Nasty, Brutish and Short
Eric Flint
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
October 14, 1636
Princess Kristina burst into the room on the third floor of the Royal Palace in Magdeburg that Caroline Platzer used for a study when the sun was shining. It was a bit on the cramped side, but had a nice view of Hans Richter Square and the Dom beyond.
“There’s another one, Caroline! There’s another one!”
Caroline looked up from the book she was reading. She wasn’t displeased by the interruption, since it was a tedious tome she was only reading because she’d promised Melissa Mailey she’d give her opinion on it—which she was now almost certain Melissa wanted simply so she didn’t have to read the dreary thing.
Das Dilemma der Religionsfreiheit, by…
She couldn’t remember the author’s name. It was latinized, naturally. Opinionatus Obscuritatis, something like that. There were times she regretted having learned to read German.
“And he’s here in Magdeburg!” Kristina continued excitedly. “Been here for three days already!”
Caroline heaved the book onto the side table. At least that provided her with some exercise today. “Kristina, settle down. Who is here in Magdeburg? And what’s he another one of?”
“He’s another famous philosopher! Like Uncle Rennie!”
Another famous philosopher…
There were times Caroline found her life utterly disorienting. By what bizarre transgression of all sanity and logic did she live in a world where René Descartes—yeah, him: the cogito, ergo sum guy—was “Uncle Rennie”?
But, so he was—at least in the view of a princess of Sweden who would someday become the empress of the United States of Europe and in the meantime had one Caroline Platzer, a Quaker born in Frederick, Maryland, in the year 1978, as her combination governess and surrogate mother.
“Okay, young lady. Start from the beginning. What is this famous philosopher’s name? And do you know why he’s here in Magdeburg?”
“He’s Hobbes, Caroline! The real one! Which means I’ve finally figured out who to dress up as for Halloween! I’ll go as Calvin, and Hobbes will be my Hobbes!”
Kristina frowned, but that was simply thought, not disapproval. “He’ll have to wear a tiger costume, of course. But that should be easy enough to have one of the dressmakers put together. They do much fancier stuff than that.”
Caroline was trying to catch up. “Hobbes…”
That name vaguely rang a bell, but only just. She’d majored in psychology in college, not philosophy. She tried to remember the principal philosophers of the day. Descartes, of course. Spinoza—but he was just a little kid still, who’d been adopted by Rebecca and Mike. Let’s see… Did Sir Isaac Newton count? She wasn’t sure where the boundary lay between philosophers and scientists. For that matter, she wasn’t sure if Newton had even been born yet.
The princess lost her patience. “It’s Thomas Hobbes, silly. You know, the guy who wrote about the sea monster.”
Herman Melville? But…
Oh.
Hobbes. The Leviathan.
Caroline had never read the book. Nor had she ever had any desire to read it.
She glanced at the tome on the side table. And it was probably not a slim little volume, either.
“Come on!” cried Kristina. She grabbed Caroline’s hand, hauled her out of the chair and pulled her toward the door. “You have to explain to him what he needs to do. Halloween is only two weeks away!”
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
October 16, 1636
“This is preposterous!” said Thomas Hobbes—for the second time in the past minute. “Deranged!”
By William Cavendish’s count, that was the fourth deranged in as many minutes. He’d quite lost track of the number of times his tutor had used the terms ludicrous and absurd.
William was fond of Thomas Hobbes, who’d been of service to the family for many years now. Hobbes had been his father’s tutor before him. William had become the third earl of Devonshire upon his father’s death in 1628 and had begun employing Hobbes in that same capacity when he’d come to the continent.
But he could be tiresome, at times, especially when William—who had just turned nineteen less than a week ago—had to explain the facts of life to a man in his late forties. You’d think “practical wisdom” would be an attribute of someone who liked to think of himself as a philosopher.
It was time to get firm, he decided. “Mr. Hobbes, need I remind you of some awkward practical realities? Two, in particular. First, my father’s profligate spending left me with a much-depleted purse, which has of late been still further strained by the Earl of Cork’s frostiness toward the family.”
Thanks in no small part to my mother’s obstinacy. But he left that unsaid. “And, second, because we were for all intents and purposes forced to flee Paris due to the caprice of the new king of France. Which has so far tied up most of what funds remained to me.”
Hobbes was now glaring at one of the walls. A quite inoffensive one, so far as William could determine.
“The end result,” he concluded, “is that we are now largely dependent upon the good will of the Swedish princess. The one”—he waved a hand about, indicating their surroundings—“who has provided us with these very pleasant quarters in the imperial palace.”
The building’s official title was Royal Palace, but William saw no harm in reminding his tutor that the dynasty hosting them could legitimately lay claim to being imperial. Something which could certainly not be said of the ragamuffin dynasties now ruling Britain and France.
Hobbes shifted his glare to the vista beyond the nearest window. Which seemed to be just as innocent of wrongdoing as the wall had been.
At that very moment, Princess Kristina burst through the door leading into their chambers. “Let’s go! Let’s go!” she exclaimed. “The seamstress will be ready for us. And so will the boys who are designing the book!”
☆ ☆ ☆
As it turned out, the seamstress was not ready to start working on the Hobbes costume. In any event, she was still missing an essential part of it. Kristina had insisted that the tiger suit had to be made with a real tiger pelt and it seemed there was a shortage of them in central Europe at the moment. Upon rigorous imperial questioning, the supplier assured the princess that the pelt would be arriving momentarily.
Momentarily was such a useful term, William reflected. There being, strictly speaking, no precise definition of the time span encompassed by a “moment.” So far as he knew, at any rate. He’d ask his tutor later. Hobbes would know; the man was a noted mathematician, among his many other scholarly attainments.
The princess was not diverted from her course by the inconvenient news. Cavendish was by now quite certain that the future empress of the USE would be diverted by very few things once she had a project underway.
“Let’s go to the book boys, then,” she pronounced. “I’m sure they’ll be ready to start working.”
☆ ☆ ☆
That proved to be untrue as well. Or, rather, “the book boys” were willing enough to work but had no idea what they were supposed to be working on.
“‘Leviathan’ for Dummies?” The fellow who seemed to be the leader of “the boys” was obviously at a loss. “But…Your Highness, we produce the Dummies volumes for people seeking technical guidance. Such as—see here.” He picked up a large but slender volume whose cover bore the title Aqualators for Dummies. “Or this one.” He held up a volume bearing the title Rotary Engines for Dummies.
He set that one down and picked up another, which he handed to Hobbes. “And this is our latest.” The title was Electrical Relays for Dummies.
The “boy”—who actually looked to be about Cavendish’s age—gave Hobbes a dubious look. “If I understand correctly, this ‘Leviathan’ tome involves political theory and”—here his voice grew a tad shrill—“hasn’t even been written yet.”
“And never will be!” barked Hobbes. He waved the book in his hand in a grand, angry gesture of dismissal. “I am not a trained bear to be set dancing for the mob. I already wrote that book! I am not doing it again.”
He flipped open the book in his hand. Cavendish thought that was done more to settle his nerves than because his tutor was interested in the contents. Hobbes was a man of theory, not experiment and physical design—much less manufacture.
He frowned at the contents. “What is the point of this?”
“Well…” The “boy” reached for the first book he displayed. “I am Jost Kniess, by the way.” He used the book, now in hand, to point to the other young men in the small shop, which seemed to combine the function of a printer’s establishment with a truly chaotic collection of devices. Cavendish only recognized a few of them.
“The fellow on the left is my cousin, Heinz Ermolt.” Yes, there was a definite resemblance. “And the redheaded one is Melchior Treit. He’s our mathematician.”
Hobbes sniffed, but managed to restrain any further rudeness. He had a tendency to become competitive with anyone labeling himself a mathematician.
Kniess opened the book to a large diagram. “This is an aqualator, a calculating device—”
“Yes, I know what they are,” said Hobbes. “But what do they have to do with these…” He glanced down at the other book. “Electrical relays?”
“They’re mostly used for communications equipment but we think they can have other applications,” said Ermolt. “We’re trying to develop a way to circumvent the limits of aqualators. The things are just—just—”
“Too slow!” complained Treit. “And you can’t push them far enough to develop really complex computations. The problem is the friction between the working fluid used—water, whatever—and the tube walls. There’s a limit to the number of gates they can operate.”
“The up-timers used what they called transistors, but that technology”—here Ermolt’s expression grew lugubrious—“is far beyond our capabilities and will be for…”
He shrugged.
“Years,” said Kniess.
“More like decades,” was Treit’s opinion.
As they’d been speaking, Hobbes had begun studying the diagram of the aqualator. Casually, at first, but with growing interest.
Cavendish was pleased to see that. Hobbes was invariably more cheerful when his mind was occupied. Leaving aside the young Earl of Devonshire’s genuine fondness for the man, a reasonably cheerful Hobbes made for a better tutor and a less exasperating traveling companion.
But he could sense the princess becoming impatient. He turned toward her and bent down enough to allow him to speak softly. “If I may make a suggestion, Your Highness, I think it might work better—certainly more smoothly—if you used me to have your seamstress design and fit the tiger suit. My tutor and I are of approximately the same size, after all.”
That was stretching the truth quite a bit. Hobbes had at least three stone by way of weight over Cavendish, and was a couple of inches taller. But William was fairly certain that no seamstress was going to be able to make a garment out of an actual tiger pelt that was going to be a very snug fit.
The princess looked up at him, and then over at Hobbes. Her expression was skeptical.
Thankfully, her governess displayed once again her skill at handling the impetuous ten-year-old scion of empire.
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” said Platzer. She took Kristina by the hand. “Let’s go back to the seamstress.”
“But she doesn’t have a pelt yet,” protested the princess.
“I’m quite sure there’s a lot more to making a tiger costume for a full-grown man than just covering him with a pelt,” said Platzer.
As they walked out of the shop, Kristina considered that proposition. “All right,” she said, once they were back onto the street, “I suppose you’re right.”
By now, Cavendish was better oriented. He’d found the princess’s rush-about-hither-and-thither method of travel confusing at first. He and Hobbes had come to Magdeburg on a previous visit, but that had been three years earlier and the city had changed a great deal since. Now he could see that they hadn’t actually gone all that far from the Royal Palace. Once you got a few blocks from Hans Richter Square, near the Big Ditch that separated the Altstadt and Neustadt from the sprawl of Greater Magdeburg to the west, you entered a zone full of small shops and narrow streets—some of them just glorified alleys. A fair number of the “shops” were really just sheds and huts set up for the day and taken down at night.
The residents’ informal name for the area was the Ottomarkt, named for the city’s mayor, Otto Gericke. Some of Magdeburg’s upper crust had complained about the noise and general disrepute of the area, which was sandwiched between the city’s municipal complex and the prestigious edifices around Hans Richter Square, but the mayor had refused to have it demolished or even suppressed.
What sort of great city doesn’t have a great flea market? he’d said.
When they entered the Ottomarkt, William was surprised by the odor. More precisely, by the absence of the stench that normally emanated from urban canals—which was essentially what the Big Ditch was. There were odors aplenty, as was inevitable in an area full of outdoor cookeries and small manufactories. But with a few exceptions—the tannery several blocks to the north being the worst—the smells weren’t especially offensive and most of the ones produced by the kitchens were rather tantalizing.
That, more than anything else, drove home to the third earl of Devonshire just how vigorously—sometimes, ruthlessly—the capital’s powerful Committees of Correspondence enforced the sanitation regulations. They were famous (or notorious) for it all across Europe, but Cavendish had assumed the reputation was overblown until he arrived in Magdeburg.
A man of his class probably shouldn’t entertain such thoughts, but privately William was quite appreciative of the CoCs. Their sanitation patrols also doubled as informal police watches, which made Magdeburg safer than most cities of the continent and much safer than London.
☆ ☆ ☆
Happily for the composure of the princess, the seamstress was now available to start working on the tiger costume, most of which was orange and black more or less stripy pieces of fabric sewed onto a very loose-fitting blouse and trousers. And then, about half an hour after the seamstress started her work, a shoemaker showed up to create the tiger’s feet.
That created some awkwardness. Cavendish had already decided that the general tranquility of the world—his portion of it, at least—would be greatly enhanced if he continued his Hobbes impersonation all the way to the end. His tutor’s rigorous sense of his own dignity being what it was, there was no chance the philosopher would acquiesce gracefully to Kristina’s desire that he himself portray the tiger of the up-time fable. William, on the other hand, was perfectly willing to do it, and had intended to maintain the subterfuge as long as possible.
Sadly, “as long as possible” proved to be now. The royal scion was anything but stupid and unobservant. No sooner had the shoemaker sat on his stool to begin the work that she was there with the finger of accusation.
“Stop it, that’s silly!” Her forefinger was aimed directly at William’s right foot. “The real Hobbes’ feet are much bigger than his. You’ll have to wait till he’s here to make the shoes.”
At this point—God bless the woman—the American governess intervened again. “Kristina, what difference does it make who’s actually wearing the costume on Halloween evening? You won’t be able to see that much of his face, anyway. You know Mr. Hobbes is unhappy with the idea, whereas”—she glanced at Cavendish, who gave her a little nod—“the Earl of Devonshire is quite willing to do it. Switching them will save fuss all around and”—here she overrode the princess’s gathering protest—“this way everything will go more quickly and smoothly. You always say you like things to be efficient.”
From subtle undertones in her voice, William suspected that Princess Kristina’s fondness for efficiency was mostly theoretical, not something she adhered to in practice. But he saw his chance in the subterfuge.
“Oh, you certainly don’t want Mr. Hobbes in the costume, then,” he said. “This ‘Halloween’ event. You’re walking from place to place, as I understand it. How long will that last?”
“Might be way into the night!” Kristina said enthusiastically.
“No more than two hours, I’d think,” said Caroline Platzer.
William spread his hands. “Either way, you’ll be exceeding my tutor’s ability to walk. He has problems with his feet, you know. He can manage most of a mile well enough.” He quickly calculated how far they’d walked earlier in the day. “But once he’s been on his feet much more than twenty minutes, he begins to limp.”
Here, he made a face. “Half an hour…? Chancy. And within forty minutes he will absolutely need to sit down. For quite a while.”
Kristina was frowning, obviously hesitant. But Platzer moved with the supple grace of a leopard. “That’s it, then. Kristina, unless you want to spend half—maybe more!—of Halloween helping poor Mr. Hobbes along, we need to accept the Earl’s very kind offer to take his place in the tiger costume.”
“Well…”
“So, we’ve settled that issue.” She beamed down on William. “And please accept our heartfelt thanks, Your Grace.”
☆ ☆ ☆
After they were finished for the day with the seamstress and the shoemaker, they returned to the atelier of “the book boys.” Only to discover that Hobbes had left a short time earlier.
“He said he was going back to the Royal Palace.”
“Not surprising,” said William. “His feet must have been killing him by now.”
All three of the “boys” looked puzzled by that pronouncement, but William hustled his little party out onto the street before any of them could gainsay him.
“He’ll need to soak them in hot water and salts for a good hour,” he said to the princess and her governess. Kristina’s expression was one of concern and sympathy. Platzer gave Cavendish the sort of look one schemer gives another. Half-admiration, half-grudge.
☆ ☆ ☆
Back in their suite in the Royal Palace, William found Hobbes engrossed in some calculations he was doing at the dining table. He went over to look, but found the mathematics incomprehensible. It looked somewhat familiar—algebra, he thought—but he couldn’t figure out the meaning of several of the symbols, some of which he’d never seen before.
On the table next to his tutor’s left elbow were two diagrams. William picked up one of them and looked at it. “This came from…”
“From the book boys,” said Hobbes. He glanced over at the one William had in his hand. “That’s a diagram of the electrical relay they’re talking about.”
He tapped the other diagram with his finger. “This is the one that shows how the contraptions operate.”
William picked that one up and studied it.
He was able to make sense of it, to a degree. A few months earlier, Hobbes had given him some basic instruction on the up-time concept of “electricity.” The earl could deduce that if an electrical current was run through the coil, it would cause the two reeds to compress against each other. He couldn’t remember the reason for it, though. Something to do with “positive” and “negative.”
Hobbes waved his hand impatiently. “You needn’t concern yourself with that. They’re just practical contrivances. In essence, from the standpoint of logic, a physical way to distinguish yes from no. What really matters—”
He sat back in his chair and, with a grand gesture using both hands, indicated the calculations on the pages in front of him. “The mathematics! That’s the key to it all. Those boys!” He now gestured in the direction of the Ottomarkt. “What a complete mess they’ve made of it all. No conception whatsoever of what’s needed.”
He brought his hands back together to point to his calculations. “Which is a new form of algebra altogether. One that ignores the issues of addition, multiplication—all that—in order, as I said, to focus on yes and no. Yes or no, rather.”
He chuckled heavily. “Of course, I need to come up with more suitable terms. I’m thinking of ‘affiliation’ and ‘detachment.’ These would be the marks for them.” He used a finger to point to a couple of mathematical symbols on the page in front of him. One was ╤ and the other was ╧.
He scratched his jaw, frowning. “I’m thinking I need a third indicator as well. Something that refers to negation.”
William was lost at sea when it came to the mathematics but quite clearheaded when it came to practical matters. Perhaps he could use the symbol ∏ for it. Feet planted firmly on the ground.
“I shall leave you to it, Mr. Hobbes.” And off he went. The palace’s major domo maintained a very fine selection of liquors and it was close enough to evening for an earl to partake of its splendors.
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
October 31, 1636
“Here?” said Thomas Hobbes, peering out of the window of the carriage with a look on his face that was not quite one of alarm but very close. He’d come along on the Halloween expedition only because William had insisted his presence would please the princess.
Kristina didn’t hear him, though, because she’d jumped out of the cab the moment it came to a stop. Caroline Platzer had followed closely.
William Cavendish swiveled in his seat, moving carefully so as not to dislodge any portion of his elaborate costume. “Where else, Mr. Hobbes?”
“Well. I thought…the vicinity of the Royal Palace, perhaps…”
William laughed. “Do you really think wealthy noble folk would agree to host a public event where unruly children would be encouraged to go from dwelling to dwelling in darkness demanding candies and such on pain of vandalism?”
Hobbes grimaced. “I suppose not. But…” His gaze fell on a small knot of men in workmen’s clothing standing not far from their carriage. They had their hands in their jacket pockets to ward off the autumn chill, and were chatting with each other.
“Are those…?”
Cavendish glanced out the window Hobbes was looking through. “Yes, that’s a Committee of Correspondence patrol. There will be several such guarding the event.”
The philosopher’s eyes widened. “And the princess does not object?”
“Ah… Actually, Mr. Hobbes, having the CoCs present was essential.” He started to point his finger but left off because his finger was now encased in a clumsy tiger paw. “This residential area is a CoC stronghold. Most of the children who will be participating with Kristina in the adventure belong to CoC families, in fact.”
He couldn’t resist. He just couldn’t. “It’s a fascinating political arrangement. The nobility resents the effrontery of the CoC mobs, but the royal family gets along with them famously. The princess is especially popular.”
He picked up the Leviathan for Dummies book—it wasn’t a real book, just a facsimile—and started to climb out of the carriage. Slowly and carefully, given the tiger suit. Once on the ground, he grinned up at his tutor—who, of course, couldn’t see his face. “I’m sure you must have written something about it in your famous Leviathan. Oh, wait, I forgot. You’ve never read the book yourself.”
Neither had Cavendish. He’d tried once, but hadn’t gotten very far into it. A dreary tome.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours or so. But have no fear, Mr. Hobbes. No one will trouble you here.” Recognizing someone standing not more than thirty feet away, he turned back. “Look,” he said, gesturing in the man’s direction. “That’s Gunther Achterhof himself. Not even the Devil will cross him lightly.”
And off he went. Princess Kristina came to take his hand and pull him faster.
“Carefully, Your Highness. I’m afraid this tiger suit is awkward for a man to get about in.”
“It doesn’t matter. You look splendid. Hey, everyone! Here’s Hobbes!”
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
November 20, 1636
“So, Mr. Hobbes. Were Jost Kniess and his partners pleased with your mathematical endeavors?”
His tutor looked up from the book he was reading and gave William a semi-glare. “Yes, of course—but now I almost regret the effort I put into it. The trouble it’s causing me!”
Cavendish had been reading a newspaper, which he folded and set down on his side table. “What trouble is that?”
“The princess. Such an exasperating girl! She has the notion that a philosopher can solve any problem, even one of a purely mundane nature.”
“So what’s her enthusiasm these days? She’s always got one—usually several at once.” He held up a thumb, followed immediately by a forefinger. “Riding—and I’ll readily admit she’s a superb horsewoman. And trying to cajole someone into teaching her how to fly an airplane. But she wouldn’t be pestering you over either one of those. So what is it?”
Hobbes ran fingers over his balding pate. “It seems young Kniess and his friends approached her with a request for financial assistance. The girl has far more in the way of funds than should be allowed for any child. It’s quite disgraceful the way her father lets her spend money.”
Cavendish, whose father had been a champion spendthrift and come close to bankrupting the family, was strongly inclined toward frugality himself. But he didn’t really agree with his tutor, on this point. It was true that Kristina had a very large allowance. But, first, her father was a genuine emperor, not a country aristocrat. And, second, he’d placed Caroline Platzer in command of the princess’s funds, not Kristina herself. Despite the American reputation for being airheaded when it came to practical matters, William had seen no signs that the governess wasn’t reasonably prudent when it came to money.
What tended to confuse down-timers on this point was that Americans were far more prone than they were to look for what they called “opportunities to invest.” And while a fair number of these “investments” turned out to be what the up-timers themselves called “pipe dreams,” at least as many wound up turning a profit.
“And how did the girl respond?”
Hobbes left off his skull-rubbing and waved his hand in a flipping gesture, as if batting away some sort of pest.
“Apparently, she spoke to her governess and the Platzer woman told her there was probably some benefit to be gained from the book boys’ obsession with using electrical relays as calculators—they’ve taken to calling them computers, as if a machine were a man!—but they’d have to figure out a way to popularize the notion. ‘Find an angle,’ she called it. Americans can torture language like no other people on Earth. You don’t ‘find’ an angle, you observe one. The things can be found everywhere, it’s not as if they need to be searched for.”
He pointed to the side table. “See? Four ninety-degree angles.” His finger moved to one of the windows in the room which featured small triangular panes of glass. “And, look there! More angles. How many d’you think I can find just sitting on my posterior?”
The earl was starting to get intrigued. “Those calculations of yours? What did you call them?”
His tutor’s expression became smug. “Hobbesian algebra.”
“You say the book boys were pleased with them?”
“Oh, very much so. Once I explained the basic principles to them, they said it would make it much easier to design their computers. Ridiculous term.” He made the batting-away motion again. “But I stopped paying attention at that point, because their discourse veered off into mechanical matters.”
William decided he’d investigate on the morrow. Given his class and British attitudes—the Germans were probably not much different—he’d need to find a way to disguise his involvement in any American-style “investment.” But that couldn’t be too difficult, and his strained financial position could use an influx of profit. For a change.
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
November 21, 1636
Caroline Platzer was frowning. “I don’t understand what the problem is. If you’re right—and I’m not questioning you on this—your electrical relay method of computing is quite a bit superior to the aqualator system. I don’t see why you think you’ll have trouble getting investors.”
Heinz Ermolt shook his head. “The problem is we’re caught in what you Americans call between a rock and a hard place.”
“More like between the Devil and the deep blue sea,” countered his partner, Melchior Treit.
Jost Kniess joined in the headshaking. “The problem is that German investors are wary of anything as technically—how do you say it?—‘far out’ as computing. And Americans”—here his expression darkened—“are like lovers who can’t get over a fixation on somebody. In this case, transistors.” He spoke the word quite venomously.
“They’re okay with aqualators,” said Heinz, “because they’re charming.” He uttered that term with venom also. “But our electrical relays, they just find crude and ugly.”
“Which, being honest, they are. Noisy, too, when you connect them in big batches the way you are,” said William, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. He held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “I’m not quarreling with you, fellows. I agree you have a problem on your hands. But I think the solution is quite obvious.”
All three of the book boys gave him beady stares. “And that is?” demanded Jost.
“Design a game using them. Something that will draw a lot of attention.”
“A game?”
“Well, not a game, exactly. What I have in mind is something quite a bit more ambitious.” He was careful not to look at the princess, lest anyone suspect him of trying to interest the only potential investor in the room who could conceivably come up with the funds for the project taking shape in his imagination.
Which, of course, he was. This would be expensive. On the other hand, he could see other possible benefits to the imperial family.
“Something very glamorous, as well. Exciting. Drawing lots of attention.”
By now, Kristina was practically bouncing on her feet. No, now she was bouncing on her feet. “What is it, William, what is it?”
“Disneyland. Well, sort of. There would be quite a few differences. And we’d need to call it something else, of course. Perhaps…” His face brightened, a smile spreading. “I have it. Vasaland!”
He overshot his mark, there. Kristina immediately scowled. “You just said that because you think it’ll interest my father. That’s sneaky.”
Dear God, the girl was brilliant. You couldn’t ever forget that, dealing with Kristina.
“Well, yes,” he admitted. “But whatever name we come up with, it will still rebound to your dynasty’s credit.”
The scowl didn’t fade at all. “How?”
Fortunately, while Cavendish didn’t have the sheer raw intelligence of the princess, he was a quick thinker. “What’s the biggest drawback to living in Magdeburg?—for the working classes, I’m talking about, not the nobility and the rich.” He waved his hand in the direction of the Neustadt, where the opera house was located. “They have their own entertainments. Expensive ones.”
“Very expensive ones,” muttered Heinz. “Whereas what we have…”
He and his partners exchanged glances.
“Not much,” said Jost. “There’s plenty of work and the wages are generally good. But except for that one theater that’s trying to play the ‘movie’ things but they keep breaking down, there’s not much in the way of fun. Well, leaving aside the boxing matches and saloons, but those aren’t favored by most people.”
“Exactly,” said William. “So we give them…for the moment, let’s just call it the ‘fun house.’ Like the ones the up-timers had at their Disneyland.”
Kristina’s interest and enthusiasm came back at once. “Oh, yes! I’ve seen pictures of them!” She looked at her governess. “In that souvenir book you have, Caroline.”
She started counting off on her fingers. “There were so many of them! There was an adventure where you got attacked by pirates. Not real ones. What you call—robots, I think. And another one where cruel frogs attacked you! And you could ride inside a mountain with all sorts of dangers!”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But what does any of this have to do with our electrical relay computers?” asked Melchior, frowning.
“That’s how we’d control everything,” said William. “There would be some big differences between our fun house and what the Americans had.”
The next part required some delicacy. He nodded at Platzer. “Ours would be…ah, a lot more what I believe you Americans call ‘inter-active.’ In the amusements you had at Disneyland, as I understand it, the customers didn’t do very much except sit and be moved about in various vehicles. Yes?”
Caroline nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Well, we’d do it differently. We’d have the game players making the decisions of what to do and where to go—and the electrical relays would make it happen.”
He rose, stretched out a hand, and mimed someone pushing. “If you shove this lever, this happens to you.” He leaned the other way and did the same with his left hand. “Push this lever, something else.”
“Like what?” asked Heinz.
William shrugged. “Could be anything. If—”
“If you push that first lever,” said Kristina, “a trapdoor opens beneath you and you fall into a chute that drops you down into a pile of sawdust. But if you push the other lever, a robot monster comes at you and unless you jump really fast across a pit that opens up the monster knocks you into it”—here she squealed with glee—“and you’re soaking in water because you’ve fallen into a canal. Then you have to decide which way to go. But if you’re in the sawdust things are just as bad because…”
Here she broke off. “Well, something. It’ll take a lot of figuring out. And the best part”—she looked at Jost—“is that I think you could change the way the relays worked so once people got too used to something you could switch it around. I’m right, aren’t I?”
The leader of the book boys was tugging at his goatee. “Well…yes, certainly.”
“This is a wonderful idea!” pronounced Kristina. “The USE’s capital will have the only fun house in Europe. No, probably in the whole world!”
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
March 3, 1637
“It’s insane, Melissa!” Caroline Platzer shook her head. “When I proposed to them that they at least put guard rails on the sides of the amusement carts, they all looked at me as if I was dim-witted. ‘But that makes no sense,’ one of the book boys said. ‘If no one has to worry about being thrown out of the cart if they let go of the handrail, what’s the point of the ride?’ Can you believe it?”
Melissa Mailey laid her head back and laughed. “You’ve been here for going on six years now, Caroline. What part of ‘seventeenth century’ do you still not understand?”
Caroline glared at her. Melissa brought her head upright and gave it a little shake. “For that matter, you don’t even have to travel back four centuries. My mother would have understood the mindset—her mother certainly would have. Even we Americans didn’t have our modern obsessions with safety and the proper care of children if you go back a generation or two. Nobody ever heard of ‘helicopter parenting.’ The standard so-called ‘word of caution’ even in my day was ‘go out and play; just be back by dinner time’ and nobody worried much where you went and what you did.”
“I don’t care. It’s insane. On one of those rides—rides, hell; you’re on foot in a narrow and dimly lit hallway—the floor consists of three boards that each slides separately and the blasted electric relays can suddenly switch directions. And you know what determines that? Which board of the walls you place your hand on to keep your balance. They have relay switches hidden behind them!”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “With my crappy sense of balance, I’d be dead meat. But I’ve got more sense than to plunge into an old-style ‘fun house’ at my age. That’s for kids and youngsters.”
“That’s not even the worst. On part of what they call the ‘voyage of doom’ you’re riding in a little boat and suddenly ghouls leap down on you from hidden trapdoors. They’re just wooden mannequins, of course, but they’re still pretty scary because like almost every corner of the fun house the lighting sucks. They give the riders wooden swords to defend themselves, which they can do by banging on the ghouls hard enough. But if you miss, the ghouls can bang into you.”
Melissa grimaced.
“But that’s not the worst of it! Depending on the sequence in which the ghouls get banged on by the swords—which there’s no way to predict because several people are banging at once—the relay switches can either let you keep going down the canal in peace for a while, have a dragon breathe fire on you ten feet further on—it’s real fire, Melissa; not enough to give you serious burns but it’ll still hurt—or—you won’t believe this!—a giant wooden sea monster rises up from the floor of the canal and overturns your boat!”
This time, Melissa’s grimace was more serious. “That’s cutting it pretty close. A lot of people in the here and now don’t know how to swim, which is what you’d expect in a world with crappy sanitation and not a swimming pool to be found.”
Caroline’s lips tightened. “Well…being fair about it, the canal’s only three feet deep and the footing’s pretty good. They keep the water clean, too. They figure the little kids can get carried by their parents if they fall in—they don’t let kids ride unaccompanied unless they’re three and a half feet tall—and in an emergency they do have a lifeguard hidden away who can help somebody in real trouble. Still!” She took a deep breath. “You watch! Mark my words, as the saying goes. Some people are going to get hurt.”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s part of the fun of a ‘fun house’ designed and built in the same year that witches are being burnt somewhere and the Inquisition is a going concern.”
“It’s sick.”
“I’ll tell you what else is going to happen,” said Melissa. “Anybody who’s been smart enough to invest in the fun house is going to make a bundle. Especially if they also invested in the relay-switch company.”
Caroline sighed. “Tell me about it. Don’t forget the new computer company they’re planning to launch as soon as the fun house opens. Once it gets rolling, that’ll probably make more money than anything.”
Melissa hesitated a moment. Then: “Caroline, being completely honest here, you really have an obligation—it’s a fiduciary thing—to invest Kristina’s money in all this too.”
“Don’t teach your granddaughter how to suck eggs. We’re invested up to our eyeballs.” She sighed again, even more heavily. “It won’t be long before the blood is on my hands.”
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
March 15, 1637
Melissa Mailey sat down in the chair facing Lennie Washaw behind his desk in his office in the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Engineering. “Well, have you had a chance yet to read those papers I gave you?”
Washaw nodded. “Yes. I agreed to do it as a favor to a former high school colleague even though I was very busy, but once I realized what I was looking at I couldn’t put it down. And I’ve done some research since—quite a bit, in fact—to make sure my memory wasn’t off.”
“I thought it was probably important. And?”
Washaw clasped his hands over his ample belly and shook his head in a gesture of bemusement. “In essence, what your philosopher Thomas Hobbes has done is reinvented Boolean algebra—except ‘pre-invented’ is probably the correct term. George Boole didn’t develop his algebra until the middle of the nineteenth century, more than two hundred years from now.”
Melissa saw the implications immediately. “Hoo, boy.”
“‘Hoo, boy’ is right. So what do we label it in our here and now—which we’re all agreed is a completely different universe? By your account, Hobbes developed this entirely on his own.”
“I’m sure he did. I doubt if he’s heard of Boole even now. We could question his charge William Cavendish, if you like.”
Washaw shook his head. “Not now, anyway. The final decision will have to be made by the whole College in formal session. If there’s any dispute, it can be settled there. But…” He looked down at the papers on the desk in front of him. “I doubt there will be.”
The last words were spoken softly. “Dear God, it’s been hard on them.”
“Hard on who?”
The math professor shrugged. “Anyone—be they a scientist, an artist, a writer—anyone who was famous enough that we have a record of them in what we brought with us. What does Rembrandt do? Paint something he already painted in another world? What does”—he gestured at the pages in front of him—“this guy Thomas Hobbes do? He already wrote Leviathan, after all.”
Melissa smiled. “The story I got is that he refuses to even read the book and flies into a temper tantrum if anyone even mentions it. He was furious when he found out they named the fun house ‘Leviathan.’”
“I have got to try that fun house,” said Washaw. “What the hell, I just turned forty. I figure I ought to survive it.”
Melissa made a face. “Be careful, Lennie. At least two people have already broken a bone in there.”
“Hasn’t slowed business down any, has it?”
“Are you kidding? 1637, remember?”
She pointed at the pages. “So what are you going to recommend to the College?”
“Oh, I think we should label it ‘Hobbesian algebra.’ There’s no indication he didn’t develop it on his own, and he certainly predates Boole himself. I’m not entirely happy with that outcome, since I think the original edition was more elegant.” It was Lennie’s turn to make a face. “God, the ridiculous terminology Hobbes came up with! ‘Affiliation’ and ‘detachment.’ Boolean algebra uses ‘conjunction’ and ‘disjunction.’ But I figure that’s a small price to pay to offset at least a little what is truly a great injustice to people who were truly great.”
Magdeburg
Capital of the United States of Europe
May 12, 1637
The crowd was huge, bigger than anyone had projected.
“There must be a thousand people here!” said Melchior excitedly.
“Easily,” agreed William. “I doubt we’ll be able to get all of them through today.”
“There’s always tomorrow and the day after. And the day after that,” said Jost happily.
Kristina came up, dressed again in a Calvin costume. This was the new Spaceman Spiff variant she’d had made, complete with ray gun. “Let’s get going! We’re the first ones in, remember?”
“How could I forget?” said William. The princess had tried to get him to agree to go into the fun house wearing his Hobbes costume, but he’d firmly refused. “That great heavy thing will get soaked right off and I’ll drown.”
Instead he was going in—leading the way, in fact—as the third earl of Devonshire, wearing a helmet and chainmail and wielding a sword. The helmet and sword were real, although the sword was a blunted practice weapon. The chainmail was simply a costume made of gray fabric. In a real hauberk, he’d be even surer to drown than in a Hobbes costume.
And that he would get soaked was a given. William had been intimately involved for months in the design and construction of the fun house, so he knew what to expect. But he didn’t know the sequence in which the terrors and horrors would come at him. That was controlled by the relay switches, and their mindless “decisions” were ultimately ruled by the logic of his tutor’s algebra.
Groups of twenty would go in at a time, and the starting enclosure was now full of paying customers. Each and every one of them was babbling with glee and anticipation.
A steam whistle blew. The gate rose. William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, led the charge toward the huge, reconverted warehouse that had flags flying everywhere decorated with the Swedish coat of arms and the name Vasaland.
The entrance was in the shape of a great monster’s fanged maw, with red eyes glaring down.
ENTER THE LEVIATHAN IF YOU DARE
—but be warned!
Your life will surely be nasty, brutish and short