called the Chapter House. The Society of Honest Whigs, Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and a host of other reformist organizations met there; I was supposed to find Joseph Priestley, the noted scientist and friend of Franklin (and where in my timeline he’d discovered oxygen, in this one he had discovered valence and the periodic table; at least in my timeline I’d have understood what he’d done).

  Failing to find Priestley, I was to look for Catharine Macauley or for Thomas Hollis. All of them were from the radical wing of the Whigs, but where in my timeline they’d had very little influence, here they were leading figures in the city, at least as important as Adams and Warren were in Boston. After conferring with them, I’d try to figure out what to do next.

  Chapter House was severely crowded, which I might have expected in the evening, and no one had seen Priestley or Hollis; Catharine Macauley would have been conspicuous, as the only women in there at the moment were serving.

  Besides coffee, Chapter House served sandwiches and various kinds of cold dinners, so I decided my best bet was to get some dinner and wait out the evening; there was an excellent chance of catching someone I wanted to meet. I found a table—a little circular thing barely big enough to hold a plate and cup—with an armchair, sat down, and waited for one of the girls who waited on customers.

  From her, I got a Times and a Daily Advertiser, both used (which meant they were that day’s paper but about one-quarter the price of new), plus a plate of bread, cold sliced beef, and cheese, and then she went off to get me a pot of coffee and a cup.

  When she got back with that, I slipped her a coin to do some inquiring around and to make sure that if anyone I wanted to see came in, I’d know about it.

  Then I settled back to enjoy myself. So this (despite modifications) was the London of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, Hogarth, Adam Smith, Rowlandson—and with added features like electric lights and flush toilets. It was really a pity that I couldn’t tell anyone, back home, or have them believe me if I did tell. I could have traded on this in the English or art departments for a good long while.

  The Times had mostly news of Court, most of which was that the King made very brief appearances but seemed quite concerned to make sure that his old friends knew he was merely busy, not ill and not avoiding them. This led to all sorts of odd rumors which were lovingly reported as almost fact.

  The Advertiser was radical Whig, and it was much more sharply critical, but since the King himself had been quite Whiggish til
l recently, and no one knew what had caused the change, there was a certain strange tone in all the stories of trying to get the King to come back to his senses.

  In neither paper was there the faintest pretense of objectivity, and I appreciated that fact quite a bit; you might not get the truth from your newspaper, but you would never mistake your newspaper for the truth.

  The coffee was very strong by my standards, like barely filtered Turkish coffee, and gave me sort of a caffeine buzz; the food was generally good if very plain. A man could get to like London, I decided.

  I had been half-listening to the conversations around me—two young men discussing horse racing and which brothels in town offered the best bargains, a couple of men arguing about electricity and phlogiston, one grumbling owner of a theater explaining for the tenth time to a playwright that if there were not enough songs, the police could close him down and therefore the play was not acceptable without more songs.

  There was a certain odd silence for an instant, and I looked up from a theater review in the Advertiser—it looked like Sheridan’s The Rivals was a big hit in this timeline, too, with Mrs. Malaprop much the same, but now parts of it took place in a traction-line car—to see the other Mark Strang.

  “Brother Ajax,” he said calmly.

  Over his right forearm, which he held level in front of him, he had a newspaper, and under the newspaper, only I could see that he had a .45 automatic pointed right between my eyes. “Why don’t you invite me to sit down, and while you’re at it, avoid moving in any way that makes me nervous?” he added.

  I moved my hands farther away from my body; the gesture was invitation, surrender, and above all else a way of demonstrating that I didn’t have any weapon right to hand.

  Of course if I had, I’d have used it already, and chances were he knew this.

  He sat down, and I noticed, glancing around, that everyone in there was staring at us. They’d probably never seen a set of twins who looked so much alike. So far, so good; right now I really wouldn’t want to be alone.

  While I had been reading it had gotten dark outside, and though the coffeehouse was now fairly brightly lit, the light came from dozens of candles and some gaslights, so that it all flickered strangely; the clouds of tobacco smoke in the air were thick, warm, heavy, and oppressive, and I suddenly became aware that for all of its comfort, the place had the unmistakable stench of bodies that didn’t wash often enough, at least not by the standards of my time in my timeline.

  The thought that came to me was that I knew him, literally like I knew myself, and if our situations had been reversed, knowing this was an effective and dangerous Closer agent, I’d have been happy to pull the trigger.

  I could not imagine that he was going to be any kinder about it to me. The only question was whether he wanted witnesses, and if he didn’t, and told me to come with him, I wasn’t going to have much choice.

  So there was a good chance I would the in this place, thick with its human stenches, or not far from it, in a history where I didn’t belong … a timeline where there was no Chrysamen, no Dad or Porter or Carrie, and where there would never be.

  I’d have felt sorry for myself about it except I was too disgusted—to get caught at a table in a public space, reading a newspaper—and that made me too angry; life had been all right before Closer bastards had wrecked it, over and over again. Even then, there might have been some purpose in knowing that I was fighting them, that I would get my licks in … and now I was face-to-face with the fact that I was at least as much on the other side. Moreover, that other side seemed to be winning …

  It made me crazy with rage, more furious than I’d been in a long time, angry and reckless and willing to do almost anything.

  Almost.

  I looked at that automatic, under the folded newspaper in his hand. I knew I had carried it through a couple of good swims in salt water, the one thing that was mostly likely to ruin it, and that I’d done no maintenance before I switched guns on him. I knew his ammo had taken a similar dunking, but it was good modern stuff that shouldn’t have been too badly bothered.

  That afternoon I’d also taken a handful of dust from under the bed and sprinkled it into the works, spitting on it to make it stick. But I had not dared to damage it more than that and possibly give my presence on the ship away before I had the full benefit of my head start.

  Clearly I had just lost my head start, and although I’d done my best to make sure that gun was unreliable, the Model 1911A is tough. It wasn’t that unreliable. It looked like it was his call, and all my anger would do me no good at all.

  “I do want to say, Brother Ajax, that the bit of billing all that to me—and then sending the Royal Marines to arrest me—was pretty good; I’d have been here much more quickly if you hadn’t come up with that one. As it was, I finally understood why the steward had been acting so weird around me for the whole voyage, and not only did I get matters straightened out with the Marines, I also got the steward carted off for stealing my gold, and gave the Marines my deposition. I should guess they’ll be hanging him tomorrow morning, or, if you like irony, perhaps they’ll let him off with transportation to the colonies. We’re alike enough that I’m sure you rather got to like him; just think about him at the end of a rope, and the way the neck makes a crunch like a breaking chair, or perhaps imagine him in some nice swamp in West Florida or Georgia, chopping brush and living on bread and water. Oh, am I making you angry? Well, it’s just possible, just very possible, that I’m rather angry myself, Brother Ajax. I think you had better come with me.”

  Suddenly, as I got up and carefully kept my hands away from my sides, and waited while he got my bag, I noticed that for all the bad smells and dim light, for all that most of the people in there were talking about things that didn’t matter to me … for all of that, I really liked Chapter House. I wanted to stay there.

  Mostly because as soon as I was out of it he was going to blow holes in my body until I was dead. And I’d used that particular weapon often enough to have a really good idea about what kind of holes they’d be. Little and smooth going in, big and raw coming out.

  It was dark when we went out of the Chapter House, and he didn’t bother to hire a lantern boy; instead he just told me to turn left and walk, then to turn into a deep alley. I started to wonder if maybe it was dark enough to make a move, and then realized that I just didn’t know; bad idea to try unless I knew it would work, since there was no real point in getting shot early.

  Then again, if he was thinking, he might realize the best way to get me for sure would be to get me somewhere reasonably concealed—like where I already was—and to leave me thinking that he was going to do something else, or had something he had to find out from me …

  And then just pull the trigger by surprise.

  If I knew for sure that it was about to go down—that I was a few feet from the place appointed for my death—I would draw and turn and fire, maybe taking him with me, counting on dark and luck and the rust that might be in the weapon, if he hadn’t cleaned it yet, or the dirt that might jam any of the working parts—it was a lousy gamble, of course, to bet on a gadget to fail when it was made to stand abuse, but it would be the only thing to do if I were six steps from him pulling the trigger.

  But if I weren’t … if he intended to keep me alive for a while …

  There was no way of knowing. And with no way of knowing, in that uncertainty, I couldn’t do a thing, except notice everything around me and keep looking for a logical way out of it.

  My feet were slipping in the slimy mud of the alley, and it was getting cold back here, where the buildings were so close together that the sun probably never shone in here. There was a strange smell I had not quite recognized, and then I stumbled a little, and he barked, “Hands up!”

  My hands stabbed at the sky and threw me so far off-balance that I nearly fell, but at least I knew now that he could see me moving, and that if I was going to get out of this one, it wouldn’t be by pulling
the .45 from its holster.

  I had to appreciate that the guy was as smart as I was and knew me pretty well. He had figured out that if he asked me to extract my .45 and drop it, I’d want to see which of us had a better reaction time. But if he made me hold my coat open and reached in to get it, he’d risk getting a foot or fist in the face and a quick test of one of the nifty pistol disarms I’d learned at COTA.

  So it was better to leave the gun where it was. He could always take it off the body later.

  It was how I would have thought of it.

  Okay, shooting him was out. Temporarily at least. I didn’t think he’d appreciate idle chat, either. Better just keep doing what he said.

  “Feel the ground in front of you but don’t bring your hands too close to your body. I’m wearing infrared goggles now, and I can see you even if you can’t see me.”

  Damn. In the instant that he must have been putting them on, I could have turned and bagged him. But of course—he was good enough to not let me know.

  I felt the ground in front of me. I found something with a blade—

  “Don’t even think of throwing that, but hold it in your hand.”

  The knife was big and heavy, something a surgeon might have used in that day and age, when they amputated legs and arms with no anesthesia and, therefore, speed was the most important thing.

  I held it by the hilt, just as if it were good for something, but in my left hand; if I got a chance with my shooting hand, I wanted to take it.

  “Just in case some eighteenth-century Sherlock Holmes should realize that it’s odd for a man to hold a knife in the hand he doesn’t use—and the position of the shoulder holster would give away that you are right-handed,” the other Strang said to me, “perhaps you should move that to your right. Do it slowly. And yes, I do remember that you, or I, or we, are a lousy shot with the left hand. While you are at it, turn over very slowly and sit, so that you are facing me.

  I did as he said.

  “Now take that left hand and feel to your left a few inches,” he said.