“Don’t be ridiculous, sir,” Hamilton said scornfully. “Admittedly we used Indian labor to construct the great Intercontinental track; but the various tribes and nations involved considered that as an apparatus of the gods, and a device which would benefit them as they do use it for trade and commerce. But to ask them to grub around in the dirt growing maize for their gods would quickly disenchant them, I’m afraid. We should have to resort to ungodlike remedies to keep them with their hands to the plow.”
“Don’t tell me you do the work yourselves,” Swift said.
“Have you never heard of indentured service, sir?” Hamilton asked. “It is a fair and honorable way of establishing yourself in a new country if you have no capital of your own.” Hamilton led the way across the road to Poor Richard’s Tavern as they spoke, and he ushered Swift through the stout oak door.
“That’s a sort of slavery on the time-payment plan, isn’t it?” Swift said.
“No,” Hamilton said, and let it go at that while they sat down at the long wooden bench nearest the door and were brought two great pewter mugs of ale by a girl who could have been no older than fourteen. Then he turned to Swift and studied him closely, as though he were trying to memorize his face. “We’ve travelled together for over a week,” he said, “and I confess I don’t know you. You speak sense mostly, but you appear to have some strange Jacobin ideas. If a man has nothing, why should he not work to acquire something? Should it merely be handed to him? By whom? And from whom should it be taken away, and why?”
“I just don’t believe that you can buy a man’s life for a period of years,” Swift said stubbornly.
“Not his life, sir,” Hamilton said, slapping his hand down on the bench wood, “not his life. Merely his work. And they don’t have to sell. We have no press gangs operating to supply us with forced labor. There are many people in many alternate Americas who would be delighted to have a chance to come here to Georgeland. Our recruiting is not a problem. On the contrary, we have a careful program to restrain growth and keep it in hand. We hope to learn from your mistakes.”
“Georgeland?” Swift asked: “Georgeland?”
Hamilton shrugged, in what Swift had come to recognize as a characteristic gesture. “We could do no less,” he said. “Although, I’m afraid, General Washington will never come to hear about it. The first rule for an invitation here is when there’s serious trouble in your home time; and in every time where we’ve located General Washington still alive, he’s doing quite well.” He drained his ale and wiped his mouth on the lace cuff of his shirt. “Believe me, Mr. Swift, those who serve under indenture here are much better off than the millions who call themselves freemen in other places which are named the United States of America.”
“I don’t deny that,” Swift said. “And I admit I’m favorably impressed both with your colony and your rhetoric. Very neat and clean, the both of them.”
“Hem, sir,” Hamilton said, “we shall not, at the moment, discuss politics or philosophy any further. Drink up your ale.”
“We agree, sir,” Swift said, taking a hearty swallow from his mug. The ale was thick and rich, and tasted strongly of the grain it was brewed from. It could have made a pleasing meal of itself, but Swift resisted the temptation to make it his lunch. “Any food available?” he asked Hamilton.
“It comes,” Hamilton said. And sure enough a few minutes later it came: a giant platter filled with assorted cheeses, meats, breads, and pickled green things. And behind it came the landlord, a short, active man of middle years who looked very familiar to Swift.
“Alex,” the landlord said, extending a large, calloused palm. “Welcome back. What news?”
“The recruiting goes well,” Hamilton said. “The needed supplies are purchased or ordered. No news of Burr.”
The landlord ritualistically wiped his hands on his apron. “Aaron Burr is your own particular bête noire, and none of the colony’s affair,” he told Hamilton. “Personally, I always liked the man.”
Hamilton shrugged. “I’m not trying to incite you against Burr,” he said, “but merely to keep track of him.”
The landlord nodded and sat down opposite Hamilton and Swift. “True wisdom,” he said, “consists of knowing your own motives. And what is this young man? I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Swift extended his hand “Nathan Hale Swift,” he said. “My pleasure.”
“Named after one of us, I see,” the landlord said, taking the proffered hand. “Like George Washington Carver. A fine tradition. My name is Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, not Benjamin Franklin anything, just Benjamin Franklin.”
‘“Ah!” Swift said, shaking the calloused hand. He couldn’t think of anything more to say that wouldn’t sound silly, so he said nothing. The silence stretched toward the ridiculous.
“You have a curious reluctance to cease shaking hands,” Franklin observed. “Is it, perhaps, your only form of exercise?”
“No, no,” Swift said, jerking his hand back. “Sorry.”
“I once invented a machine for shaking hands,” Franklin said. “Thought it would be of inestimable use to politicians. None of them ever used it, though. Said it removed the personal touch. I told them that was its major value. Removing the personal touch of politicians is always a desirable goal in and of itself. Don’t you agree, Alex?”
“I must leave now,” Hamilton said, standing up, “and check on some matters of immediacy. I shall return. Please take care of Mr. Swift while I am gone. He has quite an interesting problem that he would love to share with you and seek your advice on. I have no doubt but that you’ll give it.” He smiled grimly, like a headmaster showing his students that he does have a sense of humor. “I leave you in each other’s capable hands.” And with that he strode out of the house.
“A problem, eh?” Franklin said, standing up and removing his apron. “A problem… or was Hamilton jesting?”
“No, sir,” Swift said. “I have a problem. I don’t know if you can help me, but I do have a problem.”
“Excellent!” Franklin said. “Nothing keeps the brain stirred up and active like a good problem. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Or perhaps spiritual? Here, let’s go into my office and discuss it over a cigar. It’s good Connecticut broadleaf.”
“No, thank you,” Swift said, as Franklin led the way through the rear of the common room to a spacious office, containing one of the finest, largest Colonial desks Swift had ever seen. “I don’t smoke cigars.”
“You don’t, eh?” Franklin said, selecting one from his humidor and carefully cutting off the end with a golden cigar clipper. “Can’t say I blame you.” He took a box of blue-tip kitchen matches from a drawer and used one to light the chosen cigar. “Vile habit. Vile. Dangerous, too, I understand. Would you like some bitterroot tea, or perhaps some sarsaparilla? What is your problem?”
Swift gazed intently across the desk. “I’m searching for the Constitution of the United States.”
“An intellectual sort of pursuit, I’m sure,” Franklin said, leaning back in his wooden chair with his hands folded across his ample middle and tilting his head sideways to stare at Swift through the upper half of his bifocals. “Does your search go to the original document, or are you searching in the writings of Voltaire, Plato, Lao Tzu, and Hamhotep the Scribe?”
“It isn’t the ideas I’m searching for,” Swift told him, “but the original document. In my world someone has stolen the Constitution itself: parchment, ink, and all.” Franklin’s mouth fell open and his eyes crossed as he shifted his gaze to his thumbs, which were circling each other above his laced fingers. He remained in this posture of contemplation for a silent minute. Then he said, “Fascinating! The whole thing, eh?”
“Yes sir. Out of a sealed glass case with a helium atmosphere.”
“Helium, eh. From the sun, you know. Helios is Greek for the sun. Gas, is it?” Franklin stood up.
“Of course, in one sense it’s nothing to get excited about. I mean, no one can steal the Constitution. It is in the hearts and minds of all Americans. Besides, it must be written in a million textbooks. But in another sense, it is a dastardly thing to do. Wonder how it was done. Case was unopened?”
“As far as anyone could tell,” Swift said. “The internal helium atmosphere was undisturbed, at any rate.”
Franklin stared off into space through the top half of his bifocals. “Can’t do it, you know. Not as described. Some element is missing. The impossible is merely the possible improperly described. Tell me about it in detail.” He sat back down and transferred his stare to his guest Swift told Franklin the story of the substitution in detail, chronologically; and Franklin listened silently, with his eyes closed and his lips moving slowly in and out.
“Aha!” Franklin said at one point, “the essential detail!” But as Swift was talking about Burr’s signature, and it was unreasonable to assume that Burr had committed the theft Swift was not sure which was the detail.
“And so,” Swift said, completing his tale, “I now not only have to find the Constitution, but I have to locate my companion, Ves Romero. He is probably in trouble and might be anywhere by now. Or anywhen.”
“The two of you will, of necessity, come together again,” Franklin pronounced. “As you are both seeking the same thing, you will both terminate at the same location. I use the word ‘terminate’ in its less final meaning.”
“I hope,” Swift said. “Besides, we’re only going to terminate at the same place if we have some way of figuring out where that is.”
“No problem,” Franklin said. “I don’t know who took your, eh, particular Constitution, or why. But I believe I can tell you how it was done, and where to look for it.”
“You can?” Swift said, amazed. “From what I’ve told you?”
“Simple deduction, my boy,” Franklin said. “And if I can do it so easily, surely someone from whom your companion seeks aid will be able to similarly guide him. Perhaps the necessary effort will be greater, but the result will be the same.” He pushed himself to his feet and maneuvered across the floor. “Would you like some spring sausage?” he asked. “It’s my own recipe: an adaptation of one given me for petite saucisse in a small inn to the north of Paris.” He tugged a great bell pull by the side of the door and, without waiting for a reply, yelled, “Maryanne, child, bring some sausage and cheese on a platter, and some ale in a pitcher. Bring them to the workroom.” Then he beckoned to Swift. “Come along,” he said. “It’s on the other side of the house. There are some things I’d like to show you.”
“Certainly,” Swift said, following along behind Franklin. “But how was it done, and where should I look?”
“Patience,” Franklin said. “He who is patient today need not wait for, eh, dumpty um—something that rhymes with ‘day’, however vaguely, would be nice. Need not wait for hair to gray… to find a lay… to stack the hay… I’d best let that one simmer a while longer, it clearly isn’t done yet At any rate, in a minute I’ll show you how it was done. Probably done. Almost certainly done. Don’t see how else they could have done it. And that should show you where to look.”
Franklin’s workroom was a large, detached room at the rear of the house, which bore the constructional signs of having once been a stable. In an incredible state of disarray, it bore family resemblance to a science-fair project, an alchemist’s workshop, and a rummage sale. A giant Franklin stove dominated the center of the room; its stovepipe doing three right-angle turns as it climbed and finally disappeared through a hole in one corner of the roof. Three large worktables formed a tight triangle with the stove as their center. The tables were so full of a number of things that a fourth, temporary table had been set up by the door to work at.
“What on Earth is that?” Swift asked, pointing to a contraption on the right-hand table that looked like a cross between an organ and a sewing machine.
“An invention of my own,” Franklin said proudly. “It’s a steam-driven typewriter. Changeable fonts. It’ll come in very handy when I get it perfected. I am the publisher of the colony’s only newspaper. A weekly. Poor Richard’s Thursday-Evening Post.”
“Don’t you need a typesetter, rather than a typewriter, for a newspaper?” Swift asked. “Not that I know much about journalism.”
“Don’t feel bashful,” Franklin said. “Writing is the only field where everyone, practiced in the craft or not, feels that he’s an expert by birthright. That goes for both the technical and the creative ends of the profession.” He walked over to the contraption and prodded it a few times. “I’d give you a demonstration, but it takes half an hour to get the steam up.
“To answer your question, which I was not ignoring, I have developed a variant of the silk-screening process to produce my journal. The letters will be impressed directly onto a specially-treated screen, which will then be put in a frame, and ink rolled through the reverse when the frame is applied to the paper.” Franklin used his hands to create what he was talking about as he described the process. Swift could almost see the press emerge out of the air as Franklin’s rapidly-moving hands circumscribed it.
“Now to get to your problem,” Franklin said. “Come look at this.” He led the way across the room to the farthest table and waved his hand at a modest tangled ball of wires, tubes, coils, pipes, ceramic doodads, and carefully-carved ivory whatnots that occupied one end.
“Beautiful,” Swift said appreciatively. “What does it do?”
“This apparatus is an Intertemporal Translator,” Franklin said. “It moves objects from here to there; or perhaps from now to then. What can one say about a device which travels sideways through time?”
“You invented this?” Swift asked.
Franklin shook his head. “A great-grandson of mine manufactures them in a different time-line, but I don’t even know how it works. I’ve got this one set up here to try and discover that very thing: how it works, what it is capable of doing; for that matter, what powers it. All mysteries. But we make some slow progress. Mostly in the sphere of what the device is capable of doing. What natural law it operates by and where it draws its power— if it uses power—are still unanswered questions, at least by this investigator.”
The young girl who had served in the common room opened the door of the workroom and backed in, carrying a pewter tray of bread, sausage, cheese, and a pitcher of ale. She set these down on the near table, producing two mugs from under her arms and wiping them off with a towel before setting them down. Then she curtsied and left. “Good girl, Maryanne,” Franklin said, filling the two mugs. “Teaching her to read. There are those who don’t hold with teaching a girl to read, but I ain’t one of them.”
Swift, who had been regretting the missed opportunity of eating in the common room, constructed himself a large sandwich and began to eat. “The Constitution,” he reminded Franklin, “and the Intertemporal Translator.”
“Yes,” Franklin said. “Let me organize my thoughts.” He closed his eyes, pursed his lips and his hands created universes in the thin air. Then his eyes opened. “I shall show you.” He scrabbled about the table, picking up and discarding various small objects, before finally settling on a stone beetle about the size of a thumbnail. “Scarab,” he said. “Sacred to the Egyptians. Given me by a Frenchman, who found it in a tomb. Says it’s over three thousand years old. It’ll do.”
He fastened the scarab into the apparatus on the table. “This is an alternate use, you see,” he said. “The way it’s usually set up—the way this one was set up when I found it—it’s built into something that’s quite old, quite large, quite solid. It then somehow sends whoever uses it to the identical base object in another time line.”
“Even if the base object is no longer in the same location?” Swift asked.
“Apparently,” Franklin said. “As you should know, judging by your instant
aneous trip across country when you translated with Hamilton. The important thing is that the two objects be identical; it doesn’t seem to matter where they are. Now, what I have done is to alter the operation so that instead of sending us from object to object, it will change object for object, from another time to this. Here, watch.” Franklin touched the switch on his apparatus…
…and nothing happened. The scarab remained where it was, and changed not a scale.
“It didn’t work,” Swift said, trying not to sound as disappointed as he felt. For a second he could see possibilities that would have explained—
“Of course it worked,” Franklin insisted. “How do you expect to be able to tell when two identical objects changed place?”
“Well, how do you know it happened?” Swift demanded.
“Easy to prove,” Franklin said. “Wait a few minutes—the machine seems to have a short recycling time before it will work again.”
Swift ate his sandwich and drank his beer and tried to moderate his impatience.
“Long enough,” Franklin finally said, after what was certainly long enough. “Now watch!” He took a wooden mallet from a peg on the wall and brought it down squarely on the tiny scarab. The beetle shattered into sufficient fragments to destroy whatever identity it had held. There was nothing to show, now, that it ever had been aught but a pile of stones and a mound of dust.
“What does that prove?” Swift asked, shocked by the sudden destruction.
“Patience,” Franklin said, setting the mallet back on its peg. He touched the switch again…
…and the scarab was restored.
Swift stared at it. He picked it up and examined it closely. “It looks identical,” he said.
“Better than that,” Franklin said, “it is identical. It is the same, unique object. Somewhere in another time-line, in some tomb by the Nile, or in some Egyptologist’s glass-topped case, is a small mound of fragments that were a few seconds ago a stone scarab.”
“Hah!” Swift said.
The Whenabouts of Burr Page 15