21st Century Science Fiction: The New Science Fiction Writers of the New Century

by David G. Hartwell

  “Yeah, jammy fucker, my thoughts exactly. Still, I’m on a promise with a couple of members of his staff, so it’s swings and roundabouts.” Carney clicked his tongue and wagged his finger as a Swedish serving maid ran past, and she curtsied a quick smile at him. “I do understand, you know. All our relationships are informed by the balance. And the horror of it is that we all can conceive of a world where this isn’t so.”

  Hamilton pursed his lips and chose his next words carefully. “Is that why you are how you are, your Lordship?”

  “ ’Course it is. Maids, lady companions, youngest sisters, it’s a catalog of incompleteness. I’m allowed to love only in ways that don’t disrupt the balance. For me to commit myself, or, heaven forbid, to marry, would require such deep thought at the highest levels that by the time the Heralds had worked it through, well, I’d have tired of the lady. Story of us all, eh? Nowhere for the pressure to go. If only I could see an alternative.”

  Having shown the corner of his cards, the man had taken care to move back to the fringes of treason once more. It was part of his role as an agent provocateur. And Hamilton knew it. But that didn’t mean he had to take this. “Do you have any further point, your Lordship?”

  “Oh, I’m just getting—”

  The room gasped.

  Hamilton was up out of his seat and had taken a step toward Elizabeth, his gun hand had grabbed into the air to his right where his .66 mm Webley Corsair sat in a knot of space and had swung it ready to fire—

  At nothing.

  There stood the Princess, looking about herself in shock. Dress uniforms, bearded men all around her.

  Left, right, up, down.

  Hamilton couldn’t see anything for her to be shocked at.

  And nothing near her, nothing around her.

  She was already stepping back, her hands in the air, gesturing at a gap—

  What had been there? Everyone was looking there. What?

  He looked to the others like him. Almost all of them were in the same sort of posture he was, balked at picking a target.

  The Papal envoy stepped forward and cried out. “A man was standing there! And he has vanished!”

  • • • •

  Havoc. Everybody was shouting. A weapon, a weapon! But there was no weapon that Hamilton knew of that could have done that, made a man, whoever it had been, blink out of existence. Groups of bodyguards in dress uniforms or diplomatic black tie leapt up, encircling their charges. Ladies started screaming. A nightmare of the balance collapsing all around them. That hysteria when everyone was in the same place and things didn’t go exactly as all these vast powers expected.

  A Bavarian princeling bellowed he needed no such protection and made to rush to the Princess’s side—

  Hamilton stepped into his way and accidentally shouldered him to the floor as he put himself right up beside Elizabeth and her husband. “We’re walking to that door,” he said. “Now.”

  Bertil and Elizabeth nodded and marched with fixed smiles on their faces, Bertil turning and holding back with a gesture the Swedish forces that were moving in from all directions. Hamilton’s fellows fell in all around them, and swept the party across the hall, through that door, and down a servants’ corridor as Life Guards came bundling into the room behind them, causing more noise and more reactions and damn it, Hamilton hoped he wouldn’t suddenly hear the discharge of some hidden—

  He did not. The door was closed and barred behind them. Another good guy doing the right thing.

  Hamilton sometimes distantly wished for an organization to guard those who needed it. But for that the world would have to be different in ways beyond even Carney’s artificial speculations. He and his brother officers would have their independence cropped if that were so. And he lived through his independence. It was the root of the duty that meant he would place himself in harm’s way for Elizabeth’s husband. He had no more thoughts on the subject.

  “I know very little,” said Elizabeth as she walked, her voice careful as always, except when it hadn’t been. “I think the man was with one of the groups of foreign dignitaries—”

  “He looked Prussian,” said Bertil, “we were talking to Prussians.”

  “He just vanished into thin air right in front of me.”

  “Into a fold?” said Bertil.

  “It can’t have been,” she said. “The room will have been mapped and mapped.”

  She looked to Hamilton for confirmation. He nodded.

  They got to the library. Hamilton marched in and secured it. They put the happy couple at the center of it, locked it up, and called everything in to the embroidery.

  The embroideries were busy, swiftly prioritizing, but no, nothing was happening in the great chamber they’d left, the panic had swelled and then subsided into shouts, exhibition-ist faintings (because who these days wore a corset that didn’t have hidden depths), glasses crashing, yelled demands. No one else had vanished. No Spanish infantrymen had materialized out of thin air.

  Bertil walked to the shelves, folded his hands behind his back, and began bravely and ostentatiously browsing. Elizabeth sat down and fanned herself and smiled for all Hamilton’s fellows, and finally, quickly for Hamilton himself.

  They waited.

  The embroidery told them they had a visitor coming.

  A wall of books slid aside, and in walked a figure that made all of them turn and salute. The Queen Mother, still in mourning black, her train racing to catch up with her.

  She came straight to Hamilton and the others all turned to listen, and from now on thanks to this obvious favor, they would regard Hamilton as the ranking officer. He was glad of it. “We will continue,” she said. “We will not regard this as an embarrassment and therefore it will not be. The ballroom was prepared for the dance, we are moving there early, Elizabeth, Bertil, off you go, you two gentlemen in front of them, the rest of you behind. You will be laughing as you enter the ballroom as if this were the most enormous joke, a silly and typically English eccentric misunderstanding.”

  Elizabeth nodded, took Bertil by the arm.

  The Queen Mother intercepted Hamilton as he moved to join them. “No. Major Hamilton, you will go and talk to technical, you will find another explanation for what happened.”

  “Another explanation, your Royal Highness?”

  “Indeed,” she said. “It must not be what they are saying it is.”

  • • • •

  “Here we are, sir,” Lieutenant Matthew Parkes was with the Technical Corps of Hamilton’s own regiment, the 4th Dragoons. He and his men were, incongruously, in the dark of the pantry that had been set aside for their equipment, also in their dress uniforms. From here they were in charge of the sensor net that blanketed the house and grounds down to Newtonian units of space, reaching out for miles in every direction. Parkes’s people had been the first to arrive here, days ago, and would be the last to leave. He was pointing at a screen, on which was frozen the intelligent image of a burly man in black tie, Princess Elizabeth almost entirely obscured behind him. “Know who he is?”

  Hamilton had placed the guest list in his mental index and had checked it as each group had entered the hall. He was relieved to recognize the man. He was as down to earth as it was possible to be. “He was in the Prussian party, not announced, one of six diplomat placings on their list. Built like his muscles have been grown for security and that’s how he moved round the room. Didn’t let anyone chat to him. He nods when his embroidery talks to him. Which’d mean he’s new at this, only . . .” Only the man had a look about him that Hamilton recognized. “No. He’s just very confident. Ostentatious, even. So you’re sure he didn’t walk into some sort of fold?”

  “Here’s the contour map.” Parkes flipped up an overlay on the image that showed the tortured underpinnings of spacetime in the room. There were little sinks and bundles all over the place, where various Britons had weapons stowed, and various foreigners would have had them stowed had they wished to create a diplomatic inci
dent. The corner where Elizabeth had been standing showed only the force of gravity under her dear feet. “We do take care you know, sir.”

  “I’m sure you do, Matty. Let’s see it, then.”

  Parkes flipped back to the clear screen. He touched it and the image changed.

  Hamilton watched as the man vanished. One moment he was there. Then he was not, and Elizabeth was reacting, a sudden jerk of her posture.

  Hamilton often struggled with technical matters. “What’s the frame rate on this thing?”

  “There is none, sir. It’s a continual taking of real image, right down to single Newton intervals of time. That’s as far as physics goes. Sir, we’ve been listening in to what every-one’s saying, all afternoon—”

  “And what are they saying, Matty?”

  “That what’s happened is Gracefully Impossible.”

  • • • •

  Gracefully Impossible. The first thing that had come into Hamilton’s mind when the Queen Mother had mentioned the possibility was the memory of a political cartoon. It was the Prime Minister from a few years ago, standing at the dispatch box, staring in shock at his empty hand, which should presumably have contained some papers. The caption had read:

  Say what you like about Mr. Patel,

  He carries himself correct for his title.

  He’s about to present just his graceful apologies,

  For the impossible loss of all his policies.

  Every child knew that Newton had coined the phrase “gracefully impossible” after he’d spent the day in his garden observing the progress of a very small worm across the surface on an apple. It referred to what, according to the great man’s thinking about the very small, could, and presumably did, sometimes happen: things popping in and out of existence, when God, for some unfathomable reason, started or stopped looking at them. Some Frenchman had insisted that it was actually about whether people were looking, but that was the French for you. Through the centuries, there had been a few documented cases that seemed to fit the bill. Hamilton had always been distantly entertained to read about such in the inside page of his newspaper plate. He’d always assumed it could happen. But here? Now? During a state occasion?

  • • • •

  Hamilton went back into the great hall, now empty of all but a group of Life Guards and those like him, individuals taken from several different regiments, all of whom had responsibilities similar to his, and a few of whom he’d worked with in the field. He checked in with them. They had all noted the Prussian, indeed, with the ruthless air the man had had about him, and the bulk of his musculature, he had been at the forefront of many of their internal indices of threat.

  Hamilton found the place where the vanishing had happened, moved aside a couple of boffins, and against their protestations, went to stand in the exact spot, which felt like anywhere else did, and which set off none of his internal alarms, real or intuitive. He looked to where Liz had been standing, in the corner behind the Prussian. His expression darkened. The man who’d vanished had effectively been shielding the Princess from the room. Between her and every line of sight. He’d been where a bodyguard would have been if he’d become aware of someone taking a shot.

  But that was ridiculous. The Prussian hadn’t rushed in to save her. He’d been standing there, looking around. And anyone in that hall with some strange new weapon concealed on their person wouldn’t have taken the shot then, they’d have waited for him to move.

  Hamilton shook his head, angry with himself. There was a gap here. Something that went beyond the obvious. He let the boffins get back to their work and headed for the ballroom.

  • • • •

  The band had started the music, and the vast chamber was packed with people, the dance floor a whirl of waltzing figures. They were deliberate in their courses. The only laughter was forced laughter. No matter that some half-miracle might have occurred, dance cards had been circulated among the minds of the great powers, so those dances would be danced, and minor royalty matched, and whispers exchanged in precise confidentiality, because everyone was brave and everyone was determined and would be seen to be so. And so the balance went on. But the tension had increased a notch. The weight of the balance could be felt in this room, on the surface now, on every brow. The Queen Mother sat at a high table with courtiers to her left and right, receiving visitors with a grand blessing smile on her face, daring everyone to regard the last hour as anything but a dream.

  Hamilton walked the room, looking around like he was looking at a battle, like it was happening rather than perhaps waiting to happen, whatever it was. He watched his opposite numbers from all the great powers waltzing slowly around their own people, and spiraling off from time to time to orbit his own. The ratio of uniformed to the sort of embassy thug it was difficult to imagine fitting in the diplomatic bag was about three to one for all the nations bar two. The French had of course sent Commissars, who all dressed the same when outsiders were present, but followed a Byzantine internal rank system. And the Vatican’s people were all men and women of the cloth and their assistants.

  As he made his way through that particular party, which was scattering, intercepting, and colliding with all the other nationalities, as if in the explosion of a shaped charge, he started to hear it. The conversations were all about what had happened. The Vatican representatives were talking about a sacred presence. The details were already spiraling. There had been a light and a great voice, had nobody else heard? And people were agreeing.

  Hamilton wasn’t a diplomat, and he knew better than to take on trouble not in his own line. But he didn’t like what he was hearing. The Catholics had only come to terms with Impossible Grace a couple of decades ago, when a Papal bull went out announcing that John XXVI thought that the concept had merit, but that further scientific study was required. But now they’d got behind it, as in all things, they were behind it. So what would this say to them, that the divine had looked down on this wedding, approved of it, and plucked someone away from it?

  No, not just someone. Prussian military. A Protestant from a nation that had sometimes protested that various Swedish territories would be far better off within their own jurisdiction.

  Hamilton stopped himself speculating. Guessing at such things would only make him hesitate if his guesses turned out to be untrue.

  Hamilton had a vague but certain grasp of what his God was like. He thought it was possible that He might decide to give the nod to a marriage at court. But in a way that might upset the balance between nations that was divinely ordained, that was the center of all good works?

  No. Hamilton was certain now. The divine be damned. This wasn’t the numinous at play. This was enemy action.

  He circled the room until he found the Prussians. They were raging, an ambassador poking at a British courtier, demanding something, probably that an investigation be launched immediately. And beside that Prus sian stood several more, diplomatic and military, all convincingly frightened and furious, certain this was a British plot.

  But behind them there, in the social place where Hamilton habitually looked, there were some of the vanished man’s fellow big lads. The other five from that diplomatic pouch. The Prussians, uniquely in Europe, kept up an actual organization for the sort of thing Hamilton and his ilk did on the never-never. The Garde Du Corps had begun as a regiment similar to the Life Guards, but these days it was said they weren’t even issued with uniforms. They wouldn’t be on anyone’s dance cards. They weren’t stalking the room now, and all right, that was understandable, they were hanging back to protect their men. But they weren’t doing much of that either. They didn’t look angry, or worried for their comrade, or for their own skins—

  Hamilton took a step back to let pretty noble couples desperately waltz between him and the Prussians, wanting to keep his position as a privileged observer.

  They looked like they were waiting. On edge. They just wanted to get out of here. Was the Garde really that callous? They’d lost a man i
n mysterious circumstances, and they weren’t themselves agitating to get back into that room and yell his name, but were just waiting to move on?

  He looked for another moment, remembering the faces, then moved on himself. He found another table of Prussians. The good sort, not Order of the Black Eagle, but Hussars. They were in uniform, and had been drinking, and were furiously declaring in Hohenzollern German that if they weren’t allowed access to the records of what had happened, well then it must be—they didn’t like to say what it must be!

  Hamilton plucked a glass from a table and wandered over to join them, careful to take a wide and unsteady course around a lady whose train had developed some sort of fault and wasn’t moving fast enough to keep pace with her feet.

  He flopped down in a chair next to one of the Prussians, a captain by his lapels, which were virtual in the way the Prussians liked, to implicitly suggest that they had been in combat more recently than the other great powers, and so had a swift turnover of brevet ranks, decided by merit. “Hullo!” he said.

  The group fell silent and bristled at him.

  Hamilton blinked at them. “Where’s Humph?”

  “Humph? Wassay th’gd Major?” the Hussar Captain spoke North Sea pidgin, but with a clear accent: Hamilton would be able to understand him.

  He didn’t want to reveal that he spoke perfect German, albeit with a Bavarian accent. “Big chap. Big big chap. Say go.” He carefully swore in Dutch, shaking his head, not understanding. “Which you settle fim?”

  “Settle?!” They looked among each other, and Hamilton could feel the affront. A couple of them even put their good hands to their waists, where the space was folded that no longer contained their pistols and thin swords. But the captain glared at them and they relented. A burst of Hohenzollern German about this so-called mystery of their mate vanishing, and how, being in the Garde, he had obviously been abducted for his secrets.