We tamper with time at our peril. The Phantom in the Maze, a new story in the Mongolian Wizard series by award-winning author Michael Swanwick.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
We tamper with time at our peril. The Phantom in the Maze, a new story in the Mongolian Wizard series by award-winning author Michael Swanwick.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Overview
We tamper with time at our peril. The Phantom in the Maze, a new story in the Mongolian Wizard series by award-winning author Michael Swanwick.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780765384980 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 12/02/2015 |
| Series: | The Mongolian Wizard , #7 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 32 |
| File size: | 851 KB |
About the Author
MICHAEL SWANWICK has received the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy and Hugo Awards, and has the pleasant distinction of having been nominated for and lost more of these same awards than any other writer. His novels include Stations of the Tide, Bones of the Earth, two Darger and Surplus novels, and The Iron Dragon's Mother. He has also written over a hundred and fifty short stories - including the Mongolian Wizard series on Tor.com - and countless works of flash fiction. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.
Read an Excerpt
The Phantom in the Maze
By Michael Swanwick, Gregory Manchess
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2015 Michael SwanwickAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8498-0
CHAPTER 1
"But I already have as fine a pistol as is made anywhere," Ritter said.
"Not any more." Sir Toby dropped the reluctantly surrendered flintlock, its barrel exquisitely engraved with stags and ivy leaves and its unicorn ivory grips carved with wolf heads, into a desk drawer. Then he handed his subordinate an oddly shaped and brutally unadorned sidearm. "This is called a 'revolver.' It wasn't supposed to be invented for another forty years, but a team of scryers in Covington foresaw it and provided His Majesty's engineers with blueprints. It loads easily and you can get off five shots, one after the other, without reloading."
"It hardly sounds gentlemanly."
"Being a gentleman," Sir Toby said with some asperity, "is something I am trying to cure you of. Here is a box of percussion cartridges — another gift from our friends to the north. Which is where I'm sending you next. There has been a murder."
"You suspect sabotage?"
"Sabotage, espionage, sedition, treason, terrorism, incompetence, or happenstance. It must surely fall into one of those categories, unless it turns out to be something else. Finding out which is your job. Now hurry off to the firing range and get in some practice. You're going to need it."
Ritter went.
* * *
Buckinghamshire, in the early days of the war, was a grey and joyless place. To compound matters, an officer in an unfamiliar uniform who spoke with a pronounced German accent was an object of profound suspicion to the locals. As if their own military forces were incompetent to protect them from solitary invaders from the Mongolian Wizard's territories! And to top it off, there was the food. Ritter was half-convinced it was what the locals fed to feared outsiders out of spite, and more than a little afraid that it was what they regularly ate themselves.
"You don't look like you're enjoying your meal much," Director MacDonald said. He was a sharp-featured man with lively eyes, whose idea, Ritter gathered, the entire operation had been. He seemed to be a civilian and a Scotsman as well. In Ritter's opinion, he lacked gravitas.
Ritter looked down at the boiled peas, boiled potatoes, and grey meat on his tin tray. "I assure you, parts of it are quite good."
MacDonald laughed. "You have a sense of humor! How unexpected." Then, "I thought that perhaps you were put off by the looks that some of the girls are giving you. It's only to be expected, you know. Most men with a talent for foresight are routinely attached to intelligence units at the front lines and consequently the ratio of women to men here is ten to one. The majority of them are single and of an age when one normally makes a marriage. So naturally they are interested in a strapping, good-looking fellow such as yourself."
"I honestly hadn't noticed," Ritter lied. Distracted, he pushed the tray away from himself — and knocked it off the table.
From every corner of the room — baronial, high-beamed, and shabby in the way that takes generations of moneyed neglect to accomplish — girls burst into cascades of giggles. Coloring, Ritter realized that they had all paused in their meals to stare at him, waiting for the tray to fall. A canteen worker hurried to clean up the mess and he said, "Tell me about the murder."
MacDonald turned instantly serious. "Alice Hargreaves was the middle daughter of a dean of Christ Church, Oxford. She was identified as having a latent talent for foresight, recruited, and sent here for training and exploitation. She arrived at the Institute a week ago. The next morning, she was discovered dead."
"She had no enemies, then?"
"There was no time for her to acquire any. Nor could it have been anything she foresaw, for her talent had yet to be unlocked. Of all the young women in our employ, she was the least likely to be murdered."
"Perhaps she discovered something — a spy in your operation or suchlike?"
"On her first evening here? Highly unlikely." MacDonald produced a thin metal rectangle, perhaps three inches long. "Here is what Miss Hargreaves looked like. Lovely, wasn't she?"
On the object was a monochrome image of a young woman — good looking, dark eyed, serious of expression. "What is this thing?"
"A tintype. One of our less bellicose recoveries from the future. All our staff have their images recorded on arrival."
Ritter studied the image for a time, returned it, stood. "I will examine the scene of the crime now."
* * *
Freki had waited outside the Gothic stone building — originally a monastery, later converted to a mansion, then built over and added to by centuries of wealthy owners encumbered by not one whit of good taste, until the resulting whole resembled a witch-haunted mountain range in some treeless Northern land — while Ritter ate. Now, at a thought, the wolf trotted to his side. Together they followed Director MacDonald through the grounds and downslope to an oversized pond. Nearby was a yew maze, its hedges significantly taller than either man. They all three entered it.
"The maze is left over from more opulent times," MacDonald observed, "and I should warn you that the young ladies think it's a romantic spot in which to rendezvous with their beaus. I suggest we keep up a steady line of chatter in order to warn anyone who might be lurking ahead. You have questions, I am certain. This would be a good time to ask them."
"Tell me about the method of precognition your ladies employ. My father always said that clairvoyance was the least of all magical talents, yet you seem to have disproved his thesis."
"Doubtless," MacDonald said, "you think of the future as a country existing in a direction to which you cannot turn your eyes, and of precognitives as being able to peer ahead where you cannot. We look forward, yes — but into a blizzard. The future is always changing. You take extra time to shave one morning and as a result you miss the coach to Bristol and have to wait in London an extra day. So you strike up a conversation with an idler in your club, who tells you of a financial opportunity particularly suited to your talents. Thus you find yourself traveling on business to the Italian Alps, where a chance encounter with a brigand costs you your life. Every man makes such decisions every day and as a result, the future is in constant flux. Those brief islands of stability which people such as I have traditionally been able to glimpse, are rare and very particular to the individual: a vision of one's future spouse, say, or the moment when one is about to set sail on a ship destined to sink with no survivors."
"But you changed all that."
"I did. When I reached adolescence and the talent came upon me, I was equally struck by its weakness and its potential. So I began to experiment. It was my innovation to create those islands of stability by training a precognitive to focus her thought backward toward her earlier self, sitting quietly in that identical same room at a specific time and thinking forward to herself where she would later be. I quickly learned that messages regarding the actions of individuals were wrong as often as not. But transmissions of simple material fact were inerrant. So I have created an institution that passes technological information backward in time for as long as a century, handed from seer to seer, like so many heliograph stations in time.
"I see you carry one of our revolvers. Its design is something that we can confidently expect will not change between now and the moment one of our ladies sits down to sketch its workings for her younger self to read. Hence, its existence today, a hundred years before its invention."
"You dizzy me, sir."
"I intend to dizzy the world. Ah! Here we are. This is where Miss Hargreaves' body was found."
Ritter looked about him. The center of the maze was the center of a maze. The hedges were hedges. The grass was grass. There was a bronze sundial with the motto Tempus Vincet Omnia. "How was she killed?"
"With a rock to the back of the head."
"You have it still?"
"Good lord, no! That would be morbid. It was promptly thrown into the pond as soon as the corpse was removed."
"Pity. Sir Toby has some excellent forensic wizards we could have called upon." Ritter sent Freki nosing about the grass. "Could it have been a crime of passion?"
"We brought in a hedge-witch specializing in midwifery. She verified that the corpse was still virgin. It had not been molested either before or after death."
"Was she able to establish the time of death?"
"Midnight, or slightly thereafter."
The wolf picked up faint traces of human blood, the faded scents of many visitors, and nothing else of any interest. "There have been a lot of people through here."
"As I said, it is a popular place for lovers to meet."
"I will speak to the victim's roommate now."
* * *
"Don't speak to me!" Margaret Andrewes scowled down at a sheet of paper covered with mathematical formulae for a very long time. Occasionally she glanced up at the wall, where hung a hand-drawn pasteboard chart showing thick colored lines that flowed in and out of one another. Finally, she turned over the sheet and, looking up, said, "I know why you're here. Ask me what you will. I know nothing that will be of any use to you."
"You foresaw that, did you?"
"No, of course not." Andrewes' eyes darted away from him but her voice was firm. "I met the girl only the once. We had dinner together in the commissary and then she went out for a walk and never came back. I was weary and went to sleep early that night. In the morning I saw that her bed had not been slept in. That was the first I knew that something was wrong. I notified Director MacDonald's secretary, Miss Christensen, the grounds were searched, and her body was found. That's all."
"What did you talk about?"
"Where she could put her things. How to acquire a permanent meal card. Nothing personal, I'm afraid."
The office in which the interview was held was small, tidy, and without personality. The door to the back room (created, Ritter saw, by the addition of a wall halfway down the original space) was slightly ajar, revealing a bunk bed. The lower mattress was covered by a bright quilt. The upper one was empty.
"I thank you for your cooperation, Miss Andrewes," Ritter said at last. "We shall take our leave." They stepped outside and down a long hallway of rooms, all small, each housing a pair of precognitives.
Miss Andrewes had not looked at the director once. That meant something. Exactly what, Ritter had no idea, but he knew that it was significant. When they were out of earshot, he commented, "That was a striking woman."
"She can be quite likeable under ordinary circumstances." Almost to himself, the director added, "A trifle plump, mind you. But pleasantly so."
"Excuse me, sir." A lean, older woman, slight of profile and disapproving of mien, handed Director MacDonald a sheet of paper. "This just came in."
"Thank you, Miss Christensen." The director glanced at the sheet, scowled, and said to Ritter, "You must excuse me for a moment. My secretary will look after you in my absence." He spun on his heel and hurried away.
"The director seems a very busy man," Ritter commented to the secretary.
"That's one word for it," she replied acerbically.
"Forgive me. But I must ask. Where was the director at the time of the murder?"
"He and I were both with Peter Fischer who, despite his gender, is our best scryer. Also, rather a hothouse flower. He was having one of his periodic crises of confidence, and it took quite a long time to calm him down. We were with him from ten in the evening until at least two in the morning." Miss Christensen smiled coldly. "Director MacDonald, I assure you, is no more your murderer than I am."
* * *
That evening, Ritter went over all he had learned — or, rather, failed to learn.
There were not many people who had had contact with Miss Hargreaves — the ostler who had stabled her horse and directed her to Director MacDonald's office, Miss Christensen who in the director's absence had given her the standard orientation for a newcomer, the technician who had recorded her image on tintype as part of that orientation and, of course, her roommate for less than a day Miss Andrewes. Ritter had interviewed all of them, with the same results: She was an intelligent and attractive young woman who made no particular impression on anybody before slipping into the yew maze and getting herself murdered.
Ritter had been given an attic room which had been a servant's quarters when the building was a mansion and only God and the Cistercians knew what before then. So far as he could tell, the stairway served no other occupied rooms. There he sat that evening with his shoes off and a small fire in the hearth to ward off the spring chill, trying to sort out the facts, such as they were. Ritter found himself unable to form any theories or discern any pattern to the events surrounding the death. The strangeness of the Institute's purpose kept getting in the way.
Very well, then, he must consider that strangeness.
What had he learned?
And what did it mean?
That the future existed, somewhere up ahead of him. That it could be changed. Which implied that there were more futures than one. Which made no sense. There was only one past and it was inalterable. Why should the future be any different?
If the future was mutable, then what about the present? Did it solidify underfoot the instant one arrived at it, like the solidity of land gathering itself beneath the feet of a castaway when he finally manages to struggle free of the sea? Or was it, too, uncertain? Ritter suspected that ...
A flutter of wings filled the room and a frantic bird flew past Ritter's ear.
He started to his feet and felt the brush of feathers against his cheek as the panicked creature sped back the way it had come. There was for it no exit, but the creature had no way of knowing that. It looped through the room in wild, angular ambits.
Wherever could it have come from?
It must have flown down the chimney earlier in the day and been hiding in an obscured corner of the room when he lit the fire. There was no other possible explanation.
The beating of wings ceased.
Ritter looked around.
The bird was completely gone.
Which — in a room so small, with door closed and the single window sealed shut by multiple layers of old paint — was impossible.
Ritter's thoughts were interrupted by a low whine. Freki was crouched low against the ground, fur abristle. Gently, he touched the wolf's mind and was astonished to discover fear. Simultaneously, outside his door he heard steady, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.
The footsteps reached the top landing and continued along the hall. They stopped in front of his door.
And then ... nothing.
Ritter drew his revolver and silently positioned himself to the side of the door. Then he twisted the knob and flung open the door, mentally prepared for anything.
But there was no one there.
* * *
After such a baffling non-event, there was no chance of sleep. So Ritter banked the fire, pulled on his boots, and took Freki out for a walk. A grey, ghostly light flooded the grounds, cast by a full moon overhead. The great house and all the wooden sheds and houses about it were silent and dark. Moved by nothing more definite than whim and Brownian motion, he found himself at the mouth of the yew maze. He entered it and made his way to its center.
The pale figure of a young woman turned eagerly at his approach and started forward. Then, on seeing his face, she flinched away from him. "Oh!" she said. "You startled me."
Freki, who had been lagging behind, now padded up to Ritter's side. For a second time, the young lady started. Then she recovered herself. "What a state I'm in! I thought for a moment your dog was a wolf."
"Oh, he is a wolf, indeed. But he is a very gentle and polite wolf. Freki, show the lady what a gentleman you are." Slipping into his animal's mind, Ritter made him sit up like a dog and offer his paw. Laughing, the young woman shook it vigorously, saying, "I am very pleased to meet you, Freki."
Ritter moved the wolf back to his side and disengaged from his thoughts. Then he said, "Should I leave? Are you meeting someone?"
Even in the moonlight, he could see her blush. "Forgive me, please. Yes, I am waiting for Curdie, and ... well, tonight is special. I have never met him before, you see. But I had a vision, and–"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Phantom in the Maze by Michael Swanwick, Gregory Manchess. Copyright © 2015 Michael Swanwick. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Begin Reading,
About the Author,
Copyright,