Read The Whenabouts of Burr Online

Authors: Michael Kurland

Tags: #parallel world, #alternate universe, #time travel, #science fiction, #aaron burr

The Whenabouts of Burr (10 page)

BOOK: The Whenabouts of Burr
5.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Hahaha
, Ves thought.

“I think there's something I can do, if you'll help,” Richardson said.

“What's that?” Ves asked, playing along.

“I think I can get you out of here,” Richardson said. He patted his jacket pocket. “Would you like a cigar? I'd offer you a cigarette, but they haven't been invented here yet.”

Ves looked at him for a minute, speechless. “You don't say,” he said, finally. “I mean, what did you say?”

“I'm Prime,” Captain Richardson told him. “I'm here on a mission for the Directory. What are you doing here—and why the ridiculous mix-up in the paperwork?”

“It's no mix-up,” Ves said. “That's my real driver's license, social security card and stuff. I'm from nineteen ninety-six. A nineteen ninety-six where the fourth President of the United States had been Madison, not Hamilton.”

“Ah,” Captain Richardson said, “
That
nineteen ninety-six.” He chuckled softly.

“What do you find so funny?” Ves demanded.

“It's just that you don't understand the immensity of the random-space cycle. It's infinite. And any slice of it for all practical purposes, is also infinite.”

“What does that mean?” Ves asked, afraid he knew.

“It means that there are an infinite number of times where the fourth president of the United States was James Madison. They are all sandwiched in between Hamilton and, I believe, a third term for Jefferson. Just as there are an infinite number of fractions sandwiched in between one-fourth and one-half.”

“Does that mean you can't get me back home?”

“Oh, of course not. Luckily we can only reach certain of these infinite worlds; and though there are a great many of them, they are spread far enough apart in time to make them easily recognizable. Just keep track of what time it is in your home world.”

“Fair enough. How are you going to get me out of here?”

“If you're not from Prime, I should just let you rot,” Captain Richardson said cheerfully. “It'll take considerable trouble and effort to get you to an It. But, I suppose, it must be considered in its humanitarian aspect. I mean, to leave you in the hands of these barbarians…”

“An It?” Ves interrupted.

“Yes, yes. An It. An I.T. An Intertemporal Translator. As in: Translate, v, to bear, convey, or remove from one person, place, or condition to another. For example: ‘It was his opinion that when he died he would be instantly translated to Heaven, but for my part, I think the Devil read him better.' And: Intertemporal,
adj
., between the times. For example: ‘Intertemporal night is a lonely place, but a place where a man can feel free. You don't feel like part of—' Why are you staring at me that way?”

Ves shook his head. “I don't know. Suddenly it all seemed too much. What's going to happen?”

“Only the dinosaurs know that,” Captain Richardson said. “Just follow my lead and I'll take care of you. Someone will be in touch with you later. The password is, um, something from our common history would be nice. I have a sense of the fitness of things, a feeling of Kismet, of karma; and since the Universe so seldom goes along with human notions of what is predestined, we should encourage it in every way. You're staring again. Do you find it strange to wish to encourage the Universe? But what else can we do? I, for one, would not like to attempt to discourage the Universe; it might decide to discourage
me
.
Kismet
! That's the very word! Kismet it is, and I wish you good karma.”

Ves shrugged, a shrug that came from his soul and his Trentino-Alto Adigean ancestors. “Much obliged,” he said.

Captain Richardson glanced at the door and got busy. “Here,” he said, thrusting a cigar at Ves, “stick this in your mouth. Puff on it a bit. We're supposed to be making friends, and I'm softening you up to talk. I
do
have my position here to consider, you know.” He struck a sulfurous match and applied the flame to the cigar tip. “If you're the dumb sort of clod who inhales tobacco smoke, refrain from inhaling the first few drags of this. That match will cleanse your lungs out of your body.”

“Tell me,” Ves said, “what do you do here? I mean, why are you here?”

“Well,” Captain Richardson said. “I'm a temporalist; a sort of anthropologist-sociologist. I study primitive cultures by living and taking part in them. Someday we hope to be able to control our own by what we learn here.”

“What have you learned?” Ves asked.

“Well,” Captain Richardson puffed on his cigar. “Let me put it this way: the three guiding words of the temporalist philosophy, gained after two hundred years of doing this sort of thing, are: ‘leave it alone'. And it took us a hundred and fifty years to learn that. Some of us…” he paused and listened for a second …“Of course, I am your friend. You must understand that Colonel Brown has a job to do. If you help him, I'm sure he will help you. A new job, a new identity, somewhere where the Cheka can't find you. Ah, Colonel—our friend here has agreed to talk. No need for Captain Lewis and his French Persuasion.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nothing seemed to have changed, but suddenly the room smelled bad. The torches were now flickering and giving off an aura of thick black smoke. The perspective through the windows was different. Swift revised his first opinion, and decided that much had changed. “What happened?” he asked.

“That's almost as silly as ‘Where am I?',” Alex: commented, closing the little hatch in the stone.

“That was going to be my next question,” Swift assured him, climbing down from the stone slab. “Along with ‘what the hell is going on here', ‘what do you think you're doing', and ‘why are those naked men with knives coming through the door'?” With the last question, Swift circled around the stone to keep its bulk between himself and the three naked men with knives who had just come through the door.

“They are not naked,” Hamilton said indignantly. “They wear breechclouts and feather headdresses, the proper attire for persons in service here in Tehetiltotipec. I would certainly never allow any persons of mine to go around naked. Even the women wear proper dresses. Although I'll admit that some of the natives back in the hills… Oh, well; civilization moves slowly in its progress.”

“These Indians are in your service?” Swift asked, ceasing to crouch behind the stone slab.

“Certainly,” Hamilton affirmed. “Well, ah, to be technical about it; actually they think I'm some sort of a god. They work much cheaper if they think you're a god.”

“Why do they think that?” Swift asked.

“Well, you know, it's because I told them I was, that's why.” Hamilton looked embarrassed.

“You told them you were a god?” Swift asked, the astonishment evident in his voice.

“Yes. Well, I suppose I could have told them about Jehovah, Original Sin, Purgatory, the Elect, and all that; but I didn't think it would do either of us much good. Since all of the Elect live in Boston, and this is on the
other
coast, I didn't think they'd appreciate that particularly overmuch.”

“You're probably right,” Swift said. “The other coast?”

“You're a slow learner, aren't you son,” Hamilton said kindly. “That's right. This is the city of Tehetiltotipec. On other levels known as Mission Dolores, or Yerba Buena, or Drake's Bay, or San Francisco. Come along with me now, and tell me why you've been following me.” They went out into the sunlight, and from the top of the ziggurat, which perched on a hill, highest of a series of hills, Nate Swift could see the city of Tehetiltotipec spread out beneath him. The sun, halfway down to the western sea, spread lengthening shadows over the small, closely-packed brick buildings and the narrow, twisting streets.
Nob Hill
? Swift wondered. He wasn't sure enough of the basic shape of San Francisco Peninsula, without its tall downtown buildings, to be sure just where the great stepped pyramid had been built. Off to the north Alcatraz Island shone green, golden and white, with some sort of high wall surrounding it, and low buildings visible within the walls. Swift pointed it out to Hamilton. “A prison again?” he asked.

“Prison? No, that's the Treasury of the Iztahatitipec Empire.” Hamilton led Swift down the staircase running down the center of one side of the tall ziggurat. At the bottom, in the dirt street, a four-man palanquin awaited. Hamilton mounted and motioned to Swift to join him. “It will hold two,” he said. “The bearers change frequently and are used to the load.”

Swift climbed in beside Hamilton, and the bearers dog-trotted down the street. They tried to keep in step, but the ride was as rough above as it was heavy below. “Thank you,” Swift said, “I think.”

“Now,” Hamilton said, “I am a very patient man. All of my colleagues will tell you that I am a very patient man. But even a patient man—a very patient man—has his limits. Why have you been following me?”

“Tell me,” Swift said, “are you the real Alexander Hamilton?”

“I live, I breathe, I spit, I am,” Hamilton said. “And I am the only Alexander Hamilton I know of. There are, of course, the innumerable doppelgangers in each of the time tracks where I was born. (Doubles-ganger?). But each of them—of us—is as real an Alexander Hamilton as any of the others. Our language is not prepared for the problems of parallel times. I am intimately concerned with the needs of the Alexander Hamilton confined in this body, although I intellectually recognize the identity of all Alexander Hamiltons. Does this in any way answer your question?”

“Let's try this,” Swift said: “Are you the Alexander Hamilton who signed the Constitution of the United States?”

“I am he,” Alexander Hamilton said. He leaned back and looked satisfied. “That I shall always be.”

Swift decided not to mention the alternate version of the Constitution, or who had signed it. They rode together in silence for a while, then stopped, tipped forward, and were put down.

“We have, I assume, arrived,” Hamilton said.

“Where?” Swift asked, climbing out of the palanquin and looking about. They were on a wooden jetty sticking out into the bay. Pulled up alongside the pier was a fat bireme; the prow, in the shape of an angry alligator, snapping its teeth at the sea waves. Two double-banks of naked, oiled rowers waited silently, with shipped oars, for the steady drumbeat to begin.

“The ferry,” Hamilton said, indicating the craft with a wave of his aristocratic hand. “How is it that I seem to be answering all of your questions, while you are avoiding my only one?”

“Ferry?” Swift asked.

Alexander Hamilton sighed. “Come along,” he said. “I wouldn't want you to have to swim after the boat. We cross the bay to Xantitipetal—Oakland in your world—and the Intercontinental Coach.”

“The Intercontinental Coach?”

“Just come along,” Hamilton said. “Living it is so much easier than explaining it. And while we're en route, perhaps you will tell me something of yourself; like why you're following me.”

They traversed the narrow gangplank onto the ferry, and followed the roped walk to the passenger deck at the rear. The ropes were cast off, and the warning beat of the drum started the oarsmen on their steady task. Nate Swift found himself fascinated by the rhythmic consort of the oarsmen, and the sullen expressions on their faces.

“Why are you so fascinated by the rowers?” Hamilton asked.

“I was wondering if they have a good union,” Swift told him.

“They are convicts,” Hamilton said. “Guilty of crimes from unorthodoxy to murder. They get three days off their sentence for every day on the galley. Now sit down and enjoy the trip.”

Swift sat down and tried to relax, but he felt as though he had just been told that the black powder in the barrel was cordite; now sit down on it and enjoy your smoke. “Forced labor always makes me nervous,” he said.

“One of the results of progressive Democracy,” Hamilton said scornfully. “The great leveling process, until finally anyone who is superior is afraid to stick his head above the herd. Remember, my boy, the laboring classes were made to labor; do not try to make them think, it only makes them irritable and angry.”

Swift stared at him, amazed. “I thought you were a Democrat.”

“You thought what?” It was Hamilton's turn to be amazed. “I'm a Federalist.”

“I didn't mean political party,” Swift said. “I meant, I thought you were in favor of popular democracy.”

“I never was,” Hamilton said. “Never. Is
that
what they taught you?”

“Well, you signed the Constitution; you were one of the heroes of the Revolution…”

“Just because I objected to the methods of George the Third, that bumbling idiot, doesn't mean I'm opposed to the principle of monarchy. Jefferson believes in the natural aristocracy of the Noble Farmer. Pah! Jefferson has never met any farmers. He thinks he's a farmer because he owns several thousand acres of land at Monticello and his slaves grow things on it. Washington believes in the natural aristocracy of himself.”

“You think some people are better than others? Some people are naturally fit to govern, while others should only serve? Some kind of a genetic split between master and servant?”

“Not at all,” Hamilton said. “I believe in the natural baseness of Man. But the uneducated are too short-sighted to even know what their own self-interest is, and can be led by any knave with a golden voice. Burr is very popular with the masses. The educated have a better chance of seeing through the simpler sorts of deceit, and the rich or well-born are more able to resist the blandishments of the cruder sorts of bribery.”

“Which is why these poor brutes should spend their lives rowing back and forth between Oakland and San Francisco?”

“Xantitipetal and Tehetiltotipec,” Hamilton said absently. “No, not at all. But, whereas I can take advantage of this primitive Empire, it is quite beyond my ability to do anything to change it.”

“I thought you were a god,” Swift said.

“True,” Hamilton said. “Do you realize just how circumspect a god has to be? It's all right to appear now and again and go about my mysterious godlike errands; but if I start expounding beliefs contrary to their dogma, the priests will quickly remember that even gods are mortal.”

“I never realized what a heavy load it was to be a god,” Swift said, shaking his head.

“But now to you,” Hamilton said, “and your philosophy of life.”

“You mean, why was I following you,” Swift said.

“Exactly,” Hamilton said. “You have a quick and incisive wit. Why?”

“It's a long story,” Swift said, “and it started with the Constitution of the United States.” And he went on explaining to Hamilton what had happened. “I had some doubts about telling you,” he said in conclusion. “But it suddenly occurred to me that if I can't tell Alexander Hamilton what happened to the Constitution of the United States, then who can I tell?”

“Well now,” Hamilton said, taking off his hat and waving it in front of his face, “isn't that a hell of a thing.”

“We thought that either you or Burr might know something,” Swift said. “That is, after we'd figured out about this parallel time business.” He didn't mention how recent that was. “Do you think Burr—”

“No,” Hamilton said, “I don't.”

“You think he feels strongly enough about it not to desecrate—”

“Not that,” Hamilton said. “The other way around. You must realize that to those of us who drew up the Constitution, there is nothing sacred about the document itself; it's merely the working copy. What we regard as sacred, if anything, would be the thoughts, ideas, compromises, and dreams that we put into drawing it up. And those can not be stolen as long as the words are known.”

“You're saying that to you the document itself was just a piece of paper,” Swift said. “Then who…?”

“Obviously, someone for whom the symbol is more important than the idea,” Hamilton said. “Someone from Prime Time, perhaps; they're the sort of crass, thoughtless nitwits who would do this sort of thing.”

“What is this ‘prime time' business?” Swift asked.

“How can you not know that and still be following me around?” Hamilton demanded. “Never mind, we'll get to it later. Right now, we must debark and catch our train.” The boat pulled up to the Xantitipetal dock, the oars were shipped, the lines were thrown, and the gangplank dropped. Hamilton and Nate Swift were the first passengers off, and they rushed to a taxi-stand row of palanquins at the foot of the pier. They boarded the lead palanquin, and the four bearers dog-trotted them a couple of miles to a large, open-air railroad station.

“I thought these people hadn't even invented the wheel,” Swift said, staring at the great, gadgety-looking locomotive and the overly ornate, but flimsy-looking passenger cars.

“Their gods have done a lot for them recently,” Hamilton said. “Not only the wheel, but the steam engine, springs, iron, movable type, paper, and the grape.”

“And in return they provide the labor to make everything work, right?” Swift said.

Hamilton nodded. “Simplicity itself.”

They climbed aboard one of the carriages, which seemed to have been reserved for Hamilton, and settled on the wicker seats. One of the palanquin bearers clambered up onto the roof and disappeared from view. “My man,” Hamilton explained, with a wave of his hand.

“What service does he provide on the roof?” Swift asked.

“He stays on watch for savages. He also runs errands.”

“It must be hard to run anything across the roofs of these coaches,” Swift observed. Hamilton shrugged, disinterested.

Two men opened the door to the carriage and deposited a large wicker basket on the floor. “Ah!” Hamilton said, rubbing his hands together. “
Goobish parmisan
,” he said to the two men, who bowed to him and retreated backward through the door. “Food,” he said to Nate Swift. “Want a bite?”

It had, Swift realized, been a while since he'd eaten. A long while. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Wouldn't want you to complain about the hospitality,” Hamilton said. “We're going to be sharing this portable room for quite a while.”

“Oh?” Swift said. “Where are we going? How long will it take?”

“Manhattan,” Hamilton told him. “It should take about a week, barring wandering herds of buffalo blocking the track, or wandering savages burning the train.”

“Sounds great,” Swift said. “Why?”

“Because that's where my business is,” Hamilton explained patiently.

“I mean,” Swift corrected, “why such a laborious and time-consuming method of travel?”

“What would you suggest?” Hamilton inquired. “The aeroplane is a bit beyond their level of civilization. You have no idea how much work it was to give them the ideas for iron rails and steam boilers. Benjamin Franklin was a great help in that. You should meet him in Manhattan. I assume he is one of your childhood heroes also; he certainly deserves to be. Why, that man has invented
everything.

BOOK: The Whenabouts of Burr
5.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Celibate Mouse by Hockley, Diana
The Mistletoe Experiment by Serena Yates
Lost Time by D. L. Orton
Thorn: Carter Kids #2 by Chloe Walsh
A Dead Man in Athens by Michael Pearce
Aroused by Wolfe, Sean
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
One More Day by Kelly Simmons