Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  I turned once more to the Frenchman. “Why, Bourne?”

  He twisted his head, his face distorted by the movement. “Why what?”

  “Why did you steal this craft, cause so much damage and suffering?”

  He turned his head away without reply.

  With a strength that surprised me I grabbed his shoulder and twisted him around. “I think you owe me an answer,” I hissed at him.

  “There is no point. You British would never understand.”

  I pressed my lips together, suppressing my anger. “Tell me anyway.”

  “Because of the tricolore,” he snapped. “The tricolore!”

  He twisted out of my grasp and, no matter how I persisted, refused to say any more.

  * * *

  I found, to my horror, that Bourne had been held in restraints improvised from trouser-belts and fragments of air-hose; at my insistence—and on the proviso that he remain in his couch, and that one of us watch him at all times—the next day he was released and sat up gingerly, rubbing at wrists and ankles which were quite blue.

  Feeling stronger, I climbed, with Holden, up through the ceiling hatchway.

  When I had forced entry to the Bridge several days earlier my impressions had been blurred and fragmentary, after the manner of a nightmare; now, though, I saw that the place in flight was a basin of mechanical marvels. Devices whirred and clicked incessantly, so that one had the impression of a veritable artificial mind conducting operations aboard the craft; and the whole was lidded over by the glass latticework of the Phaeton’s nose. This dome now admitted a flood of silver light from a Moon which hung huge—ominously huge—at the crown of the ship.

  “Ah, Wickers!” The voice boomed from somewhere above me; I turned and made out, in sharp moonlight shadows, the great throne fastened against one wall of the chamber. The throne, which was of purple, plumply stuffed damask finished with ropes of velvet, loomed over the Bridge like the couch of a Caesar. Traveller settled back in this throne; he sat with feet up, a loose restraint about his waist, lacking only a servant girl peeling grapes to complete the picture of the potentate at ease. “Rather an easier entry to the Bridge than last time, eh?”

  “Indeed.”

  I pushed off from the deck and floated up into the glass-lined dome, grasped one white-painted strut and hovered there, quite comfortably. Holden stayed close to the deck, among the clusters of instruments. From my new vantage point I saw how a pair of levers, connected to pivots fixed to the adjacent wall, were fixed to either side of Traveller’s couch; to the top of each lever was affixed a smaller steel handle which could be squeezed by the pilot’s fist. Later I was to learn how the smaller handles controlled the thrust of the Phaeton’s rockets while the levers themselves directed the swivelling of the nozzles, so steering the ship through space.

  This couch, no doubt, was where the wretched Bourne had sat on a hot August afternoon, his forehead slick with a terrified sweat, in order to rip the craft from Earth.

  Above Traveller’s head was suspended a long, black-painted tube which terminated in an angled eyepiece. I saw how this device could be pushed through seals beyond the hull, affording the pilot a wide angle of vision. Thus, thanks to this periscope and the optical glass of the dome, Traveller had a panoramic view of the universe beyond the walls of his ship—as well as of the metal landscape formed by his banks of devices. The centerpiece of this array of instruments was a table-like affair I recalled from my earlier visit, a wooden disc five feet across with a circular map inlaid in its center. Smaller instruments were gathered around this table, the dial-face of each illuminated by a small, steady light; the lights formed little yellow islands of illumination in a sea of moonshadow darkness. These dials, I saw now, were turned to face the throne (as I thought of it); the intention was clearly to allow the pilot from his couch to form an instant assessment of the state of the Phaeton—but the effect was rather of a crowd of mechanical pilgrims, each bearing a steady candle before his chest, faces turned in supplication to their lord.

  I complimented Traveller on the admirable clarity of his design, but added that much of the detail left me baffled.

  To my dismay Traveller took that as a cue for a lecture.

  “Where to start—where to start… To begin with you will no doubt recognize the Ruhmkorff devices.”

  “…I beg your pardon?”

  “The electrical coils which provide light for the instruments.” These coils, Traveller explained, provided a steadier and more secure light than that afforded by acetylene lamps, and were less prone to coat the dials of the instruments with soot. He then went on to describe each instrument, with its manufacturer, function, limitations, and even, in some cases, its price, in the loving detail which other folk apply to describing their children. Holden, floating down in the depths of the instrument banks, instantly sensed my bafflement, and began to play up; he would indicate each instrument in turn with a flourish like a conjurer’s assistant, and I had to cram my fist into my mouth to avoid bursting into laughter.

  Traveler, of course, lectured on oblivious.

  There were chronometers, manometers, Eigel Centigrade thermometers. There was a bank of compasses set in a three-dimensional array, so that their faces lay at all angles to each other. Traveller sighed over this arrangement. “I had hoped to use the direction of magnetic flux to navigate through space,” he said, “but I am disappointed to find that the effect fades away more than a few tens of miles from the surface of the Earth.”

  “Damned inconvenient!” Holden called drily.

  “Instead you rely on a sextant,” I said, indicating a large, intricate brass device consisting of a tube mounted on a toothed wheel. “Surely,” I went on, “the Carthaginians themselves would have recognized such a device… but could never have imagined it placed in such a setting.”

  “Carthaginians in space,” Traveller mused. “Now there is an idea for a romance… But, of course, one could never make such a tale plausible enough to convince the modern public. It would be even more controversial than Disraeli’s fashionable fable…” I noticed that Holden looked up from his clowning with interest at that whimsical suggestion. Traveller went on, “You’re quite right, Wickers; between planets, the principles of navigation by the stars are exactly the same as those which guide mariners across the surface of Earth’s seas. But the practice is somewhat more difficult, requiring as it does the determination of the position of a vessel in three co-ordinates.” Traveller went on to explain an elaborate system—using graphs, tables and charts—which he had devised of plotting the locus of a craft which looped like a fly through the emptiness of space. The mathematical calculations involved were facilitated by means of a mechanical device Traveller called an arithmometer. This was a box stuffed with brass gears, cogs and dials; it featured two large cylinders on which were fixed rolls of digits, and Traveller had Holden demonstrate how, by turning various wheels and handles, one could induce the arithmometer to simulate the processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

  Since he had never before ventured more than a few hundred miles from the surface of the Earth—so that the features of the home world had always been at hand, like a vast, illuminated map—Traveller had never previously been forced to rely on his patent navigation systems. I fancied he rather enjoyed the challenge. “And in any event,” he went on, “navigation by the stars is not our primary means of guidance.”

  I asked politely, “And that is?”

  For answer he threw aside his waist restraint and launched himself from the throne, coming to rest balanced on his fingertips, upside down over the circular table at the center of the Bridge, his sidewhiskers wafting gently. “This!” he cried. “Here is my mechanical pride and joy.”

  I drifted down to join him, and I inspected the surface of the table more carefully. It was, as I had noted earlier, inlaid with a map; now I saw that this map showed the Earth as it might be viewed from a rocket craft far above the North Pole, w
ith the ice-locked north centered in the disc-shaped map, and the equatorial countries of Africa and South America smeared around the rim. Traveller showed us how, by turning a lever, he could invert this disc and display a similar view of the South Polar regions. The map was painted, a little clumsily, with natural colors—shades of blue for the oceans, and brown and green for the land. Traveller explained proudly that the coloring was based on his own observation of the planet from his aerial platform Phaeton.

  Holden asked why national boundaries were not shown.

  Traveller said, “And of what value would a display of political allegiance be to the aerial voyager? Sir, take a look through the window and inspect Earth—if you can find it in the moonglow. From this height, even our glorious Empire is less dramatic than the shadings of the empty oceans.”

  Holden bridled at this. “Sir Josiah, I must take exception. A dominion like His Majesty’s is an enduring monument.”

  Traveller’s first word of reply was straight from the threepenny stalls at the music-halls. He went on, “Good God, man; look out of the window! From here, the wanderings of Marco Polo are no more significant than the trail of a fly on the glass; the empires of Caesar, Kublai Khan, Boney—and of the blessed Edward—all rolled up and added together make less difference than the imperfections of a single pane of glass!

  “Holden, from our vantage point the affairs of great men are reduced to their true status: to stuff and nonsense; and the pompous fantasies of our deranged and incompetent leaders are revealed for what they are.”

  Holden drew himself up to his full height, pulling his barrel-shaped stomach toward his chest; but since he floated in the air above the navigation table like the rest of us, and he was besides upside down compared to me and Traveller, the effect was less impressive than he might have hoped. “Sir Josiah, I suggest you explain to our French saboteur how political affairs are irrelevant in this celestial prison. It was politics that brought us here, remember.”

  Traveller shrugged. “Which only serves to prove that there is nothing so small as the imagination of a man.”

  “And, like Bourne, sir,” Holden hissed, “you sound like a damned Anarchist.”

  I had been seeking ways to defuse this argument, and now I felt compelled to say, “Steady on, Holden; I think you should take that back.”

  But Traveller laid a restraining hand on my arm. “Holden, have you actually read the thoughts of such Anarchist luminaries as Proudhon?”

  Holden sniffed. “I have read of the actions of such as Bakunin; that is enough for me.”

  Traveller laughed, his face lit from above by the electric lights embedded in his navigation table. “If you had studied beyond the end of your nose, sir, you would know that your Anarchist has rather a fine view of his fellow human. The nobility of the free man—”

  “Rubbish,” said Holden sternly.

  Traveller turned to me. “Ned, the Anarchist does not believe in lawlessness, or outlawed behavior. Rather he believes that man is capable of living in harmony with his brother, without the restraint of law at all!—that all men are essentially decent chaps, no more desirous of destroying each other, on the whole, than the average Englishman is desirous of murdering his wife, child and dog. And in his natural state man lived as an Anarchist in Eden, unlawed and uncaring!”

  Holden muttered something about blasphemy, but I pondered these puzzling concepts. “But how would we order ourselves, without laws? How could we run our great industrial concerns? How would we distribute the posts of society? Would not the poor man envy the rich man’s castle, and, without the disincentive of the law, be disposed to break in at once and carry off the furniture?”

  “In all probability, such discrepancies would never arise,” said Traveller, “and if they did they would be resolved in an amicable fashion. Each man would know his place, and assume it without comment or complaint for the common good.”

  “Pious nonsense,” Holden snapped, by now quite red-faced; and I found myself forced to agree with him for once.

  “And,” I went on, “if we once lived in a naturally lawless state, like animals—”

  “Not animals, Ned,” Traveller corrected me. “As free men.”

  “But if this is so, then why do we have laws now?”

  Traveller smiled, and the light of ancient lunar seas shone from his platinum nose. “Perhaps you should be a philosopher, Ned. These, of course, are the questions with which right-thinking men have wrestled for many years. We have laws because there are certain individuals—I would include all politicians and princes—who require laws to subjugate their brothers, in order to achieve their own vainglorious ends.”

  I considered these remarkable sentiments. The England I knew was a rational, Christian country, a society informed by industrial principles and confident of its own power and lightness—a confidence fueled largely by the industries to which Traveller’s anti-ice inventions had contributed so significantly.

  But here was a man at the very heart of all this technological achievement, espousing the ideas of an idealistic Russian! I wondered, not for the first time, at the power of the experiences—in the Crimea and elsewhere—which had led Traveller to such conclusions. And I wondered how such experiences might have modulated the views of one such as George Holden…

  Meanwhile Holden had pulled himself closer to us. His fury showed in the beetroot color of his round face, and in the way his chest strained against the buttons of his waistcoat. “You sail close to treason, sir.”

  Again I urged him to apologize; again Traveller waved me down. He said calmly, “I will forget you said that, Holden.”

  Holden’s fleshy jowls trembled. “And have you forgotten the bombs thrown by your Anarchist companions? Only the rule of law stands between the freedoms enjoyed by a British gentleman and the actions of one such as Bourne, who would kill for a flag, a piece of colored cloth!”

  “Perhaps,” Traveller said—and then he shouted back, “But so would you, sir, murder for such a reason!—For it was you who had to be physically restrained from throwing the poor chap straight out through the air cupboard—”

  “Is everything all right, gentlemen?”

  The cool, rational voice of Pocket, who had pushed his head and shoulders through the open hatch- way, caused us to stop. Suddenly we became selfconscious; Traveller and Holden were arranged like two tin soldiers in a box, upside down compared to each other and roaring abuse at each other’s toecaps; while I hung in the air at an indeterminate angle between them, ineffectually trying to calm the situation.

  We moved away from each other, pulling down our waistcoats and harumphing selfconsciously. Traveller reassured Pocket that everything was in order, and suggested that perhaps some tea might knit together our troubled community. Pocket, imperturbable, said he would proceed with this straightaway, and popped his head back through the hatch. Holden was still purple with rage, but he was making a visible effort to control himself; Traveller was quite unmoved. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “a fine impression we have given of the Island Race to our Gallic friend below. Perhaps we should stick to uncontroversial subjects in future?”

  “I think that would be a very good idea, sir,” I said fervently.

  “Now then, Ned,” Traveller said, turning once more to his navigation device, “where were we?”

  I studied the map of Earth once more. “You were saying that this is a navigation table.”

  “Exactly.”

  Now I pressed my nose close to the tabletop. Around the central map, I saw, the table was perforated by an array of small holes, so that the surface was like a coarse wooden sieve. A line of tiny metal flags, gaily colored, protruded from some of the holes; the trail they marked emerged from the surface of the Earth and swept off along a graceful curve. The meaning of this was not hard to deduce; it was a representation, on a flat surface, of our path through space. “But how is this maintained?” I asked Traveller. “From your maps and charts?”

  Traveller sm
iled. “Watch for a few minutes.”

  We hovered over the table—Holden included, his breathing still rapid but his color fading fast—and were at last rewarded with the sight of a new flag popping spontaneously through a hole. At the same time, I became aware that the disc-map was also turning, slower than the hour-hand of a clock. “So,” I said, “the table maintains itself automatically. The map turns with the Earth—once every day, I should judge—and the flags emerge from the surface as we surge forward into space.”

  “Correct,” Traveller said briskly.

  “But how is it done?”

  “There is a clockwork mechanism to drive the orrery—the turning Earth. In fact the whole device was constructed, to great precision, by the younger Boisonnas, clockmaker of Geneva. But the secret of the navigation tracking device is an arrangement of gyroscopes, suspended within the body of the table.”

  As usual I was baffled. “Gyroscopes?”

  Traveller sighed. “Little spinning tops, Ned. Spinning objects retain their orientation in space, as you may know—that is another reason the rocket engines are designed to impart a spin to the whole of the Phaeton—and so the table is able to ‘sense’ the turnings of the ship’s path. This, coupled with springloaded devices to measure acceleration, is sufficient to determine the position of the ship at any time, without reference to the stars at all; one could black out the windows of this Bridge and still be confident of one’s navigation to within a few miles, thanks to my ingenious arrangement.”

  Holden was tapping the table with a forefinger, close to the surface of the model Earth; he was indicating, I saw, the representation of England, and in particular a heavy black line which passed from the central Pole, through London, and on beyond the boundary of the world by several thousand miles. “And this?”

  “The Greenwich Meridian, of course,” Traveller said impatiently.

  Holden nodded, calmly enough, but caught my eye; and we both pondered the unconscious symbolism provided by this surprising gentleman-Anarchist: for here was the worldwide symbol of British rationality and science, sweeping beyond the surface of the Earth and on to the stars.