by Tom Miller
I blinked at that. “Huh,” I said. “A couple thousand of us. I guess I just never met one.”
“Well, raw power doesn’t mean anything unless you develop it,” Freddy offered. “How old were you when you started philosophizing?”
“Oh, three or four,” I said. “I learned a few sigils before I could write my name—my sister used to tell me that.”
“So, exceptional power and fifteen years of intensive instruction. That would explain how you do what you do.”
A second question leaped to mind, but I was almost afraid to ask it. I’d wondered my whole life. One answer was as frightening as the other.
“Fred, where would that put me against . . .”
“Compared to a woman? Quite a lot above the median.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Everybody always said I was pretty good for a boy, but that I’d never be able to—”
“You’re very good for anybody.”
I let that wash over me for a second. Certainly, I’d been a better philosopher than many of the girls in Billings and I could out-fly most of Radcliffe. But I’d never really considered what that meant.
“Sure,” I said. “But the Hens are going to have the best women at Radcliffe. Even if my opponent’s a lady about it and lets me hit her first, I would need two, maybe three shots to burn out her shield. She’s not going to sit back and let me hit her that many times.”
“Oh, that shouldn’t be necessary,” Unger said. “We’ll want her to hit you. Here’s the secret: you’re going to layer your shields.”
“No,” I said, “that’s impossible. Dissipate dissipates dissipate.”
After drawing a dissipate sigil, it absorbed the energy of whatever sigil you drew next, including another dissipate. So, if you drew your first dissipate at three thousand milli-Trestors, followed by a second one at two thousand, then you had a total net dissipate of one thousand, not five thousand.
Unger waved away my complaints and gave me a pad of paper. “Show me how you draw your dissipate,” he said.
I drew the glyph and Unger compared it to a large reference book. He frowned. “That can’t be right,” he said, flipping through several pages of line drawings. “What text did you learn it from?”
“My mother.”
“Or, no, here it is . . . version originating in the Philippines. Quite obscure. Splendid.” He handed me the book. “Now choose one of the others. Any of them.”
I picked a second dissipate sigil that had only a few lines—the Reverse Pearl Standard—and practiced it ten, twenty, three hundred times, until its shape ingrained itself in my memory. Unger watched with fascination.
“You draw it the exact same way every time,” he remarked.
“That’s the idea,” I said.
When I was satisfied I knew the figure, I drew one on the chair and Unger measured: three hundred milli-Trestors. Not even strong enough to ward off one of my own pushes.
“That’s useless,” I said.
“No, it’s perfect,” Unger reassured me. “I want you to sit on the chair and lay down four overlapping dissipates. The first should be a wide, weak Reverse Pearl Standard. Then a tighter, stronger Philippine style. A Reverse Pearl, narrower still. Then a Philippine, very, very narrow and as strong as you can—just enough to cover your body and the chair.”
I was dubious. I’d fiddled around with dissipate glyphs plenty as a kid and what Unger was describing simply wasn’t going to work. But I drew the sigils according to his instructions. Then I stepped back and fired off a push at the chair.
Nothing happened.
Unger shouted in delight as he watched the gauge on the Trestor device.
“Did I miss?” I asked.
“No, you hit it dead on at full strength. Do it again!”
I couldn’t figure it. I checked my powder tube—no sign of impurities contaminating the talc. I unloaded twice more on the chair, drawing as hard as I could. It didn’t move. It was the damnedest thing.
“What did you do?” I asked Unger.
“Nothing!” he cried. “Once more.”
I fired off one more push and knocked down the chair. I was dumbfounded.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “Every one of those pushes had ten times more energy than the shield could soak up!”
“No, that’s philosophy,” Unger said. “The strength of your dissipate sigils doesn’t matter. It’s the interfaces.”
“The what?”
“When you lay down two different styles of dissipate on top of each other, they leave an interface—a layer—along the border of their overlap. That layer refracts a quantal-minimum-dependent vectored sigil, like a push.”
“So, what—it bounces off?”
“Not precisely,” said Unger. “As I said, it’s a refractive effect—”
He saw my expression.
“Yes, it bounces. But when it bounces, the sigil breaks apart into many pieces, none of which constitutes a push on its own. It also destroys the interface.”
I thought that over.
“So it doesn’t matter how hard she hits me,” I said. “The layers will deflect anything.”
“Oh, no, not anything!” Unger said. “If she had sufficient powder mass—roughly twelve pounds of talc—she could overcome—”
“She’s only going to have four tubes with one ounce each,” I said.
I picked up the book he’d found his strategy in. Twenty years old and written in French.
“All of that was in here?” I asked.
“It was mathematically described,” said Unger. “I doubt it’s ever been demonstrated practically. How often do you try to protect a fixed point from a push?”
“Never,” I said. “But it’s going to make Saturday night a lot more interesting.”
15
Look at Brother, big and strong—he’s always in a rush.
Until Sister breaks his leg when she’s careless with a push.
Miss Goodbody’s Book for Girls, 1899
ON THE NIGHT OF the tourney, I arrived at ten and sequestered myself in the basement. Krillgoe and Osgood were upstairs seeing that the caterers had everything they needed. Dmitri, who had not yet changed into his uniform, wore a singlet and shorts. He spent a long time stretching, followed by calisthenics and one-handed push-ups.
“Why do all this?” I asked him. “Two years in the tourney, I mean.”
“It’s good fun,” he answered. He bent himself in a way that looked like it should have broken his spine in two, held it for a ten count, then straightened.
“Did you want something more contemplative?” he asked.
I shrugged in the affirmative.
“I’m not philosophical myself, I didn’t grow up with it,” he said. “But my family knows what it’s like to be made outcasts in your own country. So, when I saw the abuse the lady philosophers take around here—the slurs and threats and beatings, the men with signs in the street—I knew whose side I was on. I appreciate that one night each year the common order gets stood on its head. You can take the most intractable anti-philosopher at Harvard, one who says he can’t come within ten paces of an empiricist without going faint from the stench, but offer him a ticket to Cocks and Hens and he’ll be the first one through the door. There’s good in that.”
He wiped his face with a towel. “Of course that’s a lot of high-handed sentiment for what amounts to a clown show.” He changed into his black jacket, loud tie, and ridiculous hat. Osgood and Krillgoe joined us.
At eleven, the doors opened to spectators: eighty onlookers invited by this year’s combatants, plus another ninety as the guests of former participants, who were entitled to tickets in exchange for a small donation. I’d disposed of my ten passes easily—Jake, Francine, Tillie, Astrid, and Essie. One for Frieda, in appreciation for having pulled me out of the river. Two for Unger, who really was bringing Dizzy. And two for Mayweather for the simple reason that, though he seemed to have forgotten the rest of the
details of my late-night visit, he remembered having asked.
At a quarter to midnight, Patrice Magoren, who was heading up the Hen side, snuck down from the second story where the girls had their changing room.
“Not even dressed yet?” asked Osgood, shaking his head.
“Don’t I know it,” she answered. “Just wanted to check one last time to make sure there were no other special requests for the bouts.”
“Yes,” said Dmitri, “tell whoever’s your Spur to bloody well line up her shot.”
“Of course, of course,” said Patrice. “She’s aware. None of us wants a repeat of last year.” She turned to Krillgoe. “She’ll get you in the middle of the third one?” He nodded. To Osgood: “You’ll signal me about four minutes into yours?”
“Precisely,” said Osgood.
“And I don’t believe I’ve spoken with Robert. Planning a swimming exhibition, perhaps?”
“Not tonight,” I said.
“A surprise, then?”
I wondered if Unger had been talking. “I hope so.”
“Well, we can’t wait to see.”
Soon enough, the clock struck midnight. The Cockerels lined up and, with a great adjusting of plumes and ties, we were off, tramping up the stairs to shouts and applause.
At the same time, the Hens paraded down from the second story. They were dressed in identical brown-and-white-spotted dresses, as well as black masks that covered their faces from eyebrow to cheekbone, like carnival-goers in Venice. Patrice’s mask was adorned with two feathers; the others had no plumage at all. Being a Hen had some degree of prestige among the Radcliffe women, so they usually did one stint and passed the honor on. Only the Cocks had trouble finding volunteers.
The referee was an illustrious old Radcliffe alum equipped with a tiara and scepter. With a flourish of her hand, the referee silenced the crowd and made a few grandiose pronouncements, interspersed with lines of Latin. A space was cleared and two stools set opposite each other. The Hens lined up on the far side of the room. With the crush of people between us, I couldn’t get a clear look at their Wing. Tall, certainly.
Then Dmitri was walking forward to shake hands with his opponent. I heard mutters that it was Alvina Williams, a senior I’d never met. Regular Radcliffe, not Contingency. Dmitri whispered something in her ear and she said something back, looking offended.
They took their seats to great cheering.
“Draw!” shouted the referee.
Both of them pulled tubes of bronze from their belts and drew dissipates. Dmitri’s technique was sloppy, so much so that I wondered whether his sigil would take at all. Then again, it could have been one of the variants from Unger’s book. The referee blew her whistle to start the match.
Alvina crossed her arms.
“Point of clarification!” Dmitri sang out. “So long as the contestant does not break contact with the stool or touch the ground, he is not disqualified?”
The referee seemed to be expecting this. “Correct!” she called back.
The audience buzzed.
Dmitri took his hat off and tossed it on the ground. Then he removed his tie and jacket, followed by his shirt and undershirt. Every woman present whistled and screamed—and not in horror. I’d never seen a more perfectly formed male figure. He might have been drawn by one of the Old Masters; the muscles in his arms and torso stood out in perfect relief. He unbuckled his belt, took one tube of talc, and dropped the rest on the floor. Alvina cracked her knuckles and took up a tube of talc, too.
Dmitri spilled the powder onto his hands, slapped them together, and took a firm grip on the stool’s seat. Winking, he lifted himself into the air. He extended his legs outward, parallel to the ground, and then flipped them up so that he was doing a handstand on top of the stool. He walked his hands around the seat until he’d made a full revolution. Then he swung his feet down, catching himself an inch above the ground. He did a few dips and steadied his legs in front of him. Slowly, then with increasing speed, he swept his legs about the stool, lifting one arm and then the other, as if he were on a pommel horse. After a few passes, he reversed direction, split his legs wide, and continued his rotations spinning on one hand. The stool wobbled beneath him.
Eventually, he brought himself to a stop and returned to a sitting position. The crowd roared in approval. Dmitri nodded in acknowledgment, then held up his index finger. He removed his shoes and socks and climbed on top of the stool. With his back to us he raised his arms so that he was shaped like a T. He flexed his knees once. Twice.
Alvina had extended her left arm and was sighting along her thumb. She was being extraordinarily careful, despite the sigil having to carry only twenty feet. She had the tube in her right hand and brought it halfway down, then back up in time with Dmitri.
On the third bounce, she tipped the tube over and drew. Dmitri leaped a moment before her push sigil struck his stool, spinning it across the floor. He managed his backward somersault half twist without difficulty, landing facing the audience.
He bowed to enormous cheers.
“Last year the stool rebounded off the wall and caught him in the face,” Krillgoe whispered to me.
“Point to the Hens!” cried the referee.
It had been the most superlative display of physical agility I’d ever seen. The man would be a natural flier if only I could get him in the air. Alvina rose and curtseyed to more cheers.
The stage was reset and Krillgoe took his seat, carrying a guitar strapped across his back. His opposite number was Maria Valdez, a junior, a transporter. She’d tried to join the Corps with everyone else the previous spring, but even after twenty years, the Corps still had hard feelings toward Spaniards. She’d been denied on “medical” grounds.
They drew their dissipates. On the whistle, they both quick-drew pushes, obviously underpowered glyphs that their own shields easily absorbed. But the crowd gasped. Most of the onlookers could barely see and nine-tenths of those who could were too drunk or unphilosophical to recognize the attacks as feints. Both redrew dissipates and made second attacks, just as weak as the first. But the crowd was on tiptoe, yelling encouragement. They might love a gymnastics routine, but they were mad for a real fight.
Then Krillgoe unslung his guitar and struck a couple dramatic minor chords to bring the shouting down to a more moderate level.
“Now we fully intend to finish this bout,” he announced. “And the third time’s the charm. But I think not nearly so charming as ‘The Charming Lily Brown.’ ”
With that, Krillgoe’s clear, warm tenor filled the room. His song concerned a highwayman on the gallows, looking back regretfully on a life of crime undertaken in a failed attempt to win the affections of a lass named Lily Brown. It was a sad, tuneful piece. If our audience had adored Dmitri, they melted for Krillgoe. I could understand how he’d survived three previous bouts. There was hardly a dry eye when he finished.
“Madam,” Krillgoe said to Maria, “if I may in your honor?”
She nodded, grinning.
Krillgoe launched into an a cappella arrangement of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” hitting and holding several impossibly high notes. The applause when he finished was genuine and sustained.
“One final song, by your leave?” Krillgoe asked. Maria smiled and waved as if to say “by all means.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, my closing number this evening will be ‘One Thousand Bloody Tigers.’ ”
“I say!” called someone from the crowd, sounding a little too well rehearsed. “Isn’t that supposed to be ‘One Hundred Bloody Tigers’?”
“Not tonight,” deadpanned Krillgoe. He strummed a few chords and began an up-tempo rendition:
One thousand bloody tigers,
They’re right outside the door.
One thousand bloody tigers,
I wouldn’t wish for more.
I box ’em ’round the whiskers,
I drag ’em ’cross the floor.
That’s one less bloody tiger
<
br /> That’s right outside my door.
Everyone stomped and sang along. Maria yawned and stretched.
“Nine hundred ninety-nine bloody tigers,” sang Krillgoe, as the audience got tangled in the unwieldy line.
Across from him, Maria readied her talc.
“They’re right outside the door—”
Maria loosed her first sigil, knocking the guitar out of Krillgoe’s hands with a sour note. She had uncanny precision with the sigil, and the instrument went spinning through the air in a high arc, right into Dmitri’s hands.
“Nine hundred ninety-nine bloody tigers . . .” sang Krillgoe, tucking his chin, like the veteran of three bouts that he was, “I wouldn’t wish for—”
The push took him straight on, knocking him to the floor flat on his back, but sparing the stool entirely.
“—more,” he wheezed. Maria fired off a third push with her last half tube, just enough to topple the stool so that it fell on Krillgoe to laughter and applause.
Dmitri had to help Krillgoe to his feet. Another point to the Hens.
“Took the wind right out of me,” said Krillgoe as Dmitri half carried him back to our side. “Go get her, Robert.”
The crowd parted and my opponent stepped out to cheers that exceeded even Krillgoe’s: it was the Hero of the Hellespont. My heart squeezed itself so hard that it stuck. She could hit me hard enough to kill me where I sat. Dazedly I moved to shake her hand. The crowd roared its approval for Radcliffe’s war hero.
“So are you a juggler?” Dardanelles whispered into my ear. “Sketch artist? What do you want me to do?”
She waited for my reply, caught up in the moment. But I could only shake my head.
“Hit me,” I whispered.
I stumbled back to my corner and took my seat. The referee called for silence and then for sigils. I fumbled for a tube of bronze. I couldn’t remember how to draw the Reverse Pearl. Five, six, seven seconds ticked away. Finally, my hands, unwilling to accept further inaction, drew from muscle memory.
Then came the whistle. As quickly as I could, I tore the three remaining bronze tubes from my belt and drew: Philippine, Pearl, Philippine. And my shields were in place with three interfaces that should deflect whatever Dardanelles threw at me.