Irregularity

by Nick Harkaway

  The book was called “Irregularity”.

  I opened it at random, and I read the page you have just read, and as I read on I came to these words — these, which you are reading now – and when I reached what is printed after the word “possible” I was filled with a sense of wonder and alarm. The biological aspect of what I learned was remarkable but not metaphysically challenging. The implications of what I was presently experiencing were far more significant and seemed to require that I continue with great caution. I learned, then, that at some time in the future it would be possible to create a physical replica of myself, and that she would possess none of my memories, would not be me, but that she would – will, must, and in some way already does, as evidenced by this book — nonetheless feel a curiosity about who I must have been which could only be allayed by a direct communication from myself. I would be the template on which she was built, a living architectural design, and from that inception she must inevitably derive some sense of commonality and identity, and wish to know me, just as I instinctively reach out to her, my sister, my mirror.

  Following after this understanding came the stark realisation that I must right at that moment codify and condense every speculation I had ever ventured about free will and determination into a single practical decision for myself. However tempting it might be to step around the notion of fate and prove by defaulting that I was not bound to write the passage appearing in this book, such an action might have consequences beyond the rhetorical demonstration of my own freedom to act. Might my desire to demonstrate independence — itself, after all, a consequence of my earlier life — cause a misfire in the Universe and the orderly flow of time and therefore destroy or fundamentally remake the causality in which I lived? Or would I simply demonstrate that the book did not apply to me, after all, and I was just a step along its road to that person, whoever she might be, whose life greatly resembled mine to this point but thereafter diverged?

  It seemed to say the least hubristic to experiment, so I ceased reading the book, and began writing instead. Paper and pen were laid by in the desk. I have not tried to remember what was written, but am writing what occurs to me, so that this is a true statement of self and a document created by me in this moment and not copied out from the Universe’s later recollection as an unauthored, orphaned anomaly. I will edit it tomorrow, and by then my recollection of what was written that I did read will have faded, so what I write will govern what appears in the text and not the other way about. I am not sure if this is more of a paradox or less, but I look forward to spending some time considering that matter after I have done this thing — very likely the rest of my life.

  It did not strike me, as a practical matter, remarkable that my body might be replicated. Robert Hooke, whose writings rested on a shelf but a few feet away between the travels of Al-Masudi and Mary Wollstonecroft’s wonderful Vindication, had identified the cell in 1665, and from such tiny beginnings it now appeared everyone must come. That a future medical science should learn how to grow a person entire from a single part did not seem so remarkable, as some amphibians may regrow a limb or a tree may be germinated from a cutting, and I was assured by the evidence in my hand that it must be so. To travel backwards in time and supply me with this book, I reasoned, must surely be a sufficiently onerous task that no one would set about it merely to play a trick upon a minor scholar, any more than one would build a city in order to have somewhere to keep one’s hat.

  Why anyone would bother with me, in particular, I did not know, unless of course it was the presence of this message itself, with the samples of bone and blood I have appended, preserved in various chemicals and sealed as best I can like an ancient reliquary and sent with the manuscript itself into the future by way of the firm of Mr. M .

  No, the biological business I am sure is commonplace, though I suspect it is hard work. What I cannot begin to comprehend is how this book comes to be here, in this library which I might myself have assembled, which so perfectly accords with who I am that I know instinctively where something will be found and even whether it is in the shelves at all. Mr. M informs me that there is money, too, for the maintenance of the place and the purchase of more books. I have had more shelves built. The new books, and those upon the tables in the first room, now reside in the next. It is all quite elegant, but quite impossible, and I am half of a mind to give up and blame it upon fairies, as Wessel did in his play. I say “half”, but in that I do myself an injustice. It does not occur to me to propose so mythological an explanation. If I am sure of anything, it is that no thing is unknowable, it is merely not knowable yet.

  And to you, my very far off, very loved, and no doubt very curious sister, made from my old dry bones, I can offer this: that my parents were both wrong, and so no doubt am I in all sorts of things, and so too will those earnest people be who are your parents and your guardians, and they will also be right in unexpected and unintended ways. They will keep secrets, too, lesser or greater. Perhaps they will tell you how all this came to be, or perhaps they will not know either, will wonder how I came to know about you, and the mystery will run on. Who was my mother? What else did she keep from me? Why did she not tell me until this late revelation? Through this library — which

  Mr. M assures me had been hers for decades — I know her more than I ever did before. It is lonely and sad, but it is also mysterious and impossible, and her life must somehow be folded in upon itself as this book is, and the Universe embraces that, contains it, and does not suffer by it.

  And that is wonderful.

  A Game Proposition

  Rose Biggin

  Well, now.

  There’s a hostelry in Port Royal, or there was; little to no point in going there these days, unless you’ve a fondness for charred things. Were you to go there yourself you’d see some old posts and a plaque but once, oh once, once there were people and games and frolics and what fun we had — until there wasn’t any more fun to be had, if you understand me, you pretty thing.

  The little cherubs you see pouting away in the corners of the map, they were free to fly and they are still, if they want to; our wings though, they were clipped one night, clipped good and proper. I’m to tell you how it came to pass.

  Can you picture a tavern? A bustling one. A hubbub of excesses, picture it for me now. With barrels and spillages and pistols cocked on whims and a violently low tolerance for lack of payment, whatever you’re buying. Do you have it? No, no you can’t quite picture it, not correctly, not yet. Mucky it about a bit. Add more dirt. This wasn’t a high-end place, and it would never pretend to be one. And for Port Royal at this time, ‘twas a piece of pride to be able to boast so. Vicars used to run away from Port Royal, hankies over their mouths. Fair enough. But this place? Some of the saltiest knave dogs that ever sailed the South Seas avoided this place.

  And this place, this place, this was where we would attend. Me and my girls, my fellow ladies; and whatever picture of us you’ve got, you might as well mucky that up a fair bit too. We didn’t stand on ceremony. We didn’t stand at all, hardly. Well, we would if that’s what was wanted. Nan in particular was a great one for doing it standing, or leaning up against walls. No-Conscience Nan would lean up against anything you wanted. Gravestones. Peg preferred to lie, but she’d sit at a push, or a pull. Jenny was for kneeling. And I — what was it that charming lad said of me —

  “as common as a barber’s chair: no sooner was one out, but another was in.”

  His ship sank on the way home.

  Look, there were worse ways to earn five hundred pieces of eight, in those days. And we weren’t even in it for those pieces. We were in it for what I’m to tell you about. We were in it for the fun that follows.

  So picture it, this tavern in a part of Port Royal, just afore the turn of the seventeenth into eighteenth. And picture us four, the four of us. Strumpets wenches common whores all four. Having a veritable holiday.

  I rolled the dice and turned over a card. “Full flush,” I
said, and Nan got a blush in her cheeks to match. And not much made old No-Conscience blush, so I knew I’d made a fair move.

  “Aye,” said she, “you’ve won that on a cheeky go, have you or have you not,” and with reluctant fingers she pushed her counter back over the Caribbean swells. She’d wanted to go further.

  “Two points forfeit,” said Peg, “and I’ll be having an easterly trade-wind as yet, come cyclone, come as not.”

  More picturing for you to do. A board, like as your trictrac or your backgammon. Overlay ’pon it a map of the world — all of it, the whole world, the most comprehensive cartography yet, says I — then overlay that with a grid, and counters, and wooden posts, and pegs, and cards, and dice. Do you see it? You haven’t got it quite right, my friend, but hold on to what you do have. You shan’t get closer. This was our game. I say was, because we don’t play it any more.

  “Three cards to you, Salt-Beef, and I’ll be finishing a new round at whatever latitude!” Nan rolled the dice and cackled at the result. “A-ha! I’ll place my prime counter facing westwards, methinks. More than a breeze rippling along that clime, then.”

  Now don’t get ahead of yourselves; I see you thinking, I see you thinking that No-Conscience Nan was calling herself Nan for N for North, yes? True she liked to sit in the north-facing chair but we’d ne’er be so predictable. Although there were four of us, we couldn’t be divided into north and east and south and west as easily as all that.

  “Indeed, Nan,” said Salt-Beef, “You’re playing without mercy over that coast, no mistake of mine.” She moved her own counter. “In fact, I’ll take three score off the degree of tempest at that latitude, if you’ll barter me for half a counter on the next turn-up of cards.”

  Nan grunted. “I’ll consider it over a little,” she said, as Jenny prepared to take her turn.

  You’ll know very well by now that there were four of us. We were well known in this tavern — although not for what we really were, of course. Only for what we seemed to be. Corsets and rouge and tankards of gunpowder rum — you can picture it sweet, it’s all right, t’aint forbidden today — and my point is in this drinking place they all knew us by name. We hadn’t started out with our nicknames. We were once Nan, Peg, Jenny and me. Now we were known as something much more salty around the mouth.

  No-Conscience Nan, they called her.

  And Salt-Beef Peg, who was there too, this night as every night.

  And as for the third of us, she had earned her nickname proud: but you’d be a fool to ask Buttock-de-Clink Jenny anything if you weren’t prepared to pay well for the answer.

  And then there was myself. Four of us, and those were the names the folks of Port Royal called us. A joy for it. Four of us, as I say. Four of us were enough to play ’pon the whole world until this particular evening, darling.

  “Three cards,” said Jenny. “And I’ll wager rapids along the Thames.”

  “Upstream?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then — snap!” said Peg.

  “Damn you through the blasted hemisphere,” said Nan, who had to miss a go now.

  Once a month we would meet, and you ought to know that we would meet when the Moon was full, so that she was at her strongest and able to take over the business of the tides for us. And we would retire to the back room of the place, this tavern, the one we called ours, and there would be no business today no matter who asked for us; and we got asked for by name oftentimes enough. On game night there would only be this. The board, the counters, the dice.

  “I think old Salt-Beef’s bluffing,” said Jenny. “I’d move your counter up the next Tropic, Nan.”

  “I’d agree,” said Nan, “apart from the way you’re moving your own along the Great Dead. You can’t fool me for a fool, and I’ll take two of your precious Navy shipwrecks for that.” High stakes, did we play for? None higher.

  And now I’m to tell you, though I can’t think you deserve it, but as I said before, I’ve got clipped wings now, and I’m to tell you about the last game we truly played.

  Jenny was counting her cards. “I’m afore the equatorial, I believe, my sweets,” she said, reaching to take up the dice. “And if I can square it with a circular, I’ll take two wrecks off of the Madagascar coast.”

  “You bloody won’t!” said Peg. “I’m to pass a current up along there and sink a frigate and if you go denying me that I’ll pull your hair out.”

  “Listen here, you trollop,” said Jenny, preparing to roll. “You counted nine other —”

  Then a man’s voice said, “How goes the game?” and Nan nearly fell off her chair.

  We glared at the intruder; Jenny stood up to stare and I tell ye, my sweet, she could loom when she wanted.

  Men weren’t meant to come here. Once a month was the wenches’ back room for games, and all the barkeeps knew that was sacred. We four looked to each other, deciding to try words a little afore commencing violence. “Get gone,” said Jenny, and Peg she growled.

  The man bowed, which was a gentlemanly enough act, but he didn’t go like we were asking which marked him out as a rogue to me. Nan had got her composure back and was fiddling with her hair and, if I weren’t mistaken, preparing to bat her eyelashes at him, No-Conscience to the end. I could see it myself, the man had dark hair that was pleasant enough, and knowledgeable eyes and a smile that was interesting. And that’s as complimentary as can be got out of me. He wasn’t swaying on his feet; nor, I noted, was his jerkin completely covered in a drunkard’s dribble; and so it seemed he was, if not sober, surely able-brained enough to know what he was getting himself into. Well, by that I mean us as a quart of angry ladies; nothing else. Nothing more.

  “Might I not join you, madams?” he said. Peg took her turn to stand up now. She’d turned a shade of red she had, my lady Salt-Beef, and she was cursing fit to make the northern breezes blush.

  “We don’t invite anyone to play with us,” said Jenny, fierce old Buttock-de-Clink. “It’s a game for four, with dire consequences. Get you out.”

  The man looked at our board, the pieces strewn about mid-game. “I’m new in Port Royal,” he said. “I sail aboard the Roebuck. Before that I’m from London. From England.” At our ignoring him he bloody well kept on, did he not know wiser? The next thing he said gave his wherefroms away even if he hadn’t just told us: he was truly an Englishman no matter how far flung he would ever travel, for as a conversational gambit he disparaged his home weather. “Plenty worse than these climes, the weather in England. Damn rain and the drizzle.”

  That did it. We won’t take comments about the weather, not on game night.

  “Now look here,” said No-Conscience Nan, screwing up a paper boat she’d been idly making out of an abandoned bible page, and in doing so damning a thousand sailors. “You whipsnap,” she said, “I’d break you in half across my knees if I didn’t think ye’d — ”

  “Confound you for a fool,” said Salt-Beef Peg, “if you think ye’ll be getting anywhere with us walking in here uninvited and for — ”

  “Blast you with a thousand blizzards!” said Buttock-de-Clink Jenny, and with a slam of her hand she trumped enough cards to make the rain fall even harder that autumn in his home city.

  He took our anger, soaked it up. He bowed again, at me this time.

  “My name is William Dampier,” he said. “May I join your game?”

  Looking backwise, at this point we might have made everything different, and all right for us; and the worse for you. But at the time there was something about his nerve that made me want to test it for a turn or two.

  “Sit,” I said. “Join us.” The others looked at me, Nan starting to enjoy it, Peg not sure, Jenny fuming like a soggy bonfire. “It seems safe enough,” I said, “to add a player for a single round.” I placed a new counter on the board, near the mark that — how was he to know? — signified the Roebuck.

  Peg saw. “That’s a naughty tidal wave you’re sending on, there!” she said.

  �
�Don’t tell him,” I said. Peg shook her lovely locks; she wouldn’t. Nan’s eyes glinted.

  “Tell me what?” he said.

  “Tell you what,” I said, “Let’s talk stake. I’m telling Salt-Beef strumpet not to tell you I’m betting a wager on your very own Roebuck, so help me, but so help you more.” Even Jenny smiled when she saw what I was about.

  “Ah,” he said, and I hoped to the great north trade-wind that he was beginning to get the weight of what was happening here. Nan whistled in appreciation — and somewhere, off the coast of the Galapagos, a butterfly shuddered at the change in the air and altered its course.

  “What do you want to play for?” said Jenny. “We know who you are. You’re an explorer? What’s that to us, who’ve seen the world already? You hothead, layabout sailor, no-good-for-nothing-”

  “You needn’t bait him any more than we do by our existing here,” I said.

  I rolled, I moved the piece. Peg tapped her nails on the board. She had a splinter she was using for her place-marker; it was from the wreck of Sir Clowdisley’s Association, the naughty girl. That boat was nothing but splinters now. She’d won it off a lucky throw months afore, landed not just that flagship but the Romney and the Eagle sunk down in the Scillies.

  Now, I —

  What’s that, you say? The Association sunk in seventeen-oh-seven; and yet Dampier’s map came out in sixteen-ninety-nine, and wasn’t that when we got our wings clipped, so how could Peg be playing with a piece of driftwood before the ship had even got wrecked? Well, aye. You ask and I’ll answer as straight as I can. It’s most certainly true that we were put down in our power as the century turned. Dampier did what he done, no doubt of it; but to this day we’ve still got some strength in us, and some of our bets take a long while to pay off. Old Nan, she was playing with a piece of metal set to go down in northern waters many, many years ahead, in a freezing cold sea and with severe want of lifeboats; she was always a shrewd spreader of bets. I’ve still a hold of a piece of white plastic from a vessel that’s yet to begin its time on the seabed. Now if you’ll let me continue.