He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
After almost ten years of singlehandedly running an industrial revolution, and trying to destroy superstition like he did chivalry, slavery, and smallpox, superstition has begun to fight back. He paces around the room in an empty Camelot, reading and re-reading the note from Clarence.
Only fifty-three Englishmen who didn't drop everything and go back to their sixth-century lives, and them besieged. The entirety of the nation in arms against them because the Church decreed it. And Arthur—the one nobleman who might truly be called noble—dead.
He paces around the room, trying to think of a rescue plan, or any plan at all with a chance of working. After for once in his life repeatedly failing to think of anything, he sees his footprints in the dust forming a circle on the oak floor.
He looks at the footprints. He looks at Hank.
"Well, this looks hilariously accidental," he says.
"Who are you, and how did you get in here?" The door wasn't locked, but it is noticeably across the room from the newcomer.
"...I would be very impressed with this feat of hocus-pocus if I didn't know how summoning worked. If you just want to get rid of me, go ahead, I'll go home and catch up on my reading and try not to be too mopey about how not even accidental non-binding summoners appreciate my commitment to nonviolence."
"Okay. Seems likely to be an improvement, considering, I think they had the rudiments of germ theory and so on by 1895, etcetera. So do you need a demon for anything? ...You don't know what demons are for, do you. Demons make stuff. Arbitrary stuff. Including stuff from 2159."
"...Okay, I'm less confident in 'time travel' and beginning to suspect 'alternate universe', because I think I probably would have noticed if there was a Republic in England in the five hundreds. But that's relatively immaterial. Should I replace my wings and be rid of the tail, pretend I'm an angel? Not like anyone will know the difference magically speaking unless you've got a cagey summoner."
"Definitely don't be a demon. I thought I had cured the superstition from these people, but the church has its tentacles on them tight, or else the lot of them are cowards. Anything that even makes them think the word 'demon' and they'll break out the torches and pitchforks."
"And torches and pitchforks could mildly inconvenience me. Okay. Have you got someplace to burn these or whatever once I've taken 'em off?" he asks, waggling a wing. "I don't think I'd better try just layering feathers on top, easier to copy angel wings wholesale. I could do without entirely, I guess, but my balance is for crap sans wings."
"Right. Unfortunately, I can't do the proper halo the way angels really do, because they do it by changing bits of their skulls into magnets to make the halos float, and I'd be looking at major surgery. Wings, I can do." He reaches over his shoulders, hooks his fingers into thin wires that are suddenly there, and yanks. The wings flop to the floor. Cam does the same thing to his tail, then starts unpeeling spontaneously-appeared gauze and tape and the blood thereon from his back.
"Sure. Air is a thing, so I can make it, complete with little cedar particles. Teeny little music players are things, so I can make 'em. Clouds are things, so I can make 'em, although I can't get rid of preexisting clouds, so this might be an activity for a sunny day if we want to do it properly."
"I'm admittedly not up on theology, it has not been a focus and I imagine it's changed some in sixteen hundred years. So we should compose me a speech, or I suppose I can just land and introduce all of the recalcitrant types to the modern equivalent of - have you got chloroform when you're from?"
"Yes, I said 'modern equivalent of', I do not know when chloroform fell out of common use except that it was well before I began peering at medical textbooks. I can knock people out nice and safe, is my point. I will also be fine if they decide to shoot directly at me or something."
It's the Church that would be hard to convince, and they're the ones we need to withdraw the Interdict."
As for what I've been doing with that position, mostly I've been kick-starting an industrial revolution. Factories I mentioned, but the schools and universities were more important. Convincing people that they can think and not simply accept whatever an authority figure decrees, though apparently that only worked on fifty-three of them.
At one point the king and I went out disguised as commoners to show him what life is like for his subjects. When we returned, he abolished slavery and I took care of smallpox. The queen took a disliking to me after I got in the habit of pardoning her prisoners when they haven't committed any crime.
I've been working improvements of that sort since arriving, toward the eventual goal of establishing a republic after the king's death.
A few months ago, my infant daughter became ill, and my family left for France while she recovered. My wife and daughter are still safely out of the country, thank God. I only just returned, and found everyone absent. The Church has proclaimed an Interdict, so nobody is to receive any sacraments until the King, Mordred, and I are all dead. Arthur and his nephew killed each other, I hear, and now all of superstitious England opposes my few faithful. Clarence, my right hand man, did proclaim a Republic, but it lacks standing at the moment."
"Yes, but if I stay dead then the country goes back to sixth-century feudalism. I don't know if the abolition of slavery would survive the next king's reign, let alone the idea of representation. And if I don't stay dead, then nearly everyone would try to remedy that."
"I can... sort of magic translations, in the sense that when I'm summoned I get my summoner's languages. I don't have sixth century Chinese, but I have a few dialects of modern and could muddle along, and if we can talk a Chinese person into re-summoning me I'll be all set. That does of course assume that in spite of the time travel slash alternate universe business I can be dismissed and resummoned as normal. But sure, you're entrenched, we can try the angelic proclamation business. Is England Catholic right now? Should I go appear to the Pope?"
The Pope would be obeyed, but I don't know how long a message would take between here and Rome. In order of urgency, the knights likely come first and then the Archbishop."
Perhaps we tell them that since Arthur was the best king heaven itself could imagine, he is to have no successor?
And, since the Church has displeased the imaginary source of our message, a general dispensation that sacraments can now be provided by anyone, be he a priest or no."
"Was Arthur really that great? I mean, we have Arthurian legends where I'm from, but they're mostly about how his wife cheated on him, he overreacted, he may or may not have slept with his sister, and generally England had to wait around for the Magna Carta before things could be called progressive."
But the people loved him, and if we tell them he was the best king imaginable, they will both believe it and be more likely to believe anything else we say."
"Speaking of the best one's century can produce," says Cam, looking Hank over, "I'm sort of curious about what 1895 spat out. I'm tentatively impressed, especially when you didn't blink much about the idea of industrializing China, but I feel like maybe I want to quiz you a little bit before taking your advice as read."
As for whether they will be able to, I don't see why not. Sixth-century women are at no more of a disadvantage than the men are when it comes to understanding and voting on politics. And I was pro-suffrage, back in Connecticut."
"Good for you. Hmmm, current events I'm most recently familiar with are things I couldn't possibly expect you to have an informed opinion on. Pan-Lunar independence movement and such. Enh. Okay, full speed ahead, but I'm not sure I want to appear as an angel to people who think angels are angelic and tell 'em that King Arthur was the best of the best. It's possible I should in fact read the entire Bible before attempting to impersonate an actually-angelic-angel. ...Do they even have the King James version yet? I know Hebrew but not Aramaic."
The Arthur thing was just to make it credible—folk around here expect their kings to be divinely ordained and therefore the best possible.
If we want to tell them no more kings, they'd be a lot more likely to listen if it's because no-one can measure up to Arthur than if it's because kings are around as useful for about the same purposes as cats."
"I expect kings to object more if you try to rub their tummies and be much worse at catching mice. You know, in my time, there still exists a British monarchy. It has only ceremonial power and the ability to make journalists squeal at high pitch; meanwhile the actual governing is accomplished principally by the parliament and the European Union."
"There's an argument to be made that it's good because it distracts people from having stupid opinions about the actual business of legislature, if they can squeal about kings and queens and princes and princesses. But that's a little beside the point, if Arthur's dead and there's not a decent successor stashed in a broom cupboard." Cam experiments with various ways of folding his wings and finds one he likes. "Look, generally speaking, I am disinclined to lying. Playing merry hell with implications, sprouting feathers and descending from dramatic cloud formations sillhouetted by burning magnesium and announcing myself with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir crooning in Latin in surround sound, telling people that industrial revolutions are lovely and they should want one, yes; claiming Arthur was totally great you guys, you're going to have to sell me harder on that one."
A direct statement that England is not to have a king... the people would need some justification. We're competing with lifetimes of propaganda here and we have the option of making it work for us."
"I'm proud to say I have no magic at all. Nothing but hard work and cleverness. Other magicians would love to have those parlor tricks, though. I haven't seen any of them do anything that couldn't be sleight of hand, but a reputation in this sort of thing is surprisingly easy to keep up."
For everyone else, they've been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they might literally disbelieve an angel from heaven. If we told them everyone is equal, the best possible result is that they stop to ask the priests first and then decide you must be a demon disguised as an angel."
"Since I am a demon disguised as an angel, my ability to produce evidence to the contrary is limited, although I'm not exorciseable and won't burn on exposure to crosses or holy water or anything. And genuine angels just have slightly different magical powers and aesthetics and reputations, that's all, so summoning one won't help."
"Sure. Maybe when this Camelot business has settled down I'll show you how to summon a bona fide angel and you can ask them. But we do keep getting distracted from the topic of whether there's anything less patently false I can say to justify the end of monarchy than 'yaaaaay Arthur'."
What if we say that Arthur isn't dead, but recovering in Avalon or something and England should elect its Regents until he returns in a thousand years?"
"There are other words for the place, but the English one I use is Limbo. Angels live in Heaven, demons live in Hell, fairies live in Fairyland, and dead humans who never summoned any of the above loiter in Limbo and don't get any of the cool magic powers apart from indestructibility. Speaking of indestructibility, I'm immortal, and I might want to still be wandering around periodically saying things in a thousand years, if dismissal and resummoning works all right."
"I don't know if it will work as it should from an alternate universe. But usually I'll be dismissed if you die, or will me away for about a minute, and you can draw this," he produces a piece of paper, "finish the circle part of it last, in any material, on the floor, with space for me to stand in, to get me back."
"Yes, but if there's some sort of emergency - for instance, if you are about to die and I am for some reason very far away, but you have access to a piece of charcoal, a floor, and two minutes, you may as well try to dismiss and resummon me to where I can help with the 'about to die' thing."
"Suppose you did become king, and convinced everyone to accept you. They would then believe that you were infallibly placed over them because it is your rightful place. They would not be able to comprehend the idea that you might be wrong or that they might ever have a duty to disobey you or that they might have any rights against whatever you choose to do to them. I have no doubt that you would be better than whatever other king they might suffer under, but it would nevertheless be a grave blow against equality."
"You really don't have a very high opinion of these people, do you. Democracy's very good at some things, but - not at all things. I suppose it's a reasonable start, anyway, if it comes down to it after Earth is nice and industrial I'll fly off and terraform Mars and take immigrants with a slightly more sophisticated understanding of how monarchy actually works... Right, fine, I will angel it up and declare an end to kings of England. I'll be the Emperor of Mars if I get that far."
If you run Mars the way England is run in my time, I won't try to overthrow you. I don't object to the existence of high-sounding titles, only to what they're taken to mean."
"I think I have an advantage over anybody trying to run England in your time, given that I don't have to worry about economic scarcity of necessities and foreigners will not be able to visit unless they manage to get ahold of one of the spaceships I personally manufacture. So I should be able to do at least that well."
Would you be willing to tell people as divinely as possible that Arthur is alive and will return eventually, that leaders in his absence should be elected by and from all the citizens, and that the bishops who promulgated the Interdict are ordered to revoke it?"
The lead story is from a war correspondent describing Arthur's last battle.
'Then the king looked about him, and then was he
ware of all his host and of all his good knights
were left no more on live but two knights, that
was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir
Bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. Jesu
mercy, said the king, where are all my noble
knights becomen? Alas that ever I should see this
doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am come to
mine end. But would to God that I wist where were
that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all
this mischief.'
He picks up a pen and paper and starts scribbling.
'BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL. Whereas the king having been sore wounded by the traitor Mordred, and beyond all mortal aid taken to the Isle of Avalon, and whereas he has left no heir, it is the duty of the British people to meet together and by their votes to elect representatives from noble and commoner alike. They shall deliver into their hands the government, and continue so doing throughout the generations until Arthur should return.
BE IT FURTHER KNOWN that no just God would allow any man to refuse another's absolution, THEREFORE a general dispensation is granted that if any be unable to receive a sacrament by reason of the present Interdict or any other, his soul is at no risk because of it. But if any, being charged to provide such holy sacraments to those willing to receive them, refuses, he fails to discharge his duty.'
He shows Cam the paper.
"That ought to put their Interdict down for good. I hope you don't mind speaking for a Catholic God, but, well, I don't hold with people threatening one another with Hell."
"That's easy enough. My fifty-odd Republicans are fortified against siege in a certain cave, and we need not go to the knights of Britain if we know where they are coming to us. My information is dated from three days ago, and estimates that the army could reach them within the week. Any time in the next few days we can tell tens of thousands of knights at a stroke."
And there are less obvious roads, so we will get there safely one way or another."
"I could also just give you a set of wings, but it takes a while to learn to fly, people at point B would notice, and you're a human so you won't heal clean when they come off even if I make 'em so it doesn't hurt like I did my own. I'm leaning spaceship. I'll be basically fine if we hit a mine, but if you get hurt I can't necessarily patch you up all the way myself and if you die, boom, I go home, game over."
Hank is walking around the spaceship trying not to make it obvious that he has no idea where the door handles are supposed to be.
"I can take these wings off just as easy as the last set. My balance is kind of terrible without wings at all, though, they help a lot - even being without the tail is throwing me off. I think once you have stuff under control here I'll go someplace without so much Christian iconography and just be a dude with wings and a tail." Cam opens the door and slides into the pilot's chair. "Build my Mars colony, make humanitarian visits to aboriginal Australians."
The only currently known way of going from a sixth-century nation to an upgraded one is to secure the cooperation of me or someone from my schools and more or less do whatever they say.
If nations would like to compete over that, I won't stand in their way."
"I can imagine arithmetic telling you how to do existing things better, figuring the precise proportions of alloys for the strongest steel or things of that sort, but I can't think how a box of arithmetic could do anything you couldn't do without it. How does it work?"
They fly past the base of the ruined tower. The rest of the tower is in the form of individual stones scattered in a roughly circular pattern.
"We're almost there. Can you land around the other side of that hill to our right?"
They descend into an area surrounded by a sturdily built electric fence. Visible at the top of the hill is a Gatling gun that was the state of the art yesterday. None of the defenders are in sight.
"Well, I can produce textbooks and magically generate the infrastructure," says Cam. "Since I don't need to know all the underlying physics to conjure things up, I've concentrated on other areas of study, but I've got enough of a library to help you along. But the really cool thing is when you combine a computer with a phone-like thing. The social effects of being able to instantly talk to anybody anywhere, and send them the computer equivalent of books and - do you have movies? Silent ones, even? - and pictures and 3-D printing templates and so on are pretty special. Oh, and fiat money doesn't stop working when you turn it into a digital representation instead of a paper one, that's also big."
I'd expect we get most of the social effects of communication simply from having a telephone exchange. It's more limited than what you have, of course, but only in degree. As for currency, I haven't even dared introduce paper money yet. You and I know it can work, and so do people I've had in my schools, but I'm afraid the public at large still measures wealth by number of coins."
"...One of the benefits of going from telephone to internet is making one-to-many communication universally available. Anyone can set up a publicly accessible repository of - whatever. Writing or art or anything at all. It's also browsable - you don't know anybody in New Zealand now, but if there were a good search engine, you could find that exactly whatever thing you wanted to find happened to be produced by somebody there, and it'd be at your fingertips."
"Boss!" he shouts. "We've been wondering if your coming would precede the army's, but I think you'll be quite satisfied with our defences. Did you get my note?" He looks at Cam, sees the wings, and stares.
"Ah." Hank begins. "Cam, this is Amyas le Poulet, better known as Clarence. He's my right-hand man and has apparently done very well as de facto leader of the Republic.
Clarence, this is Cam. He's...approximately the thing to our people that we are to the rest of Britain, and is willing to cancel the battle. He's not really an angel."
"You know, of course," Clarence says, once he processes Hank's reaction, that we have no means to distinguish between methods of performing impossible tasks? What you call magic could be a device, or the converse, and we have only your word that you possess both skills."
"It doesn't make very much difference to me how you think I'm doing things as long as you understand that I can do them - and if necessary acknowledge the small number of constraints I'm operating under, whether you're assuming they're technical or magical. Should I bother describing what I can do or are you just going to be sort of irritatingly skeptical if I explain?"
Would you like to come in and meet the Republic?"
"Ho all!" Clarence shouts after barring the door behind them. "To the council-room! The Boss has come, we have an ally, and we need not fight our countrymen!"
To Cam: "How was it you were to 'cancel the battle?' "
"I'm planning to appear to the recalcitrant parties accompanied by music, dramatic cloud formations, burning magnesium, and possibly other frippery - while dressed in something other than a pair of jeans, probably, I'll work out some kind of toga arrangement perhaps - and, while looking thus angelic, produce a speech about the virtues of democracy and how very unkind it is to prevent people from receiving their sacraments whenever they should care to have same. Did your school not admit girls?"
Those present here are those over whom the Church's threat held no sway and whose families were not depending on their immediate presence."
There are. The ones that get shouted enough to be audible over the cacophony cover everything between "where did you come from," "what can you do," "is my family OK," "are you going to make yourself king," and "can I set you up with my sister."
"Whoa, whoa, I can do a lot of things, but I don't have super hearing. I heard a few of those. I came from my house, which is above a city with many names, one of which is Amblamire. I can fly, I'm indestructible, and I can conjure up arbitrary matter wherever I want to put it, and know a lot about different things that may be useful to conjure up, sort of like your Boss knows what would be useful to build but more so. The current plan does not involve me being king. Whether you can set me up with your sister depends a lot on your sister but I'm going to tentatively guess no."
Clarence speaks up. "Our first order of business is ending this Perilous Siege before it begins. The knights are two days ride away, and we can execute the plan at any time before they arrive. Cam, is there anything you need to prepare?"
"I should probably pick out my dramatic music and where to put the speakers - I'm leaning towards a specific hymn but I'm open to advice. I will need to decide on an angle of approach, and the dramatic cloud formation will be more dramatic if I choose a moment when the sky is clear. And figure out something more angelic to wear. Other than that, no, I think I'm good. You guys aren't starving or anything while besieged, are you?"
If your hymn be as alien as your clothes, it will sound otherworldly to the hearers. That can only assist.
The sky has been clear these last few days, but neither scientist nor magician can promise that the clouds do not return. For clothes, a white robe and a halo?"
Hank interrupts, "Why not just support the halo with a transparent hat? You'll be some distance above the audience, with the light in their eyes. No reason to let them get a good look."
It is a professionally recorded 500-person choir of highly trained vocalists accompanied by a full orchestra singing in Latin a song composed in 2058, in eight-part harmony.
Hank, at least, has heard real music before. "I think that's a hit."
"Loosely, minding that I'm not a professional translator - glory, glory be to God who shall save each and every one, who forbids that any soul shall perish for ever, universal salvation, universal salvation, glory, glory and then on like that in various combinations and the bridge has a bit about Jesus and what a swell fair-minded guy he was. And then the end is just alleluias."
We just fly low along that until somewhere you like the angle, and they'll come to us."
He gets up and turns toward the exit.
One of the fifty-two interjects, "If it please you sirs, take a position as easterly as might be. The less distance our adversaries travel before hearing your apparition, the sooner the siege is prevented."
"If you give me blueprints I can make things over very large scales - the problem is when there's already stuff in the way. I can make stuff in such a way that it shoves preexisting matter out of the space, such as railroad spikes, but if I don't know what's in the way of each railroad spike I can't do it especially intelligently, and even if I do do it advised of the conditions on the ground you still occasionally run into problems more or less analogous to tree roots destroying sidewalks, just faster. So you'd want to have somebody picking out paths for me that were made of dirt, not rock, and unobstructed by too many plants. It might actually be easier to do the entire thing on a raised monorail; then you'd only need to pick places for stops and columns. If you're willing for it to take a little longer I can make some robots that do tunneling and give you a subway network - or you could summon an angel or three to do the tunnels, but since there's time travel involved and we don't yet know whether I can be dismissed in the first place, let alone resummoned, probably you want to save that for something a little more keenly urgent that can't be solved with robots. Phone system I'd be inclined to do with satellites. It'll scale better to extension to other countries and the phones'll be portable."
When you say 'satellites,' what sort did you have in mind? Expanding the telephone network would require more exchanges than just Central, but somehow I don't think you meant that."
"Satellites are small objects that orbit the Earth, sort of like the moon does, but much closer. Remember how phones work wirelessly? The satellite bounces the signal from the one phone to as many intermediate satellites are necessary and then to the receiving phone. You'd probably better let me design that one myself."
"Mars is big enough to hold atmo if I give it some extra magnetics and a few other things. Thin atmo, and very chilly in places, but not worse than being up a mountain once I'm done, and it can be cozy as anything indoors with some pressurization and heating. Plan sounds good to me."
"Deeper voice sounds like this," says Cam, on sulfur hexafluoride. "It will be sort of uncomfortable to keep up if I'm doing questions-and-answers afterwards." He produces a toga sort of thing, which attaches behind his neck on a golden chain, drapes over his chest, and leaves his wings undisturbed where it loops around his waist. He takes the jeans off from under it, and then tosses them and flicks a bit of plasma at them to set them on fire.
"You're certainly under no obligation to stay if it does get uncomfortable. You can 'return to the heavens' at any time. Maybe appear copies of the scroll next to some of them? I don't think I've ever seen quite that material before, so it'll seem nice and otherworldly to fit with the rest of the apparition."
"This is just - well, I'd just call it paper but I suppose paper composition has changed with everything else." (The sulfur hexafluoride voice is gone for now.) "Are there going to be enough of them that I should relay my voice to the speakers that are going to do Universalis during my descent? To be heard?"
"Where are you going to be? Oh, also, do you need this road unobstructed for anything, I'm considering appearing a marble pillar to land on."
We'll want to hide the vehicle, too, unless you planned to claim that it's an angelic chariot.
This road is currently the established way of crossing this part of England. Can you make an arch across it instead?"
It occurs to me that, being knights, they'll be theoretically identifiable by sight. If you leave me one of those telephones that can receive images and a copy of the registry of granted coats of arms, I can find you the names of people whose pictures you send me. They'd never expect an angel to do something as mundane as read their labels."
The registry only contains hereditary insignias that have been granted by some king or other. Those will be the most prominently displayed insignias anyway. Anyone with a banner is a safe bet. Just give me enough advance warning to look them up."
"It can be pretty small and pretty hidden. And hard to get to, I'll make a nice tall arch - hmm, I could put a layer of mirror and put the camera behind that, the effect could be nifty. I'll try to avoid having to address anyone by name but it will make a nice fallback."
What do you think about a multilingual inscription? I don't think it would help with the act at all; I just have an entertaining mental image of future British explorers hearing unknown languages only to find that their homeland already has a mutually intelligible monument."
Maybe something like a statement of human rights instead? People may still disagree, but at least there's no external source to contradict it."
Cam makes an arch of seamless marble with a mirror on its front-relative-to-forthcoming-army surface to hide a tiny compartment behind a one-way section which contains a tiny video camera. He adds a mic pickup to one of the hidden speakers which will cancel out the rendition of Universalis so Hank can hear whatever's going on besides that from his phone. He drops off Hank in his hiding place with the spaceship, the heraldry reference, and a phone that is set up to receive streaming video and audio and project Hank's voice to an earbud tucked discreetly in Cam's right ear.
And then, carrying his scroll with the remote control in he climbs up high into the sky, getting a feel for his new wings. They're a little heavier, and smaller twitches adjust his flight path because of the feathers, but he can still fly and will be able to gracefully control his descent.
He circles, waiting for the army to approach the site of his speakers and his arch.
When they reach the site, the knights don't react at all. Very few of them ride cross-country often, and Cam's marble arch doesn't look completely out of place for an old Roman road. For all they know it was there for the last hundred years. Anyone who's going to be directly blocked shifts sideways, and everyone else treats this the same as any other stretch of road.
On go the speakers. He makes sure his halo is sparking, and he dives, dispensing with the magnesium but not the halo when he gets close.
His feet touch the arch as the first chorus is concluding, and he unscrolls his scroll, flicking the remote as he does. The chorus stops and he regards the knights severely, wings spread to full span.
He pauses for a moment to make sure that they are all paying attention.
From their point of view, the first thing they see is a bright light coming from somewhere (or possibly everywhere) below the spontaneously appearing clouds. If there was any doubt about the fact that the winged figure is an angel (there wasn't), it's settled as soon as the light silhouetting him fades and they can see his superhumanly beautiful face. Forget the halo, he has all his teeth and no pockmarks from any of the recent plagues. And also a halo.
And they're simultaneously hearing an orchestra where they're used to plainchants. The overall effect is completely unfair.
Hank hears what sounds like the sudden cessation of twenty-five thousand coconuts being knocked together as the entire army stops and stares. He grins; in his mind 'staring in awe' is the nobility's natural state. Then he starts looking up the insignia on one of the front and center banners.
"BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL. Whereas the King having been sore wounded by the traitor Mordred, and beyond all mortal aid taken to the Isle of Avalon, and whereas he has left no heir, it is the duty of the British people to meet together and by their votes to elect representatives from noble and commoner alike. They shall deliver into their hands the government, and continue so doing throughout the generations until Arthur should return.
BE IT FURTHER KNOWN that no just God would allow any man to refuse another's absolution, THEREFORE a general dispensation is granted that if any be unable to receive a sacrament by reason of the present Interdict or any other, his soul is at no risk because of it. But if any, being charged to provide such holy sacraments to those willing to receive them, refuses, he fails to discharge his duty."
The army is convinced in short order that they want the message to be true, and from there it's a short step to believing in it.
While the knights come to a consensus, Cam hears Hank's voice saying, "That fellow front and center, with the oblique slash across a red and white shield? That's Sir Geoffrey of Canterbury, use the name if you've a mind to. And the knight with the tree on his shield is named Wilfred."
Eventually one of the armored figures near the front collects the nerve to address Cam directly. He squeaks out "How long will it be until the king returns?" and then starts cowering.
Now that he's known to be answering questions instead of smiting the asker for impertinence, there are twenty-five thousand people who want to take advantage of his omniscience. Since Cam's speakers weren't made with microphones, he can only hear the closest people.
"Can the Church then be wrong?" "How will anyone believe us?" "Who ought we to vote for?" "When you get back to Heaven, tell Westley he still owes me money!" "What would you have us do now?"
It is probably a safe guess that any remotely plausible response is being shouted by somebody.
(He is rather pleased with himself, but still doing his best to look severe.)
"The first to pose a question may pose more, provided his fellows are calm enough to listen."
After a few moments' silence, one realizes there isn't much point in their previous divinely appointed mission anymore, and asks "Where shall we go now? Is there some great deed we can accomplish, or quest we can achieve?" The ones with their helmets off look briefly hopeful at the word 'quest.' Briefly.
One knight toward the front gets as far as "So, can you tell Westley—" before the man next to him shuts him up and speaks over him. "My lord, we will discharge the obligation with the utmost duty and respect. In a fortnight all of England shall know of your decree."
He can stay in the air for a long time. He can get tired, but only so tired, and it's just not tired enough to make his wings seriously contemplate collapse. So he circles, hidden, waiting to give the knights time to disperse. He makes a walkie-talkie for Hank and one matching for himself. "Hey, lemme know when I'm not going to be spotted instantly if I land near you. What'd you think of the show?"
"That was perfect! I've spent years as a charlatan and a politician—if you'll pardon the redundancy—and that's the best lie I've ever seen work. Couldn't see the fireworks with the camera facing forward, but the voice was excellent. I almost believed the angelic messenger story myself!
You could probably come down now; everyone is facing the other way after all. Safer to give it a few minutes, though, depending on how long you can fly."
"I can fly as long as I want. I don't get very tired. I'm glad nobody asked for my name. The most plausible non-lie I could've come up with would have been my middle name, and 'Mark' isn't really very angelic. I suppose I could have said 'Campbell' and hoped all the many thousands of them managed to hear something more like 'Camiel'. I could've said 'Revelation' but that is not supposed to be anybody's name and involves a few more creatures with too many faces than I wanted to evoke, in the biblical origin."
"I think the angel wings are probably a good compromise between going wingless and looking demonic. If I wind up teaching a lot of people how to summon, it'll come out what I am anyway just based on the kind of magic I use, but I'll keep these for the time being, not like I have a swimming pool to get waterlogged in here. The halo and the voice are too much hassle for everyday though."
Speaking of which, the knights are gone far enough that the camera can't see anyone. It should be safe to come down."
"We'll just have to try to make it as short a time as possible until we're not depending on today's message. Once the Republic is up and running and obviously enough of an improvement that going back is unthinkable, it won't really matter if people guess that the angel was a fake."
"If I go as far away as Mars you will not be able to get ahold of me in a hurry except by dismissal and resummoning, which we don't currently know to work normally even on top of the time travel. But I could go see how my Chinese stacks up against what's currently being spoken and make some friends there, leave you the phone and make another and a slew of satellite relays, and be out of the way of anybody likely to draw conclusions about the angelic messenger if they get a good look at me. Since you've already got some progress underway here."
"Yeah, sure. I'll hole up with your teenage boy contingent for a bit, you can draw up some plans for where you want a monorail to go, and I can overfly the island putting it all in place before I go into space and make satellites and touch down in China. Or maybe someplace that speaks Arabic. Arabic has probably been held to some consistency because of hangups about translating the Koran."
Shall we go tell the contingent they aren't going to be besieged after all?
Maps and surveying were an early project of mine, so we should be able to have the plans done in days if we reuse blueprints as much as we can. Clearing the space may take longer, if you need us to have that done."
"I have been a curious sort of individual, dwelling in Hell, taking summons routinely, for a hundred fifty years. I've never heard of anybody time traveling when summoned. I don't know why it happened this occasion. I don't know if it'll behave like summons normally do only with added time travel; I don't know if it'll interact with you having also time traveled, such that I go home and find that it's your original time, or this calendar year, or a version of my usual time in which all the things we have been up to are recorded history, or what. So, yes, I'd say there's a risk that you can send me home but not get me back, especially because I didn't actually exist yet during this time or yours in my own timeline - but I don't know how big the risk is."
"Sounds good." Cam takes off and heads back the way they came. "There are good economic reasons not to counterfeit currency, at least in large amounts, but that sort of problem doesn't apply as much to things with direct uses of their own, so if you run short of economic wherewithal I can conjure anything commonly bartered. Although if you have me doing livestock it's going to be excruciatingly stupid livestock; demons are terrible at minds."
We could create more money for this—I suppose I arguably still have the power to authorize that—but that might make it a Crown project, and under the circumstances I'd rather have the new lines be unambiguously privately owned.
Are there limits to how far away you can create things? If we use that to send messages, it could save valuable time on the recruitment."
"There are hard limits on range but they're astronomical in scale - I could make a star without diving into it or having to move around to get at various angles. But to make something in a specific place relative to other stuff, I need to be operating off plans that refer in detail to the other stuff, or directly sensing the other stuff myself. So I can't just appear a letter on the kitchen table of every house in the country."
There are probably ways to accomplish this. Send copies of the newspaper with an advertisement in it down by parachute, perhaps?"
"The backup plan is to use the existing telephones and railroads to get as much of a head start as possible, then send messengers from there. It'll work, but there's little real chance of completing the project before the news that there's going to be a nationwide election spreads the sixth-century way."
"I tend to assume that society progressed enough that most anyone from my century would be the best and brightest here. The things I know how to do are probably the most dramatic, but a teacher or a lawyer would be no less the best this Britain had ever seen. Either of them could work the same scale changes, if slower."
I won't say everyone would certainly have succeeded, but if they had the same quality of luck as I did I think most men of 1895 would have had a fair chance at changing this world. Is that not true of your century?"
"I don't think most people want to change the world that much. Given motivation levels like yours or mine, probably, you could do a lot with nothing more than germ theory and high school math. Although, I think a fair number of them would probably have gotten smallpox or something, and died before they could do anything. In 1895 have you got rid of smallpox yet? I know that happens before daeva are public knowledge but not exactly when."
"Vaccines had been around for almost a century when I left, but the disease wasn't eradicated yet. That was easier here, with smaller and more command-able populations. I was immune when I came here, but I suppose if you don't have it at all then nobody would bother with the immunity."
Reconstructing the ability to create vaccines is—hopefully—even more important than having them. How long would you estimate that would take, with twenty-third century texts?"
This is why I mostly do infrastructure and social reform. Much more interesting."
"If I'd, what, been summoned by accident by a crawling baby who couldn't possibly dismiss me or contribute to any plans until later? I'd probably start by going around without wings on for a while, eavesdropping, making sure my language skills sufficed, connecting my extremely limited knowledge of history with what was going on, doing Good Samaritan type stuff when I came across obvious opportunities. Based on what you've told me about the culture and its intense dependence on religion I might have appeared to the Pope before I did anything very large-scale. Although I am not at all sure I would get along with a Pope under ordinary circumstances, I might get along with a Pope who thought I was a divine messenger."
He doesn't usually have much to do with Britain in particular, but is definitely the person to talk to if you want to be emperor of the known world."
Hank looks distasteful at this last part, but only because of his innate dislike of monarchs.
"It would be marginally all right for the church to increase in legitimacy if it also increased in, like, decency, by a lot and very fast. I probably cannot encourage mass atheism on any reasonable time frame, and I'd be losing a lot of useful person-coordination power that I could co-opt instead, if I could and did."
I never had the option to work with the Church even if I could grit my teeth hard enough, since I claimed to be a magician from day one. But in your position convincing the Pope to tell the priests to tell everybody things might actually be the most effective thing to do."
"Well, for the Catholic population. If I hadn't landed near you I might not have started work anywhere near Europe. I can't get any free languages without being resummoned by people who speak them, but a combination of fancy software and what I landed with would let me set up in other places, possibly more comfortably."
"This would also require the eavesdropping for a while thing. I think China might do a mandate of heaven thing? I'm not sure who is supposed to communicate about said mandate, though. Likely nothing as easily imitable as an angel. So I might've started in Europe after all, or I'd see what was going on in the Muslim world - I think Islam is currently pretty new, and they do angels?"
"No, see, remember I don't like lying to people? I'd rather appropriate a preexisting network of falsehoods with a few well-targeted misleading appearances than start Islam. If I decide to start something I will go somewhere without a history of copious monotheism, show off some magic, and start making pronouncements without much in the way of surrounding theology."
Oh, and about the lying. If anyone asks if you're an angel and they don't accept evasion, 'angel' just means 'messenger,' you absolutely do have a message, and the answer is yes."
They approach line of sight of the cave. This time there is someone visible on the outside, at the Gatling platform on top of the hill. When he sees the machine, the figure turns and disappears down into the inside.
"And the 'messenger' business is pure semantics. I've met members of the actual species of daeva that in English is referred to as 'angels'. I am not one of those. It'd be like calling myself a swan because that's my last name. I am, in a perfectly legitimate sense, a Swan; if I utter that sentence to someone without explaining I am clearly screwing with them."
I mistook you for someone like that because you avoid lying to people but demonstrably don't mind screwing with them."
Hank exits the contraption and walks toward the door. It opens, and suddenly they're surrounded by a contingent of teenage boys eager for news.
He just states, "We won." Cheers occur.
Clarence steps forward. "I've already contacted our printing office in Mercia, with the story written as if it went according to plan. As soon as word reaches them, they'll ensure it reaches everyone else. Unless I tell them it didn't go according to plan?"
"I landed on a marble arch, I put a mirror on the arch to hide some electronics, I," sulfur hexafluoride! "talked like this the entire time, and I took a few questions you can't have anticipated ahead of time. Don't bother getting me a copy; I can make my own when the editing's done."
"Can you make a copy of the geographical survey we completed in 534?" Hank asks Cam. For the others, he clarifies "We'll need railway and telephone lines covering Britain, and this is to find lines within a reasonable distance of everywhere while also being relatively easy to clear."
Hank briefly starts trying to plot courses, but is replaced in seconds by people who are from the relevant areas and can find locations as well as he can or better.
"That part may go more quickly than I thought.
If you make the best transportation system you can, we'd have no idea how to keep it running. Is there anything we can adopt into one of our designs and have it make sense?"
"Uh - maybe. It's been a while since I studied the minutiae of monorails. I could just do a regular train platform up on columns, if that'd be easier? Then you can put normal train cars on it, swap them out as your infrastructure catches up. Monorail was mostly just for the cool factor."
What happens if you use the same method to get rid of every other obstruction? Could this theoretically be done in minutes or seconds?"
"Dry ice could hurt somebody if they touch it, will people not touch it? And it depends on the obsctruction. It'd take me a good while to tunnel through a mountain or something with ice - the matter still all exists, if I move it around in the wrong way it'll collapse into a new stable configuration and if I just use ice pockets to weaken it for conventional tunneling to go more smoothly the conventional tunneling still has to happen. A vertical hole in the ground to put a column in is pretty trivial by comparison even if I do a million of 'em. Getting a tree out of the way is worse - I can ice one to smithereens but then I have tree smithereens, not exactly ideal foundational substrate. And my usual limitations on interacting with matter when I'm not looking right at it apply, of course."
We're already selecting routes that are as flat as possible. No mountains or anything, but probably some trees. Having a tree where a hole is supposed to be seems like a necessary consequence of doing a million of 'em; does that mean we can't just hand you a map of places for ice columns?
The best-case scenario that I was thinking of was an ice replica of the entire thing, following the blueprints, columns and all, so that anything in the way gets smithereensed by some magic material that disappears right away, and then putting the real thing in the open space. But I can see how that wouldn't work if the smithereens themselves are a problem."
If I try to make the entire thing out of ice it won't work where there's solid stuff in the way. My options when there's stuff in the way are grow the new thing from a single point, shoving the original out of the space in the process and cracking it into a few pieces if it's fragile; or destroying the original thing by growing something in many locations all at once till it comes apart." He makes two blocks of wood. One splits in half in his hand as he grows an ice cube in the middle; the other crumbles to damp sawdust as it fills with tiny ice crystals. "Like so. I have to be doing one or the other, there isn't a magical default option if I try to just plain add ice to an area and there happens to be a tree present."
"I'd be very surprised if there's an acid that's safe at the kind of quantity we'd need. If not, we can clear trees and tree-equivalents the normal way. Would you be able to mark the route with paint or something similar once we have the map ready? The clearance will go faster if we can tell the workers 'remove anything between the yellow lines,' and we'd hardly need to worry about the structural integrity of paint."
Most of the article is a direct retelling of how "the eyes of a host of good knights beheld the descent of an Angel from the clouds even as their ears were filled with a divine accompaniment like unto no music heretofore heard upon earth." It depicts the knights as much less terrified than they were, but accurately records what Cam said.
Quotations, mostly recounting predictable things like the witnesses' shock at the message and the impossibility of disbelieving it, are attributed to people like Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Draft. Presumably names will be manually inserted once they've gotten people to say the quotations.
It ends by saying "We at the Hosannah have taken the liberty of re-activating our machinery and electric lightings, and suggest that our readers may now do likewise. We trust the prohibitions will be rescinded as soon as the Church hears of the events here described."
"Pair me with a teenage boy, I will teach him how a cellphone works and get his help writing an accessible-to-a-layperson set of instructions set up with some combination of pictograms and recorded voice instructions on the phone, I will airdrop a crate full of phones with satellite service into the middle of every town? I may have to customize some voting software but I know how to program and most of the features seem like they'd be pretty straightforward to import."
"Well, I don't mean having everyone make a voice call in, that would require a lot of staffing. I mean I'll hack together a little polling program so people can submit their candidacy if they want to run and then select from the available choices. Box full of ludicrous amounts of math, you see."
Um, even if that would work I doubt anyone would trust it. A lot of people further from proper civilization aren't even going to trust the newspapers at first.
It'd be far too easy for anyone to say the glowing boxes must be wrong because they and all their friends voted for the loser. If we have officials literally count ballots, they can testify to the result or even save the ballots as proof.
Maybe we can vote by math in future elections, once everyone is used to it never being wrong."
"Okay, you have a point, the glowing boxes full of math are probably not going to be obviously trustworthy. I think you might need to figure out how people are going to submit their candidacy before you decide how to hold the election, in that case. Are you planning to run yourself?"
For candidacy, we might just require people to tell us in person. At least for the offices that don't have merely local constituencies. I don't like throwing that in their way, but anyone who can't make it to declare their candidacy isn't going to have much support across the country anyway."
The hard part is arranging for everyone to get a phone. If they fall from the sky, that almost certainly does not happen. Even if we send agents through every town handing them out, many people wouldn't bother taking one."
"I can't put them inside everybody's house unless you know in considerable detail where everybody's house is. Will people take them if you advertise that they also play pretty music? Is it a problem if they play pretty music after my stunt with Universalis or will it be fine as long as the music library is of unrelated genres?"
"I mean, if you going to wind up filtering out a subset of the population no matter how you try to get them to vote, 'unwilling to interact with a phone' seems like a reasonable enough ruling-out criterion to me, considering how much technology the place will be crawling with and how fast. What offices can people run for? What are their term lengths, are there term limits, can a single person hold multiple offices, how is the balance of powers handled, is there a constitution or are the elected representatives going to have to draw one up or do without? 'Democracy' is not a monolith."
And probably nobody will call me on the fact that I don't actually have authority to say what offices there are."
"It's standard practice not to let demons, in particular, say anything but 'yes summoner' and 'no summoner', in response to summoner-proposed deals, lest demon-proposed deals involving charming features like summoner loss of soul be made to sound tempting. I cannot actually take human souls, it's just a rumor."
Because if we want to fix the ambiguity, we could easily make up English names for the types of daeva and and tell those to any new summoners. We could even put it in the dictionary. Whatever it takes to avoid having people introduce themselves as angels and demons."
"That's an interesting idea, actually, deliberate loanwords. The demons are still going to show up with the bat wings, of course, and the angels with the bird wings and the fairies with the bug wings - plus whatever else any of the above have decided to do to themselves for cosmetic fun and games. But yeah, I don't see any other reason that shouldn't work. 'Daeva' is a pretty neutral term and we can loanword in terms for the three species no problem."
This probably isn't urgent, since for the near future anyone who learns about summoning should be carefully vetted first, but it's good to have a plan. Anything in particular you'd want to be called?"
"We could go with 'maker' and 'changer' and 'mover'. I mentioned a demonic word for demons earlier but the problem with that is the demonic languages have kind of loaded words for angels, some of them nearly as bad for fairies, and I'm actually not sure how much of that would come through in an engineered loanword setup."
"Fairies get along fine with angels and demons both, it's just angels and - sorry, movers get along fine with makers and changers, but makers and changers as groups do not like one another. And everybody gets along fine with Limboites - maybe those should have a new name too."
"Normally I might object, but since as far as I know no time-travelers have ever shown up in Limbo, I can't guarantee that people from here would even be warned about a real future event - maybe this alternate universe has a different setup. I do feel I should inform you that the only dead humans in Limbo are the ones who never summoned any daeva. Summon even one even once, and then instead of becoming a Limboite you become some kind of daeva yourself. So that's what you're looking at unless the rules differ here."
If the concept of Limbo had been invented yet it wouldn't be so bad, but as it is even most of the non-Catholics would refuse to hear you out."
"Oh, I thought you meant it was a big deal for you. Everybody else would probably run around like chickens with their heads cut off, sure, I buy it. Anyway I genuinely have no special insight into what happens to people from this universe with its time travel shenanigans and no history of daeva summoning. Or your original world, since it seems reasonably likely that you're from either earlier in the timeline of my world - I don't think I'd have noticed any effects from your vanishment - or a third universe, as opposed to one that managed to proceed forward from what we got up to today here. Maybe one or more of these places actually has one or more deities."
I very much hope we're in a third universe. If not it means we fail, since one or the other of us would have known if history got a head start."
"I mean, we can't really affect it in any obvious way, so no, but it's interesting to speculate about, and please proceed only after reading a lot of science fiction if you find any way to time travel on purpose. At some point we'll probably want to experiment with sending me home and getting me back, which will give us another couple data points."
"I'm not so sure. I know extensionally what I can and cannot make, but nobody knows why those things and not only things for which I have more information or why not things for which I have less information; I don't know that this set of things can't follow me around the same way my memories can."
Would you be willing to try equivalent things from my world?
Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' came out last year, and Well's 'Island of Doctor Moreau' was due to be released in '96. The only difference being whether they have in fact ever existed."
"Not necessarily. Any books that were published in your world may just be part of my history in such a way that I can get at them. The real test would probably be if I were anticipating a release date - so, in four months, I'll see if I can get a copy of Amn nin Ioan."
I don't know if this would work, but is there some old book that describes summoning well enough that it wouldn't exist if it were false, and if so can you try to create a version published in my world? Because if that works, and there are daeva there, that seems like a good thing to know."
"There were economic incentives involved... And demons are somewhat less useful when there's less technology around to tell us to make, angels likewise, fairies can't do much large-scale stuff that people can't do themselves until you know how to keep atmosphere inside a vehicle... And I'm not sure what you mean."
Then if you successfully make my world's edition of that thing, it means it does exist and therefore we have daeva."
"Since I've never previously wandered around between worlds that may be as disconnected as ours could be and experimented with this, I don't know if I can aim for Summoning and Binding and have it only appear if it exists in your world instead of getting a false positive from mine."
Might be testable, though. If we produce an edition of a book from your world here, then you can see if you can aim for a particular world's version.
If so, we check whether you can reliably distinguish books we've printed here from ones we haven't or if the false positives from your world get in the way."
One of the people who had been working on plotting the course of the railroad brings over a conveniently timed completed section. "This ought to take the rails north through Ystrad Clud, as far as the maps went."
"There's years before I want to be home. We might or might not find it expedient to see if I can go home before then, because if I can't that puts some constraints on the wisdom of summoning any additional daeva -" Cam takes the map. "Okay. How does blue circles where I want holes dug for columns, yellow lines below where I need any encroaching tall trees cleared for the raised tracks but short things can stay, and red rectangles around the stations that need to be clear but not dug out at ground level, sound?"
Hank asks him, "Ask for volunteers, would you, for recruiting the labor? It'll be dangerous, both because they'll be carrying rather a lot of money and because nobody out that way will have heard about the angel yet. Tell them I'll pay sixty cents to anyone who takes the job."
The money is for hiring people; we're hardly going to clear the area with just us. A half of a cent for a day's work ought to draw plenty of people. Hm, and we may need to pay the nobility to let us hire their serfs.
There shouldn't be a reason not to fly if you use a pillar of cloud when going up and down. Telescopes exist but nobody will be looking. Is the aerial view going to help?"
"I can carry a few dollars on my flight, descend in columns of cloud to box them. Up to you if it's worth it. There might also be some things I could outfit people with that are less lethal and/or scarier than guns. Tasers aren't fun but they're usually nonlethal, for instance. Flashbang's probably more alarming and even less injurious."
"It makes a loud noise and a bright light. It's disorienting but shouldn't blind or deafen anyone permanently. Here is a flashbang to try somewhere - not in anybody's face, please, and read the instructions, they can start fires - and an instruction manual. Feel free to claim to have invented it."
Cam goes out, conjures up a nice big column of cloud, and takes off. It takes several hours to traverse the entire route, after which time he comes back.
Clarence sees Cam first. "We've received some news from the nearer Mercian townships. Apparently you were a very convincing angel. Nearly everyone who heard believed the knights. The Church has yet to respond, but it would be strange for them to contradict something everyone agrees on."
"Eep! Oh good, it's you." He takes his hand off his revolver. "Did anyone ever tell you your wings sound like a terrifyingly large flying beast?"
Word of the angel stunt is spreading fast. The knights talked to the priest in the first town the ran into, and nobody wants to tell tens of thousands of well-respected and better-armed knights that they've been taken in. So the papers spun that as an endorsement by the Church. Now anyone who's used to trusting news from a wire is reactivating their own electrics."
And we can always use more infrastructure if you're up for that.
Or maybe we could permanently win the war with the Angles and Saxons and Picts and so on if you can supply a way to do that without killing many of them.
We aren't going to run out of things to do, but none are especially urgent."
"It's a sort of halfhearted attempt to take territory from each other. Battles as such are rare, people just avoid going anywhere already occupied unless they think they have enough force to back it up. Fights happen when they're wrong, when they're right territory changes hands. Been going on as long as anyone can remember. Ah, and I strongly recommend not letting slip to anyone that we know this country as 'England.'"
Cam snorts. "Good to know. Is 'Britain' safe? I can sail in and trivially win battles, and I'm willing to do that against aggressors who don't have time-travelers and makers supporting their populations' quality of life, but I'd want to be assured of the twenty-second-century-standards humane treatment of anybody I'm going to drug until they fall over."
I don't know twenty-second-century standards. I can promise no torture, but prisoners would be being not tortured in a sixth-century cell. I should hope that fails. Chained to the wall, bread and water, virtually no light, imprisonment permanent unless ransomed. That sort of thing.
But I don't think taking any reasonable quantity of prisoners would win the war by itself anyway, just gain some territory."
There...aren't a lot of procedures for ending wars here. If we could locate and capture their kings, we might get them to recognize some borders for at least a few years. Do you know anything that can do that?"
A gigantic wall would also set borders, but wouldn't be worth it even if it wouldn't have the same foundation problem."
More practically, I hope to have Britain be the one expanding. Not the typical, bloody way of course, but the wall would be a pointless inconvenience if it doesn't match the borders."
If we publicize that anyone at our border who doesn't want to owe fealty to a king can join the republic, a notable minority might take us up on it. It snowballs from there, of course."
Once hostilities are ended, nobles with too much time on their hands will travel through simply to see what's there. Eventually some of them will decide they'd rather join. We could even use bribery.
It'll be easier now, because they're under the thumb of the same Church. If the Church confirms and spreads the Republic proclamation, the Anglo-Saxons join us. The Picts might follow them, and the Gaels trust the Picts."
And we might even get other sides to agree that any people group or area of land that wants to join can. We'd be in a much better bargaining position, after all."
What if we just walk into a throne room while the king is holding court? Everyone would see our faces and the fact that they inexplicably can't stop us, but we would be able to leave with a royal bargaining chip."
"I could do this while wearing a mask," Cam says. "You're squishier... But I'd be hard pressed to do the job without visible magic. I don't think I can so much as hit people with tranquilizer darts without appearing the guns pre-aimed, I am not a marksman. I can knock out everyone I meet, though."
"Me or you in the armor? The problem with that is that without a set of wings I'm likely to fall over more than once on the way in. Being a maker doesn't do a thing for being clumsy. Does that ruin the effect? I could pose as your clumsy squire or something, I suppose."
If I'm in the armor do you think you could manage a disguise as someone who belongs there? You only need to get in the room, but you won't have seen their styles of speech or dress before."
You'll probably stand out for one reason or another, but if there's a sufficiently ominous figure in black armor nobody will remember someone looking slightly out of place."
If we fail, it'd be because whichever king we target happens to not be at his palace that day. I can't think of a way to get around that, but the only risk is of walking in, looking somewhat silly, and turning around."
Do makers sleep? I can find you a room if you want one."
....Come to think of it, a fortress stocked for a siege probably isn't the best time to demonstrate our food."
Hank comments "Didn't know we had so many cooks here.
You should throw in a potato with the rest. See what they make of it."
All that: appears. It is a magnificent feast.
All this is not remotely similar to a typical medieval breakfast, but nobody's going to quibble about that.
During the feast, Hank and his lieutenants have worked out who's going where to explain elections. It's mostly determined by whose family lives close to what area.
"We can probably delay starting the race for the top job until after we've got a representative from each town in our Congress. We could hold those elections now if we had to.
Regardless, our current difficulties are what do we want in our Constitution and how do we go about getting people to accept it."
"You're going to want to make sure the wording is exquisitely clear and have a really straightforward - if not easy - amendment process. People spent preposterous amounts of time wondering about what the US Constitution meant; I'm not sure how much of that was going on around when you were there but it seemed to keep getting worse when I was. But once you have a constitution, how about just presenting as a fait accompli that being elected to Congress involves swearing to uphold it? Pretend Arthur helped, if necessary."
Can you create a copy of the U.S. one in simpler terms? Editing that sounds easier than trying to write one from scratch; I was never a politician back in the States."
To everyone else: "The United States is a place we both come from; it's a republic that works tolerably well."
"The making process doesn't accept 'simplify' as a format transformation, but here's a copy of it as of 2159 with lots of space between lines for markup," says Cam, handing it over. "This time let's start with no property ownership requirement for voting. Also, ignore the bit about prohibiting alcohol, it goes really badly and gets overturned later on."
Hank tries to restore the credibility of the United States. "Don't worry about that; the rest of it is full of good stuff like 'no killing people without trials' and 'you can insult politicians if you want.' And—ooh, women got the vote. Good for them."
Later on in the constitution are exciting things like an acknowledgment that the internet is a utility access to which shall not be infringed, an amendment lowering the voting age to 15, and one stating that the right to marry shall not be restricted on the basis of sex, gender, or quantity.
"Obviously some things were going on that didn't involve constitutional amendments. But the legal code would take up a lot of space in paper form."
"Um. Anyway, most of the differences between state and national governments wouldn't need to apply here. All the old stuff about slavery can definitely go.
The government's structure seems kind of arbitrary, but I don't exactly have any quarrels with it."
He passes the document around the table. "Anything that doesn't make sense when you read it twice we can edit."
"What if I go ahead and appear to the Pope? Without including it to begin with I can't imagine it'll be much easier to get it done here than it was the first time around, and that was a long and unhappy struggle. Or - well, no, how much of the problem is the religious monopoly on marriages? There's baggage in the culture I'm familiar with on settling for civil union but that probably shouldn't be a consideration here."
All marriages here are religious. Most have nothing whatever to do with the government though. Come to think of it, that Establishment Clause is going to be a hard thing to get passed but if we can solve that it might also get you what you want."
"All right, that sounds like a usable angle, then. Although someone savvy might point out that it would be very hard to make a religion practiced by exactly one member of I'm presuming its laity the state religion. Wouldn't be worth the paper it was prescribed on. Do you guys want more copies of that?" Cam adds to the teenage boy contingent.
"I'm not quite the only one anymore, but it's a valid point.
Perhaps I could try my hand at spreading nasty rumors against myself. If people hear that I'm considering it, then the Church would be demanding such a clause. It's worth a bit of reputation to get this passed."
We're seven or eight hundred years before the Magna Carta. If the entirety of our Bill of Rights were 'people are people too,' it would be the greatest advance in history. The limit is that I might not have the political capital to convince people of every provision in there."
"Oh, by the way, overnight I made you some scary black armor, check it out, it's on a stand over there."
The armor is scary and black, although Cam refrained from making it spiky (it's sleek instead). While it will be possible to put on and take off, it doesn't look like it would have been possible to forge, and the joints have several layers of tiny-ringed chainmail that would be excruciating to put together by hand.
None of the people groups the Britons are fighting at the moment have a single unified king. The Britons don't either, normally; Arthur was unusual. But if we aim for the most powerful from each set of allies, the rest should follow suit."
'There' is...let's say Wessex. It's not the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but it's the border where most of the fighting has been recently. Their capital is at Cerdicesford southeast of here, so we'll have a decent chance at finding the king there."
The armor is fantastically light, compared to regular armor on the occasions when Hank hasn't been able to avoid wearing some. He gives Cam a thumbs up and starts walking toward the fort. Then he remembers he's supposed to be ominous and starts marching toward the fort.
Slinking is a pretty good idea, from the point of view of not obviously being there together. Hank is being extremely obvious about his presence, after all. When they reach the front door, he dramatically raises a mailed fist and slams it into the wood three times. It opens.
Hank ignores them, and walks forward toward the throne without saying a word.
The armored knights draw their swords, and Hank continues walking toward them and the king. Just before he reaches easy sword range, he stops and raises a hand toward them.
The spectators stop edging toward the walls and start running. The king instead grabs a sword from a side of the throne that can't be seen from the door and swings it at Hank. His target is confident in the strength of titanium, and raises his left forearm to block it. And resumes walking toward the king.
"Pulse is working. A bit slow, but then he is asleep.
If he can stay asleep indefinitely, then we may as well take the trip around England now. We've got space for unconscious passengers. Next to the...can you incinerate the wings?"
"Yeah. I shouldn't keep him unconscious for more than five or six hours, ideally." Cam nudges the wings out of the ship and sets them on fire. He continues to make them be more on fire until they are unrecognizable. "The other guys got much smaller doses so even if they are allergic they should be okay after having hives for a while."
"I mean - yes, in a general sense, this jobbie can go around the world in that period of time if I open it up and don't accommodate your human need for moderate acceleration, but if we run into any unforeseen problems, they may hold us up for unforeseen amounts of time, and if you have any trouble finding exactly where you want to land, similar issue."
For that matter, we could imprison this fellow at Camelot proper. Seems like the kingly place to be held for ransom."
As they approach Camelot, they'll see that the surrounding city is much more alive than it was when Hank accidentally summoned Cam there. Electric lights are on and people in the street are openly going about business that may or may not have existed ten years ago. There's even smoke rising from a factory smokestack. Caerleon at least has already taken the opportunity to restart.
It just occurred to me that if we try to land at Camelot directly someone will almost certainly see us. What with the city being active and all."
"No. But that's fixable." He turns to the first servant he sees. "Excuse me, but who's in charge of the castle these days?" After he has his answer, he returns to Cam and says "All right, let's get this fellow locked up. The man to leave him with is just around that way."
The man is surprised, but this is part of his job description. Before he can get a word in edgewise Hank turns around and declares "All right, let's pick up the next one!"
"I mean, we do plan to ransom some kings, in a manner of speaking. If all they can cough up is stuff that I can make in five seconds flat I'll be very disappointed. See how far you can get with the armor on your own and I'll do the zippers in the back if you need me to."
"Well, we do plan to ransom kings for unorthodox political concessions. Those are worth more than the usual."
It takes a few minutes for Hank to look scary again.
They pass above the spot where Cam made the arch, though they're going farther and faster now. Eventually they turn at Dere Street and after that, "I think that's probably the River Swale. Which would make that city our destination. British maps never reached this far, but can you make an atlas from your world to check?"
A bystander has noticed Cam. There's an obviously noble person dressed in nondescript black clothing, and he's lurking. And there's a black knight attacking the king.
Cam now has a dagger coming toward his throat.
Meanwhile, Hank has abandoned his ominous and indomitable act to run after the king. It is neither dignified nor effective.
Hank has no idea whether Cam can put everyone to sleep at once. He stretches out an arm in case anyone is still fooled by the ruse and shouts "flashbang!"
Only two people in the room knew to expect it. Hank grabs the king and runs—well, staggers—for the door. The helmet was better than a complete lack of protection. "There's more of them!" he tries to say. He has no idea whether or not he's actually speaking. "Incoming from our right."
I don't actually know where this last king is going to be. His castle is said to be near Brú na Bóinne, and that's a collection of standing stones that we could probably see from space, but where he is might or might not be obvious from there.
Britons aren't much for foreign geography, unfortunately."
The thing is not obviously a castle, but it is taller and more fortified than most non-kings have reason to care about.
"I'd suggest walking up and asking if the person we're looking for is here, but I haven't got the faintest idea how to pronounce the man's name."
Hank knocks on the door. It's common knowledge that a knight in black armor means Adventure and should be let in. That goes double if it's scary-looking armor. The door opens.
The answer he gets is "I am Muirchertach mac Muiredaig of the Goidels, High King of Ireland, and I answer to no one," so they're in the right place.
"You will soon." Hank raises the Glowy Rock and gestures toward Muirchertach mac Unpronounceable.
Hank is stunned in multiple meanings of the word. The next thing he knows is that his vision is swimming and at least this helmet is pretty cushioned, by armor standards. After what seems to be no time at all, he finds himself on the ground wondering whether anything happened while he was out.
The fairy shrieks.
"If the king's your summoner and you like him enough to work for him," Cam tells the fairy, "you do not want me unsummoned, right now. You want me to denature the poison in the capsule in his stomach before it dissolves. It is too big for you to get it out through his throat without killing him. Are you calmed down? Can we talk?"
"Y-yes," says the fairy. "Oh, please put the lights back on."
Cam reignites one of the fires.
"If he's her— she's a— a mover?"
Everyone asleep, good. Mover captured, better. They're not in any immediate danger then. "But," Hank asks her, "if the king of Ireland can summon daeva, why is he only king of Ireland?" His entire plan for international relations depended on being unassailably more powerful than everyone else. Muirchertach could be a problem.
"He - he only knows how to get me," says the fairy. "And only with a binding that requires me to stay near him. Neither of us knows the language the circle's written in so I can't teach him to change it..."
"He wouldn't trust you unbound?" asks Cam.
"Not yet..."
"Met any other daeva?" Cam asks her.
"Just you. How did you -?"
"Ah-ah. What all have you been doing here?"
"I helped his father become king. He paid all right, no tech, obviously, but meals and trinkets. I'm mostly a bodyguard."
"That's sort of a meaningless question. She can get out of the glue eventually and then she'll try to follow the king because her binding says she needs to be near him. I can't meaningfully restrain her, so keeping an eye on her and being ready to kill off her summoner at a moment's notice is probably the best we can do."
"No, so we could try to confuse her and bolt too fast for her to follow, and then she'd meander around controlled only by whatever's left of her binding, which obviously leaves her free to fling people into walls at high speed - maybe only if they're threatening him, maybe not."
"You put poison in him!" exclaims the fairy.
"Which will only kill him if I stop renewing the capsule. I suppose it might produce a digestive complaint if it goes on for days and the capsule material disagrees with him, it'd add up, but he'll be fine. But her, even the guy she's been working for for however long won't let her loose and she has no reason to like us, plus, we can't send her away and resummon her with so much as revised binding without her current summoner's cooperation or death."
But it seems to me that the situation isn't all that different from what we thought it was coming in, except that they know exactly why they can't compete with us. We can probably trust them not to start spontaneously killing people about as much as we could trust the other kings and their minions."
"I'd like to get a good look at the circle that he summons her with - let me see if I can -" A piece of paper appears in Cam's hand. "Drat, I don't read this language either. What is that, ogham? Let me see if my computer can figure it out -" Cam has his computer on him under his nondescript outfit; he takes a picture of the circle and attempts to feed it to a character recognition program. "Nnnnnope. Linguists everywhere have fallen down on the job. We don't know what this circle says and neither does anybody else who's seen it. If we can get her unsummoned, we could resummon her, under a binding that we thoroughly vet or just intending to leave her in the circle taskless and well-treated... The problem is you can offer her no permanent consequences. Her incentives are not just like his, even though they've been cooperating this long. She is immortal, she can at worst be inconvenienced or sent home to where no one knows or cares what she's been up to. She doesn't have the same concerns about, say, threat of retaliation or social censure, that a human would."
"OK, but if she's malicious then her summoner has been keeping her in line somehow. So we just make the same deal with him as we planned to."
"I'll take the chemical burns," mutters the fairy. The glue hisses as it dissolves. The fairy floats into the air. "You could replace the bit of my cloak," she tells Cam reproachfully.
The burned-away bits of her cloak are replaced. "Thisaway," he tells the fairy, and to Hank, "Leave your armor on for now."
He goes to pick up King Muirchertach, thinks better of it, and asks the mover, "Actually, would you mind bringing him? You can probably make it more comfortable than I can anyway."
They soon arrive back at Cam's spaceship. "Shall we just hover over the sea somewhere? Then there's sure to be no collateral damage possible even in the worst case."
And if he categorically refuses to listen, we do have the last-ditch option of killing him."
He goes out until he thinks they've gone far enough, then makes and lands on a pleasant little island.
"Aaand he'll wake up in five minutes, give or take."
"I am King Eoppa of Bernicia, and that"—he gestures toward the unconscious crowned man in the back seat—"is Arthur of Britain.
I do plan to release you unharmed, but only after you agree to stop attacking your neighbors. Don't worry, they're getting the same deal. I'm not even going to make you swear fealty to me, but do remember that the thing about not fighting is backed up with overwhelming force."
King Muirchertach isn't paying attention. He's clinging to the fairy.
"I heard you the first time. Why do you care if I raid the Britons?"
"I happen to think it's better for all England if kingdoms rise and fall for reasons other than who's best at throwing rocks at each other. To that end, you will accept the allegiance of any provinces that want to join your empire, and allow any of yours to join someone else's. Or else: Daeva. Got that?"
Muirchertach has got that, but doesn't accept yet. He's still petting.
"That could still work. She could surveil him without so much awkwardness about his personal life. We keep a close eye on him for now, and - you got married, right? I will assume here that you didn't pick somebody random without redeeming qualities. We mail your wife instructions on how to summon me. The fairy is informed that if she, or any other summon belonging to her king or people he teaches, produces a daeva who causes trouble, even if they manage to kill you, I show up and start bumping summoners off. Once this is set up we can leave them more to their own devices, and then we're at least set up for damage control if anything smaller-scale than 'wrecking most of Europe' happens?"
And probably tell more people as well. Summoning itself may be secret, but there are any number of people I'd trust with 'if I die, draw this on the floor.'
What if our Irish friends do the same? Everyone starts killing anyone who might be a summoner?"
"Our Irish friends know way less about summoning - for now, anyway, I suppose they could get lucky and find someone who knows as much as I do or is willing to go fetch a book on it and translate - you know what we could do that doesn't involve killing him that'd neutralize his summoning capabilities is keep this guy in space in zero-gravity. No floor to draw on, no summons. Not exactly pleasant, and if we left him his fairy friend she could haul them to the planet lickety-split..."
"What are you whispering about?" the mover asks. "You're not forgetting about the capsule, are you?"
"The capsule's intact," says Cam. "We're talking about how to make sure you two don't make mischief. Any bright ideas?"
"All you want is a - a non-aggression pact, right?"
But those we can enforce with daeva. The mischief we're worrying about involves summons."
"I only know the one circle." Muirchertach didn't hear the last time this came up. "I already can't summon and bind anyone else."
"No, but - well, I'm disinclined to make suggestions. Options for making very sure that you can't summon anybody else and wreak havoc, or teach other people to do it efficaciously, include lots of things that would be unpleasant for you in various ways. But maybe we can just operate in good faith."
"It's been years. Is there anything I could possibly have done to be more trustworthy with what I can do, or is this all solely because I'm a summoner?"
"Well - yes," murmurs the fairy.
The king addresses Hank, still assuming he's the only important one. "You're clearly not going to kill me. So what are we waiting for? Fix this poison and let us go."
"Well, if that happens, there's nothing stopping you from instantly killing me. We haven't told anyone how to resummon Cam if I die so he can wreak vengeance on whoever killed me yet."
To Cam: "We might have to make two trips so she doesn't get a chance to unsummon you by force."
When he sees Cam, "Welcome back. The wars are over, such as they were."
Better to stick with the books and a few pre-made papers. Those I can hide indefinitely."
"Er, hello." he says to the winged person in the circle.
"Remember, don't agree to anything I haven't vetted, the task is also a possible point of failure," Cam tells Hank. "Possibly nothing," he adds to the changer, "this is his first summon, although we may want to note your name for future use."
"Eyndiel," she says.
The hard part is secrecy; daeva aren't common knowledge and should stay that way. Can you turn yourself into a bird or something for the occasion?"
"Yep," says Cam.
"You have a demon who objects to making houseplants?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Nope, your summoner here described it a little over-constrained. Houseplants are doable. If you want a demon kitten there's no obvious reason you can't have a demon kitten, usual caveats about demon kittens apply."
"Anyway, I don't want to be a bird, but I could take off my wings and tone down the colors for the occasion," says Eyndiel.
"It's his first summon, be nice," says Cam. "Her range can be summarized loosely as line of sight within about fifty yards, close for detail work, farther for a few simple things. She's also slower than a demon for comparable amounts of matter influenced, but if we did give her a scooter she could clear trees and stuff in front of her at a sedate scootering pace as she traveled."
"Er," says Eyndiel, "come again?"
Are you up for cross-country transformation? It could take, let's say ten hours to complete a line, or whatever fraction of that you're willing to do. A houseplant seems like kind of inadequate payment for that."
"The time travel is unexplained to us too," says Cam. "Expect alternate universes."
"...riiiight," says Eyndiel. "Anyway, I can do path-clearing more or less indefinitely with an hour break every twelve hours, plenty of coffee, and my first payment, delivered in advance, being a decent music player and library to listen to while I do it. I don't actually want a houseplant or a demon kitten, I want new-model computer hardware, I can move whatever I don't keep back home, but if this is 536..."
"Demon's from the same year you are. And even if that were not the case you could still just name your models," Cam says.
"Right."
The northward line is the most important. We have maps of course."
The holes will need to hold piles, and since we don't have to have people physically dig it anymore...can you give it a good fifteen meters? If you have to pull over to get line of sight, slowing down is fine."
"If we need water or raspberry seeds or anything we've got that covered," Cam assures her.
She nods.
"You'd also have to avoid talking too much to anybody you meet on the way," he muses. "But refusing to speak at all might look weird. We might want to give you a script."
I don't expect anyone else will challenge you, but be prepared for bystanders to stare. If the disappearing earth weren't unusual enough, the scooter will be."
"Is she supposed to send whatever workers she runs into home or just go past them and do whatever they haven't gotten to?" asks Cam.
Hank puts pencil to notepad and starts writing scripts. The result should satisfy (in increasing length of how hard it could get) the general bystander population, the set of emissaries who went on the now-redundant recruitment mission, and any workers with complaints about being outcompeted. This last gets a line saying that they'll still be paid for that day.
"One more thing. This is the sixth century, and you are going to look like an outsider pretty much everywhere. In the unlikely emergency that you get attacked and have to use magic, it's probably better to defend yourself by vanishing things rather than be revealed as invulnerable. And less unpleasant."
"I might not," agrees Eyndiel. "One person's arrows, sure, a whole bunch of them isn't going to happen that fast."
"But preferentially vanish weapons rather than let them scratch you," says Cam.
"Sure."
"It's his first day, I'm not that much of a jerk," says Eyndiel.
"I'll write it up for you," Cam says, and he produces his computer and starts fiddling with a template of task assignment.
"Oh, hey, you have the brain surgery model," whistles Eyndiel.
"It's fast," Cam says absently as he finishes laying out the task and then turns the display. "Hank, does this look like what you want?"
"She isn't enough of a jerk to smirk at you and step out of her circle on the strength of you asking her if she's ready to start. Which would give any summoner who knew what was going on a heart attack even if she didn't then exploit the fact that you never expressly told her not to turn your guts into bees."
Hank looks at the display and sees a long string of ironclad anti-bee provisions. "Oh.
Um, this looks like it has everything we went over and, apparently, then some."
Focus on business. The near miss will be less terrifying.
"Eyndiel, do you mind if the scooter's cosmetically different, more 1890s-looking?"
Also, apparently a scooter is like a future bicycle. He already knew that, definitely.
"She can't destroy the planet," says Cam. "Or at least she'd have to be really creative. And this will prevent her from destroying things which are smaller than the planet and larger than train-obstructions. If you're all set, you say something like, oh, 'You may accept the terms presented and be on your way' is traditional."
"I'll go fetch you your things," says Cam, and he steps out of the room to pretend to address a separate demon. He comes back with a boxy scooter made of steel and rubber and leather, unpainted and undetailed. "How's this?" he asks Hank.
When they get to where Eyndiel needs to start, she hops on her scooter and starts it up and goes on her way.
"They get used to it, and it's a nice medium density, and it sticks to itself but not to most other substances and can be pretty easily sculpted by hand," says Cam. "Is I think most of the draw. Water is also a nice medium density but lacks the other attributes, for example."
It's actually interesting, though, because here the afterlife Heaven isn't depicted as full of clouds. I don't know when that started in my world, but it'd be too much of a coincidence if it isn't somehow related to the changers' Heav— eh, let's call it Pittsburgh."
Mainly artists just show a bunch of people looking happy, including at least one dead saint to mark it as obviously Heaven. The clouds would be a useful shorthand.
Definitely yes on the lakes of fire. But if everyone can extinguish them at will, they wouldn't be much use for torturing people, would they?"
"Oh, we do. There's stuff in the void that people have made. Most of the population lives on an enormous tacky plane of solid gold, it's incredibly stupid and covered over in most inhabited areas with a layer of less stupid materials. But by itself it's all void, like in Ambular it's all cloud by itself."
"I mean, they're indestructible too, so there's a hard floor on how unpleasant it can be, but it's very disappointing. They import what they can from the daeva worlds - I send stuff myself, whenever there's a concordance. There's small patches of scenery here and there, and like one ocean - I don't remember if I explained to you the theory on what exactly appears in Limbo? But mostly it's featureless flat earth in all directions. When they have sources of water - near the ocean or somebody's house or whatever - they can turn it into basically serviceable bricks and build things, but not complicated things. I have a side project of keeping up with efforts to make decent nanotech, because decent nanotech could fix Limbo with a package-sized amount..."
"A small number of people have gotten plants, or things that included plants, and Void exports plants too. They don't grow really well unless they're part of somebody's original thing-they-get, but the soil isn't actively poisonous to them or anything - they need fertilizer and water and the former is not to be found underground and the latter utterly fails to fall from the sky. I know two people who got water sources as part of things - one of them has a house, the other has a mobile home - and they're very much in demand to supply water; the faucets more or less run continuously."
"There isn't known fact about why people get the things they get, but a theory I have never seen disconfirmed is that people get whatever non-person, non-person including thing that they would previously have considered an afterlife incomplete without. Sometimes this means an ocean, sometimes this means their house, sometimes this means their favorite dead dog, sometimes this means an ice skating rink. These things are sort of indestructible in the same way daeva are - it's hard to map that directly onto, say, a house, but the way the house works is that the plumbing and electricity and climate control all work even though they aren't attached to anything, you don't have to replace the filters or unclog the sink or even dust the shelves, it just carries on being a house. If you remove something from the house, the removed instance continues to exist, and eventually you find it in the house again - so in addition to constantly running the faucet the person I know with a house will give away pillows and apples from the fridge and spare clothes and stuff as often as he can. The person with a mobile home perpetually has about a third of a tank of gas and is not much inconvenienced by the lack of truck stops. And so on."
No wait, I'm going about this all wrong. If you take, say, pipes or wires from out of whatever buildings exist and melt them down, you can get useful metals. How long do buildings take to repair themselves?"
"There are patches of trees - no really big complete forests that I know about. The ocean's also totally empty - no fish, no seaweed, no islands, no weather, just a gigantic thing of salt water which does tides in total disregard for the lack of a moon. They're somewhat inhibited from attempting to dismantle the houses for pipes and wires by lack of tools, but it takes as long as a few months depending on what you do, it's not as fast as healing on an indestructible person."
They do at least harvest the trees, right? Basic tools should be possible to make. Or even send, though not priority for most people. How does the mail work, anyway?"
"Trees are alive and behave more like indestructible people or animals. You can get leaves and sticks but not lumber. Mail works via people with vehicles - the makers provide some of those in addition to other exports. The one of my pen pals whose thing is a mobile home does mail runs in it when there are concordances."
"Oh! Yeah, I haven't explained those, have I. Concordances are occasional, regular, smallish - like maybe amphitheater sized? I've never been to one in person - overlaps between worlds. People can go into concordances, but if they leave them, they come out in their usual world. You can't go through one to another world. But you can bring objects - including live things, houseplants or chickens or whatever. So whenever a concordance happens, there are postal offices set up near them and the postal volunteers swarm in and get as much throughput in both directions handled as possible. So when I want to send something I make a package and leave it at the nearest post office and it gets trundled off to the correct concordant site to be sent through. Except when Void and Ambular have a concordance there is no mail because extremely stupid makers and changers prefer to spend the entire time having a tiny stupid war."
If you can't go to Limbo yourself because of its commitment to inconvenience, can you make things that are partly in both worlds? That would make things much easier. Assuming it's too stubborn to allow that, it sounds like the process of passing things back and forth could at least be sped up."
The carts appearing in the concordance instead of having to be loaded and moved ought to speed it up at least a little."
"I mean, concordances happen less often than once a decade per pair of worlds, and it's easier to lose a slip of paper or forget to include a bit of data than to totally miss a package in the roomful of packages. So unless it's shortly before a concordance it is pretty typical to send actual physical objects to the post office and have them loaded up on carts and lined up in a train much longer than the concordance itself. This also allows you to not tell postal workers exactly what you want to send. Messages to Void are often just 'so and so, be advised that this person wrote you a letter' - and then we can conjure up the letter. I do that routinely without having to be notified, with my pen pals. It will be interesting to see if I can do it from here."
Would conjuring things from Limbo be harder than conjuring things from your Earth or from Void? Those both already worked."
"They get everything through, but it's tight. And no, at least normally it is perfectly possible for me to conjure 'letter to Cam number five hundred and eight' or whatever. The question is whether I will be able to conjure letter five hundred and nine, since I don't expect it to be written yet but it should be soon, for values of soon that assume time is passing in my usual timeline at a normal rate relative to my subjective experience."
How effectively do you think changers can alter terrain? As it is, bogs and fens and such are mainly used as background for signaling ominousness. If we can turn those into something arable, it's one of the best things possible to impress people, especially the English."