The Speculist

Chapter 40

Part IV

Chapter Forty

 

(Read earlier chapters.)

 

Malacca lay quiet in the light of the setting sun. Behind Reuben stood one of the town’s most famous structures, a vivid red church in the middle of the central square. Malacca was a small town that packed a lot of history. Rows of shop houses lined the narrow street that led down to the Melaka river, where floated a replica of a Portuguese sailing ship — a floating museum. Reuben watched as the ship rocked in the gentle breeze. The heat of the afternoon was giving way the relative cool of evening: the temperature couldn’t have been more than 85. Over the weeks, his blood had thinned sufficiently that he could think of this as being “cool.”

He was dressed, per instructions, in slacks with a dress shirt and tie. A coat, he had been told, would not be necessary.

Wong Yoke Yee stepped out of the front door of her shop house, about a fourth of the way down the street. She saw Reuben standing in the square and started towards him. She was wearing a cheongsam, red and black with a dragon motif. Reuben had never seen her wear anything but western dress. He would have expected tight-fitting clothing to accentuate her weight, but it turned out the opposite was true. She had never looked more trim. Her hair was also combed differently than he had seen it before, swept back dramatically.

“Miss Wong,” he said as she approached. “You look great.”

She treated him to a cold stare.

“I believe I’ve already explained my policy on personal remarks?”

Although things had loosened up quite a bit between them over the three weeks, there were still moments like this. She would grill him relentlessly about his past — his experiences, his relationships — but she would not allow any discussion of her personal life. Reuben didn’t really care. He was mildly interested in learning how she of all people had come to be leader of the Society of Magic Minor. And he had a passing curiosity as to what was going on, or had gone on, between Daphne and Iskandar.

But that was it.

“They are unwelcome,” he recited. “And they will not be tolerated.”

“Correct.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know the policy applied to compliments.”

“It applies to any irrelevant, impertinent, half-formed comment which might be lurking in the recesses of whatever it is you have that passes for a brain. No matter how desperately they may try to escape, will you please keep them under control? Whether we’re in the shop or not. Please.”

Reuben nodded.

“Yes, Miss Wong.”

“Good. I appreciate your punctuality, Reuben. Are you ready to begin?”

“I think so. Would it be too impertinent if I asked why we’re dressed this way?”

“Our mode of dress is appropriate to our destination. That’s all you need to know.”

“How about this question, then — how long will we be gone? My hotel isn’t expecting me back for a month, but I don’t even have a single change of clothes.”

She stamped her foot with exasperation.

“Did I tell you that we would be gone for a month?”

“No, Miss Wong.”

“So where did the month come from?”

“I made it up.”

“Reuben, I never gave you a specific return date. The correct answer, if asked, would have therefore been a non-specific answer. Surely you can see that?”

Reuben shrugged.

“If you say so, Miss Wong.”

“Don’t be insubordinate with me. As far as your question goes, you wouldn’t even be asking it if you had paid more attention in class. Now, I believe we should get started. I’m starving.”

“Ah, right,” said Reuben. “Actually, I was just thinking about hitting one of the stalls before we leave. I was going to the Mamak man for a murtabak, but the lady next to him does a pretty good kway teow. If you’re interested. Or there’s the Nyonya place across the street.”

She looked at him curiously, her manner seeming to soften a little in spite of herself.

“I didn’t realize you ate at the stalls, Reuben.”

“Sure. Breakfast and dinner almost every day. And lunch on the days when you kick me out.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Reuben’s eating at the stalls seemed to hold some significance for her. He couldn’t imagine why. It had no particular significance to him — he just liked spicy food.

“Well, thank you but no. We will be dining when we reach our destination.”

“Okay.”

“All right, then. Let’s begin.”

She turned and faced the street from which she had approached.

“Reuben, do you see the mast of the ship?”

“Yes, Miss Wong.”

“We’re going to put a tall building almost precisely where the mast is. It will actually stand a bit back from the river, and be much taller. But it will be right there. Parallel with the line of the mast, and centered on it.”

“Yes, Miss Wong,”

“All right, Reuben. Give me a controlled ripple. Disrupt the waveform.”

Reuben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As he had been trained to do, he pictured himself standing in the center of the mandala, an enormous blowup of the design he had seen in the manuscript Michael Keyes showed him. He now knew that the design was an elaborate compass, and that it was one of many tools used by members of the Society to find their way across the configuration space. He pictured the lines of the mandala as luminescent and superimposed over the landscape before him. The ship’s mast would be north. He started with the mandala positioned slightly off-center. As soon as he began — in his mind — to rotate the shape so that it’s northern point aligned with the ship’s mast, he was struck by the now-familiar disorienting lurch. As always, this was accompanied by a spinning sensation and a slight throbbing in his head.

But the pain, the disorientation, and the sensation of motion were now all under his control.

“Okay, Miss Wong. Coordinates, please.”

“How’s your grip?”

Reuben tested his grip. It seemed secure. If he wanted, he could quickly move the mandala to any of its possible configurations.

“My grip is secure. Coordinates, please.”

“Very well. Take us south by southeast with an incline of six.”

Eyes still closed, Reuben spun the mandala around him so that the central marker which had been north was now behind him and to his right. South by southeast. The next step was more difficult. He changed the incline of the mandala, tilting the disk of light so that it now intersected the ship’s mast about halfway up. An incline of 6 meant a 60 degree angle. A down incline would have been more difficult to manage, requiring him to tilt the mandala down into the ground and yet still see it.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “I think I have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ve got it.”

“Very well, Reuben. Let’s move ahead three steps.”

Reuben opened his eyes. The street lay before him as it had before, ending at the river. The ship was right where it should be. The world looked different, however. Less real. Grayer. Concentrating, Reuben pictured the mandala oriented precisely as he had seen it with his eyes closed.

He took hold of Daphne’s hand. He took a step forward.

A number of things happened at once. Several of the shop houses grew taller and wider, subsuming others that surrounded them. The street grew wider. The vehicles traveling on it changed. They were different models, now, and different colors. But the cars and trucks were indistinct to Reuben. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, right where the ship’s mast had been, but no longer was.

With the second step, the air changed. A hot blast of wind caught them in the face. The buildings were much taller now, the street much wider. A new building stood before them at the end of the street, slightly in front of where the ship had been. But this was not the building Daphne described. It was low and flat and gray.

Reuben took the third step. They were now on a busy street in a major city. It could have been Kuala Lumpur. It could have been Manhattan, but for the tropical heat and humidity. The shop houses were far fewer, and they now towered above them. Skyscrapers. One of them stood at the end of the street, running parallel to where the ship’s mast had been.

Reuben turned to Daphne.

“Is this is it?” he asked. He realized that he was winded. Taking these few steps was an effort, just as she had told him it would be.

“Let go,” she said.

He let go of her hand.

“No, Reuben. Your grip. Let go, now.”

It took him a moment. He sometimes had difficulty with this. It was easy enough to agitate the waveform, to get a grip on it and create a ripple within it. But it was harder, much harder to stop. He now knew that on the train to St. Petersburg, only his blackout had forced him to let go. There was a very real danger in keeping the waveform agitated — he might take a step or two in the wrong direction and land them both in a hostile environment. Or a deadly one. Or one just like the one they had left, only from which there was no way out.

Only Daphne could see where they were going, and only she could avoid all these potential traps.

Reuben closed his eyes again. He pictured the lights that made up the sides of the mandala flickering out. Then he pictured the dark lines left behind as dissolving into nothingness. He held his breath for a moment, then exhaled deeply.

He opened his eyes. The spinning had stopped. The throbbing had faded. And the world had its colors back.

“There,” he said.

He took a long look around. It wasn’t just the street they were on that had changed. The city had grown immensely, spreading out in all directions. The shop houses were gone, as was the central square where the church had stood.

“Wow,” he said. “Where are we?”

“We are in Malacca, three steps down the street from where we started.”

Reuben nodded.

“Maybe I didn’t phrase that question right.”

“Maybe not. Try again.”

“What happened? Why is this Malacca so different from the one we left behind?”

Daphne looked down to the end of the street and back, apparently considering the question.

“Because it is. Histories diverge. The more different they are, the more different they become. After a while, it’s difficult to pinpoint any one change and associate it as the cause of any one difference.”

Two passersby approached, a couple dressed in traditional Malay clothing. The woman’s kebaya was bright and cheerful, with a purple and scarlet floral design. The man’s baju malayu looked like very fancy green pajamas; the plaid sampin he wore over his trousers reminded Reuben of a Scottish kilt. It seemed at first that the couple took no notice of them, but as they drew closer it became apparent that they were deliberately avoiding looking at Reuben and Daphne.

Just as they passed, the man muttered something under his breath. Daphne responded loudly, and in some detail. The couple hastened their pace as they continued up the street.

“That didn’t sound like Bahasa,” said Reuben.

Daphne looked startled that he could make such a distinction.

“It was Baba Malay, which technically is a dialect of Bahasa. But here, what the Nyonyas speak is closer to Hokkien than it is to the Malay language.”

“So they were Nyonyas? Chinese? But the way there were dressed…”

“…is how the Nyonyas dress, here. Histories diverge. Besides, their clothes weren’t terribly different from the kinds of things my grandparents wore.”

Reuben considered this. He had read a little about the Baba Nyonya, the descendants of early Chinese settlers who could be found throughout the Straits of Malacca. Over the centuries, they had developed their own distinct culture, blending their native Chinese traditions, cuisine, and style of dress with those of the Malays with whom they intermarried.

Apparently they had blended them differently here. That was interesting, as was Daphne’s reference to her grandparents. It hadn’t occurred to him that Daphne was, herself, of Nyonya descent.

But of course, learning that sort of detail would have probably required some personal comments along the way.

“Anyway, what did the guy say to you?”

“Something about ‘foreigners.’ I couldn’t quite make it out.”

“And what did you say to him?”

Daphne looked away.

“It doesn’t bear repeating.”

“Miss Wong, I’m touched. You said something in my defense?”

She looked back at Reuben, puzzled.

“Why would you think that? He insulted me. This Malacca is bigger than Singapore, and a very proud city. They are used to seeing all sorts, but they don’t take kindly to mainland Chinese. Which, based on my apparel, he assumed that I am. It has to do with some old, old grudges.”

“But I thought you said we were dressed appropriately for our destination.”

“I did. What does that tell you?”

“That this isn’t our destination.”

Daphne almost smiled.

“We are making this trip in small stages. You did all right for your first actual go. I’ve seen much worse, I can tell you. But your incline was a bit off. Work on that.”

Reuben looked down for a moment, considering this.

“So if my incline was off, does that mean that I didn’t get us to the right place?”

Daphne shook her head.

“It doesn’t exactly mean that. But this isn’t exactly the right place, either. It’s probably better that you don’t think in those terms.”

“But…the building is there.”

The half-smile disappeared. She glared at him.

“Reuben, try to imagine what it would have been like if you had had someone explaining all this to you in great detail over the past few weeks.”

Reuben blinked. He felt slightly helpless, as always, in the face of Daphne’s mounting temper.

“Oh, wait a moment. Hang on. I remember. Someone did explain all this to you. It was me.”

Reuben looked down the street, trying to remember what Daphne had told him on this subject.

“I guess…there’s more than one configuration that has a building right there?”

She nodded violently.

“Well, that sounds like a safe assumption, Reuben. Inasmuch as a few hundred thousand trillion is, indeed, more than one.”

Reuben cleared his throat.

“Okay,” he said. “Take it easy. I remember, now. We aren’t going for a particular configuration. We’re just trying to end up somewhere in the middle of a cluster of configurations.”

“And?”

“And if my incline was off, I put us somewhere else in the cluster, or in a closely related cluster.”

“And so?”

Daphne’s face glowed red with a harsh defiance. She was practically spitting the questions at him. But Reuben was no longer intimidated; it was all coming back.

“And so you’ll have to make some corrections in our course over the next few steps to get us to our destination.”

Daphne’s rage began to subside.

“That’s correct,” she said.

“So I’ll have to do my best to keep my incline true. That will get us there quicker and make your job easier.”

She let out a bitter laugh.

“The one thing my job will never be is easy.”

She turned and took a long look down the street, apparently trying to identify something.

“Now, Reuben we’re going to put a black bench just a bit to the left of where that taxi stand is. Do you see it?”

The stand was twenty yards or so in front of them. A lavender car with a rectangular blue light on top had just pulled in, apparently hoping to get a fare from the two of them.

“A black bench?” he repeated.

“Yes. Wrought iron.”

Reuben looked at her.

“Really? Portuguese?”

She nodded.

“How about that,” he said. “I guess histories really do diverge.”

He looked up at the buildings towering over them.

“I bet everything is about to get smaller again,” he said.

Posted by Phil at February 29, 2004 11:59 AM | TrackBack