The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (60 page)

Napier, already in the process of packing up his engine dejectedly, rose to his feet. Rubbing his lower lip with an oil-stained finger, he answered.

“A matter of months to eradicate the current limitations, your majesty,” he said. “Perhaps a year. But I would need easily as much time to instruct a staff of men, as at present I am the only one who understands all the aspects of the engine’s manufacture.”

The Emperor, uncharacteristically demonstrative, nodded twice.

“Leave now,” the Emperor commanded, and they did.

* * * *

In the antechamber, while Napier led a collection of pages and eunuchs in dismantling and boxing up his device, the Chamberlain caught Tsui’s elbow.

“A moment, Chief Computator,” the Chamberlain said in a low voice, drawing him into an alcove well out of earshot.

“My thanks, O Lord Chamberlain,” Tsui said, his tones hushed, “for allowing me to perform this small service for our master the Emperor.”

“We all serve our part,” the Chamberlain answered. “Remember, though, that the Emperor’s remembrance of this good office will serve only to balance his displeasure that you kept him waiting.”

“And for that, you have my apologies,” Tsui answered. “But it is strange, I should think, that you would send for me at the House of Computation, in an hour during which it is well known to you that I am elsewhere at my leave. Would not one of my journeymen have been a suitable representative to hear the foreigner’s presentation, and to offer any service you might require?”

“Perhaps,” the Chamberlain replied, eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it slipped my memory that you would not be found in the House of Computation at this hour, and perhaps it did not occur to me that one of your able journeymen might be as suited for our purposes. But perhaps,” the Chamberlain raised a long finger, “it was best that a member of the House of Computation in your position of leadership was present to see and hear what you have. I have always counted on you, O Chief Computator, to find solutions to problems others thought were without resolution. Even, I add, solutions to things others did not even see as problems.”

Tsui nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “but of the many hundreds who labor under me in the art of calculation there are others very nearly as adept.” He paused, and then added, “Many hundreds.”

“Mmm,” the Chamberlain hummed. “It is best, then, do you not think, that this device of the British does not meet the Emperor’s standards, that so many hundreds of adepts are not removed from their productive positions?”

That the standards proposed had not been the Emperor’s, but had instead been proposed by the Lord Chamberlain himself, was a point Tsui did not have to raise. The Emperor, in fact, as evidenced by his uncharacteristic inquiry into the production cycle of Napier’s invention, seemed not entirely swayed by the Lord Chamberlain’s stagecraft, the question of the utility of the Analytical Engine not nearly so closed as Tsui might have hoped.

“I could not agree more,” Tsui answered, thin-lipped and grave. “I thank you for this consideration, and value our exchange.”

The Chamberlain nodded, and drawing his robes around him, slid away into the antechamber and beyond, leaving Tsui alone.

* * * *

The next morning found Tsui in the Ornamental Garden, eyes closed by the northernmost abacus fish pond.

The noise of shoes scuffing on gravel at his side startled him, and he opened his eyes to see Royal Inspector Bai standing at his side. He’d made no other sound in his approach.

“Good morning, Chief Computator,” Bai said, a statement more than a question.

“Yes, Inspector,” answered Tsui, looking down into the waters of the pond. They were silty and gray, the carnivorous fish almost hidden below the surface. “I would say that it is.”

“Surprising, one might argue,” Bai went on, “after the excitement of the evening.” The Inspector pulled a wax-paper wrapped lump of meat and bread from within his sleeve and, unwrapping it, began to drop hunks of dried pork into the waters.

“Excitement?” Tsui asked, innocently.

“Hmm,” the Inspector hummed, peering down into the water, quiet and still but for the ripples spreading out from the points where the meat had passed. “The fish seem not very hungry today,” he said softly, distracted, before looking up and meeting Tsui’s gaze. “Yes,” he answered, “excitement. It seems that a visitor to the Forbidden City, a foreign inventor, went missing somewhere between the great hall and the main gate after enjoying an audience with the Emperor. The invention which he’d brought with him was found scattered in pieces in the Grand Courtyard, the box which held it appearing to have been dropped from a high-story balcony, though whether by accident or design we’ve been unable to determine. The Emperor has demanded the full attentions of my bureau be trained on this matter, as it seems that he had some service with which to charge this visitor. That the visitor is not in evidence, and this service might go unfilled, has done little to improve the temper of our master, equal-of-heaven and may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years .”

Tsui nodded, displaying an appropriate mixture of curiosity and concern.

“As for the man himself,” Bai said, shrugging, “as I’ve said, he seems just to have vanished.” The Inspector paused again, and in a practiced casual tone added, “I believe you were present at the foreign inventor’s audience yesterday, yes? You didn’t happen to see him at any point following his departure from the hall, did you?”

Tsui shook his head, and in all sincerity answered, “No.”

The Chief Computator had no fear. He’d done nothing wrong, after all, his involvement in the business beginning with a few choice words to his more perceptive journeymen and foremen on his hurried return to the Imperial House of Computation, and ending in the early morning hours when a slip of paper was delivered to him by one of his young apprentices. On the slip of paper, unsigned or marked by any man’s chop, was a single ideogram, indicating “Completion” but suggesting “Satisfaction”.

Tsui’s business, since childhood, had been identifying problems and presenting solutions. To what uses those solutions might be put by other hands was simply not his concern.

“Hmm,” the Inspector hummed again and, looking at the still waters of the pond, shook his head. “The abacus fish just don’t seem interested today in my leavings. Perhaps they’ve already been fed, yes?”

“Perhaps,” Tsui agreed.

The Inspector, with a resigned sigh, dropped the remainder of the meat into the northernmost pond, and then tossed the remaining bread into the southernmost, where the languid fish began their slow ballet to feed themselves.

“Well, the Emperor’s service demands my attention,” Inspector Bai said, brushing off his hands, “so I’ll be on my way. I’ll see you tomorrow, I trust?”

Tsui nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, “I don’t expect that I’ll be going anywhere.”

The Inspector gave a nod, which Tsui answered with a slight bow, and then left the Chief Computator alone in the garden.

Tsui looked down into the pond, and saw that the silt was beginning to settle on the murky bottom, revealing the abacus fish arranged in serried ranks, marking out the answer to some indefinable question. The Chief Computator closed his eyes, and in the silence imagined countless men working countless abacuses, tirelessly. His thoughts on infinity, Tsui smiled.

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* * * *

Islands in the Sea

Harry Turtledove

INTRODUCTION

Islam exploded out of Arabia in the seventh century. The triumphant armies of the caliphs overthrew the Persian Empire and took Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa from the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. Muslim forces twice besieged Constantinople, in 674-78 and 717-18. In our history, the Byzantine capital held and the Byzantine Empire survived as Christianity’s eastern bulwark, holding Islam out of Anatolia and the Balkans for centuries to come and converting the Bulgars and Russians to faith in Christ. But what if the Empire had fallen in the eighth century instead of the fifteenth? The still-pagan folk to the north of Constantinople would have had new choices to make. . . .

A.H. 152 (A.D. 769)

The Bulgar border guards had arrows nocked and ready as the Arab horsemen rode up from the south. Jalal ad-Din as-Stambuli, the leader of the Arab delegation, raised his right hand to show it was empty. “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, I and my men come in peace,” he called in Arabic. To be sure the guards understood, he repeated himself in Greek.

The precaution paid off. The guards lowered their bows. In Greek much worse than Jalal ad-Din’s, one of them asked, “Why for you come in peace, whitebeard?”

Jalal ad-Din stroked his whiskers. Even without the Bulgar’s mockery, he knew they were white. Not many men who had the right to style themselves
as-Stambuli
, the Constantinopolitan, still lived. More than fifty years had passed since the army of Suleiman and Maslama had taken Constantinople and put an end to the Roman Empire. Then Jalal ad-Din’s beard had not been white. Then he could hardly raise a beard at all.

He spoke in Greek again: “My master the caliph Abd ar-Rahman asked last year if your khan Telerikh would care to learn more of Islam, of submission to the one God. This past spring Telerikh sent word that he would. We are the embassy sent to instruct him.”

The Bulgar who had talked with him now used his own hissing language, Jalal ad-Din supposed to translate for his comrades. They answered back, some of them anything but happily. Content in their paganism, Jalal ad-Din guessed-content to burn in hell forever. He did not wish that fate on anyone, even a Bulgar.

The guard who knew Greek confirmed his thought, saying, “Why for we want your god? Gods, spirits, ghosts good to us now.”

Jalal ad-Din shrugged. “Your khan asked to hear more of Allah and Islam. That is why we are here.” He could have said much more, but deliberately spoke in terms a soldier would understand.

“Telerikh want, Telerikh get,” the guard agreed. He spoke again with his countrymen, at length pointed at two of them. “This Iskur. This Omurtag. They take you to Pliska, to where Telerikh is. Iskur, him know Greek a little, not so good like me.”

“Know little your tongue too,” Iskur said in halting Arabic, which surprised Jalal ad-Din and, evidently, the Bulgar who had been doing all the talking till now. The prospective guide glanced at the sun, which was a couple of hours from setting. “We ride,” he declared, and started off with no more fanfare than that. The Bulgar called Omurtag followed.

So, more slowly, did Jalal ad-Din and his companions. By the time Iskur called a halt in deepening twilight, the mountains that made the northern horizon jagged were visibly closer.

“Those little ponies the Bulgars ride are ugly as mules, but they go and go and go,” said Da’ud ibn Zubayr, who was a veteran of many skirmishes on the border between the caliph’s land and Bulgaria. He stroked the mane of his elegant, Arab-bred mare.

“Sadly, my old bones do not.” Jalal ad-Din groaned with relief as he slid off his own horse, a soft-gaited gelding. Once he had delighted in fiery stallions, but he knew that if he took a fall now he would shatter like glass.

The Bulgars stalked into the brush to hunt. Da’ud bent to the laborious business of getting a fire going. The other two Arabs, Malik ibn Anas and Salman al-Tabari, stood guard, one with a bow, the other with a spear. Iskur and Omurtag emerged into firelight carrying partridges and rabbits. Jalal ad-Din took hard unleavened bread from a saddlebag: no feast tonight, he thought, but not the worst of fare either.

Iskur also had a skin of wine. He offered it to the Arabs, grinned when they declined. “More for me, Omurtag,” he said. The two Bulgars drank the skin dry, and soon lay snoring by the fire.

Da’ud ibn Zubayr scowled at them. “The only use they have for wits is losing them,” he sneered. “How can such folk ever come to acknowledge Allah and his Prophet?”