“A research project? But you don’t need someone like me—I mean, the kind of research your staff do, begging your pardons in advance, your grace, aren’t exactly where my aptitude lies—”
“Correct. Which is why I want you for a different kind of research.”
“I don’t understand.”
“On the contrary, I think you’ll understand all too well.” (Pause.) “Red or white?”
“Red, please.” (Sound of glass being filled.) “Thank you very much.”
“Show me your locket.”
“My” (coughing) “locket? Uh, sure. Here—”
“Put it there. Yes, open. Don’t focus on it. Now, this one. You can see the difference if you look at them—not too close, now! What do you think?”
“I’m—excuse me, it’s easier to study them if you cover part of the design and compare sections. Less distracting.”
“You sound as if you’ve done that before.”
(Hurriedly): “No sir! But it’s only logical. We’ve been using the Clan sigil for generations. Surely” (pause) “hey, I think the upper right arc of this one is different!”
“It is.” (Sound of small items being cleared away.) “It came from our long-lost, lamentably living, cousins. The Lees. Who, it would appear, discovered the hard way that redesigning the knotwork can have catastrophic consequences.”
(Pause.) “I’d heard they used a different design. But…” (Pause.) “Nobody thought to experiment? Ever?”
“Some of the Lee family did, generations ago. Either they failed to world-walk, or they didn’t come back. After they lost a couple, their elders banned further experimentation. For our part, with no indication that other realms than the two we know of might exist, who would bother even trying? Especially as most of the simple variations don’t work. Look at yourself, Sir Huw! The finest education we can buy you, a graduate student at MIT, and you, too, took the family talent for granted.”
“I, I think—hell. I assumed that if it was possible to do something, it would already have been done, surely?”
“That’s the assumption everyone who has given the subject a moment’s thought comes up with. It tends to deter experimentation, doesn’t it, if you believe an alley of inquiry has already been tried and found wanting? Even if the assumption is wrong.”
“I—I feel dumb.”
(Pause.) “You’re not the only one of us who’s kicking himself. There have been a number of unexplained disappearances over the centuries, and simple murder surely doesn’t explain all of them—but the point is, nobody who succeeded came back to tell the tale. Which brings me to the matter at hand. When Helge reappeared with the family Lee in unwilling thrall, I had reason to send for the archivists. And to have my staff conduct certain preliminary tests. It appears that the Lee family design has never been tested in the United States of America. And our clan symbol doesn’t work in New Britain. That is, it doesn’t in the areas that correspond to the Gruinmarkt. The east coast. But that’s all we know, Huw, and it worries me. In the United States, the authorities have made their most effective attack on our postal service for a hundred years. This would be a crisis in its own right, but on top of that we have the pretender to the throne raising the old aristocracy against us in Niejwein. He can be contained eventually—we have means of communication and transport that will permit us to meet his army with crushing force whenever he moves—but that, too, would be crisis enough on its own. And I cannot afford to deal with any new surprises. So I want you—I have discussed this with members of the
council—to set your very expensively acquired skills to work and do what our none-too-inquisitive ancestors failed to do.”
“You want me to, to find out how the sigil works? Or…what?”
(Clink of glassware.) “When there was just one knot, life was simple. But we’ve got two, now, and three worlds. I want to know if there are more worlds out there. And more knots. I want to know why sometimes trying a design gives the world-walker a headache, and why sometimes the experimenter vanishes. I want to know, Sir Huw, so that I can map out the terrain of the battlefield we find ourselves on.”
“Is it really that bad?”
(Pause.) “I don’t know, boy. None of us know. That’s the whole point. Can you do it? More importantly, what would you do?”
“Hmm.” (Pause.) “Well, I’d start by documenting what we already know. Maps and times. Then there are a couple of avenues I would pursue. On the one hand, we have two knots. I can see if the clan knot is failing to work in New Britain because of a terrain anomaly. If, say, it leads to a world where the world-walker would emerge in the middle of a tree, or underwater, that would explain why nobody’s been able to use it. And I’d do the same for the Lee family knotwork in the United States, of course. That’s going to take a couple of world-walkers, some maps and surveying tools, and someone to report back if everything goes wrong. Next, well…once we’ve exhausted the possibilities, we’ve got two knots. I need to talk to a mathematician, see if we can work out the parameters of the knots and come up with a way of generating a family of relatives. Then we need to invent a protocol for testing new designs: not so much what to do if they don’t work, but how to survive if they take us somewhere new. If this works, if there are more than two viable knots, we’re going to lose world-walkers sooner or later. Aren’t we?”
“I expect so.”
“That’s awfully cold-blooded, isn’t it, sir?”
“Yes, boy, it is. In case it has slipped your attention, it is my job to be cold-blooded about such things. I would not authorize—I suspect my predecessors did not authorize—such research, if the situation was not so dangerous. The risk of losing world-walkers is too high and our numbers too few for gambling. Already there have been losses, couriers taken in transit by American government agents. You met the Countess Helge. Your opinion…?”
“Helge? She’s, she’s—what happened to her? Shouldn’t she be here, given her experience?”
“I am asking the questions, Sir Huw. What was your opinion of her?”
“Bright…inquisitive…fun, I think, in a scary way. Where is she?”
“‘Fun, in a scary way’…yes, that’s true enough. But she scared too many cousins, Huw, cousins who lack your sense of fun. I did what I could to protect her. If she surfaces again, well, circumstances have changed, and it may be possible to distract her pursuers, as long as she is not involved in the regrettable business unfolding in New York. But for the time being, she is not available, and so I am turning to you.”
“I’m, um, I’m at your disposal, sir. How would you like to proceed?”
“Write me a report. No more than three pages. Tell me what you’re going to do, what resources you need, what people you need, and what you expect to learn from it. I want your report no later than the day after tomorrow, and I want you to be ready to begin work the day after that.”
“Sir! That’s rather—”
“What, you’re going to tell me you’ve never written a grant proposal in a hurry? Please don’t insult my intelligence.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir! But it’s going to cost, people and money—”
“Let me worry about that. You just tell me what you need, and I’ll make sure you get it.”
“Wow! Thank you—”