Empire of Fashion

[Pleater]

The mind of man - sorry, the minds of men - I do realise that men are individuals, but there is not one, so far, with motives I understand - what I mean is - I think that Mister Brown was actually reluctant to convey the next part of the story.

He does claim to have been at Isandwala and Rourke's Drift during the Zulu Wars, but just perhaps at times when there were no Zulus there.

He might have been distracted - I notice that my printer has been depleted of ink and that there is a gallery of glossy prints around the pc desk.

It was about this time of year - possibly slightly later, in that alternative continuum, and I had been out gathering nuts.

It was mid afternoon and the gloriously clear morning had deteriorated into a dark and dismal rainstorm.

I led the pony to the stables and dried its coat, hung up the baskets in the passage where the draught would dry off the chestnuts, hazel and walnuts by the next day so they could be sorted out, and then made my way into the House.

It was only because of the howling wind that I used the spiral staircase to reach the old hall, and perhaps because of it that I reached the edge of the Japanese screen unheard.

I realised that there was something wrong just too late to not let go of the door, but I was carrying the Captain's prized possession of an elegant spear. I had made the long slender point for it, but she had straightened, shaped, hardened and balanced the spear and spent long hours in devising the launcher. It is a simple idea, the spear lies in a u shaped holder, the end of which is shaped much like a ball and socket joint. As the spear is launched you hold and rotate the launcher, and it, in effect, extends your arm and the spear has far greater velocity.

The Household was literally cowering down before Ivana Rulitall, who was holding an interesting device in a threatening manner. She was badly in need of a hairdresser and a new pair of tights.

Standing in a group by the wall over on her left were the six others of me, and the door had just slammed behind me, to her right. The Captain caught my eye, and screamed, pushed the Chorister so she fell to the floor and caused the male versions of me to scatter knocking over a couple of blue clad guards.

Ivana turned to her left and a beam of turquoise light shot from the thing she was holding, it was aimed at the wall, quite high up, but several stuffed hunting trophy heads exploded as it travelled across them, arcing down towards the Captain, who was on her knees but still screaming and waving her arms like a lunatic.

The spear flew straight and true, struck Ivana at the base of her neck and hurled her to the floor like a rag doll.

It took a moment for the Household to realise what had happened, but then everyone jumped up and rushed forward and it took several minutes for even a semblance of order to be restored, by which time Ivana had bled a great pool of gore.

I had gone weak at the knees and was sitting on a stool when the Captain managed to reach me. She was holding the spear and was bloodspattered from ankle to armpit, and she was grinning. She went down on one knee and put her right arm - the cleaner one, around me.

'Bloody good shot, Cookie' she chortled, 'I thought we were history, I really did.'

'The spear moved in my hand.' I declared, rather weakly. 'I threw it before I even thought about needing to.'

'Yeah - bloody good spear.' she grinned. 'I don't think it is damaged, even.'

She rose and checked that the spear was indeed, undamaged, then she took the launcher from me, notched the spear, and moved a little way into the hall so she could begin a victory dance, holding the spear vertically but causing it to sway from side to side as she hopped and skipped merrily in a roughly circular path around an empty wrought iron jardinière of metal coils decorated with gilded and enameled flowers and leaves which stood before the first large window. The wind was hurling the rain, or perhaps it was hailstones now, against the small panes of coloured glass which made up the window, and it was quite dark.

One by one the other versions of myself managed to cross the Hall floor and congratulated or thanked me, and helped me to my feet.

The Chairman put his arm around me and guided me out of the Hall and into the Library, where he threw a couple more books onto the fire and poured us both a drink.

He steered me to a chair, put a glass into my hand, then sat down on the other side of the hearth rug and looked at me.

'I don't think I could have done that,' he admitted, rather hoarsely.
I put down the glass so I did not have to look at him and hide my smile.
'I thought that you could do anything - up to and including walking on water.'
He looked hurt, and took another gulp of the alcohol.
'You have been avoiding telling us that you can't get us back to our realities, that we are stuck here.' I chided.

He seemed to come to some conclusion.

'Yes. Or at least I couldn't.' He lept to his feet. 'That disruptor she had - if it isn't damaged.' He was already half way to the door, and by the time I reached the Hall door was not in sight, but I could hear him shouting. In half a minute he was walking back towards me with the thing in his hands.

'I think it is intact,' he called. 'Perhaps I can find out how it works.'

'See if you can find Ivana's handbag. The manual should be in there.'

He looked puzzled and I was suddenly overcome with laughter and had to sit down for some time.

[Southern Breeze]

[Pleater]

It seemed that no one was at all bothered about digging a grave for Ivana, and when I decided to take responsibility the logistics seemed impossible. The difficulties of gardening had been bad enough, back in the Spring, but moving enough soil for a decent and hygenic grave is a serious undertaking.

The body had been left out in the garden overnight - and a heavy downpour had cleaned it.

Although beaten black and blue and creeping around in pain, her guards had survived, and I decided to rope tham in to sort out the problem. My first thought had been to use the ruins of an old greenhouse which had had a water tank in the middle of it, now empty of all but an accumulation of compost and vegetation that could be cleared and made decent, but one of the guards assumed that I wanted to return Ivana to Fashion Furs home world.

He offered to assist in the creation of the portal between worlds, on the assurance that he would not have to go through it. Even though he was a Company man his home was there, but in France.

The hovercraft had been driven over the low railings alongside the drive and they had ripped the skirt to shreds, but it was still operational.

I called on the other versions of myself and some of the rebel forces to ensure the transfer went well and there was no trouble. I made careful notes of all that the guard told me and we carried everything to the front drive. An old door was used to convey the corpse, and it was propped up on some boxes from the hovercraft. I set up the projection equipment in the space that made, where I could give instructions on the settings to the Chemistry Master sitting at the controls in the cockpit.

I wrote a note and tore out one of the precious pages from the notebook, and tucked it into Ivana's hand, to explain what had happened, and then set to work to create and lock a ring into another world.

There was the double transfer to do, from the House to Paris on the other world, but after a couple of tries the familiar buzz filled the air, and I could see the alarmed people hurrying away and the paramilitaries running to face whatever it was coming through the portal.

I rolled the Ring, pulled it back and the corpse, door and boxes were gone, so I closed the portal and shut down the equipment to reset it for a French city in that world.

The guards staggered through it, and I closed it again.

All around us the scenery was strange and seemed to be twisting and unsure of itself. There was a hot smell in the air.

'Ten to one on it being something the Chairman is up to.' said the Captain, as everyone moved into the cockpit, or as close to it as they could get.

The effect faded, but left the front gardens a strange mish mash of different designs and slightly different placings for flower beds and railings, but that was corrected by a circle expanding away from the hovercraft, returning everything to what it had been, or at least close to and coherent.

When we were sure things had stopped changing the men hurrind off to the house to remonstrate with the Chairman, and we women looked over the hovercraft to see if there was anything useful to be liberated.

The Captain got a locker open after some effort and gave an exclaimation of disgust to find it held firearms and ammunition. After a quick rummage through it she slammed it shut and came to see what we had found. We had a couple of bags of what might be useful, and she picked up one of them, and took her spear in her free hand.
'I think we could get the seats out - they aren't bad - be OK to sit on on the terrace next year.'
'I hope that we are home next year.' I protested.
'Any idea of how we are to find out which reality is our own?'
'If we can sort out time travel, yes.'
The Chorister and Captain both snorted derisorily.
'It can be done.' I insisted. 'Time travel is possible, and when you come through the Rings to here, then, you can nip back through to your own world, with no problem in locating it now.'
The Chorister's face crumpled.
'You mean I could still be in time to sing?' she said rather unsteadily.
'The time lost would only be seconds, it would have to be, you'd be back where you were when the ring formed.'

At once she went off to assemble and check her music and all that she had brought with her, including the silly hat.

The Captain and I carried our ill gotten gains back to the House - I could tell that she was very thoughtful so did not disturb her by talking.

[Pleater]

I was very touched when the others of me showed me the loom that they had constructed.

The Chairman had only burned his way through the first few cases of the romance section of the library - and although they were nicely printed and bound, and some even had illustrations, they were hardly what I would have thought of as literature. This left all the reference section untouched and there were several very useful collections there, from which the design of the loom had been taken. The hovercraft had been a useful source of parts, and the seats had been brought into the room we had appropriated for the loom.

I set up a simple two colour Shepherd's plaid and tested the mechanism, which with a little tweaking proved most efficient.

As I had access to all the yarn I could ever wish for - the tendency of the Fashion Police to arrive if anything untoward happened meant that is was far more usual for old clothes, or spare ones not used by the time the style or colour changed to be pushed into a box or cupboard than burnt - and that had been going on for decades. The construction of the cloth, which was much like that of cheap curtain material, meant that they were easy to convert back into yarn, as the warp was a line of chain stitch, and once the final loop was released the line could be pulled out easily and quickly.

The fibre used for the weft was good, strong soft and even, and a pleasure to work with, so as Christmas approached I spent all my spare time weaving, and the others of me came to 'assist' which seemed to mean long conversations on the Multiverse in general and time travel in particular.

One morning I pulled out the poor old notebook, which was by then little more than loose leaves within a disintegrating cover kept together by a crochet pouch.

'Oh for a reel of sticky tape, eh - pity there are no more raids into the Homeworld, I could have asked someone to steal a reel for me.'

The others were drinking what passed for coffee and they just sighed and nodded. I think I was the one most affected by the low tech environment.

'Did you ever take a reel of sticky tape into a dark room and see how it glows blue when you unstick it?' I enquired as I found the counts for the materials I had successfully woven to that time.

'Why does it do that?'

'I don't know why.' I confessed 'The act of unsticking is what does it. If you put a mechanism into a sealed box and have the air pumped out, unsticking makes it emit X rays.'

There was a small flurry and the Chairman had to be slapped on the back to clear his airway. The other men did not leave him alone with the equipment as he was inclined to cause disconcerting inter continuum ripples, or thump things with his fists, or on bad days, his forehead. When he could breathe again the Chairman wanted to return to the workshop.

'That's it - that is what I have not understood!!' he cried excitedly. 'I have always kept the effects apart, been careful to avoid cohesion, but that is the energy source, that is what I could not understand!'

The four men left us. The Captain and the Chorister went on winding yarn.

'Your problem is that you know so much, you don't know what you do know.' the Chorister said quietly.

I shrugged, and looked at the page with the last settings for the portal equipment noted on it.

'Our problem is that no one knows everything, and without sharing knowledge, there is no progress.' I sighed. 'If the Chairman had let me see the settings he had, it would have been obvious.'

'But he saw both sets of settings. Why didn't he realise their significance?' the Captain sounded quite peeved.

'Wrong sort of mind, perhaps, no interaction with sticky tape in the dark, remember, or just never struck by the idea.' I smiled. 'People sometimes say that the time for an idea had come. I suspect that there are showers of particles called ideons which move through the Universe and collide with minds from time to time, and so trigger some sort of revolution. '

I found the right place on the page, and began the process of warping the loom by selecting the colour for the first set of threads.

[Pleater]

Hamish returned to the House.

He had been in hospital after the train accident, though no one would tell me what his injuries were, but I knew that the medical abilities of the locals were exceptional so did not worry about him all that much.

Sure enough when he arrived he seemed to be hardly the worse for wear at all, but he wore long gowns or robes rather than trousers, and seemed weary from the journey.

The male versions of myself naturally had more contact with such an august personage, but soon after the return they turned up with rather anxious expressions and requested any kilt lengths of fabric I might have.

'What colours would Hamish prefer, do you think?' I enquired.

'Ones that go with his shirts.' said the Chemistry master who was the fastest thinker.

'And who is going to be sewing them?'

'That is all taken care of, we just need the fabric.' said the Copper.

I selected three lots of eight yards in shades of brown and green, and handed them over, one to each man. I saw each one in turn raise his eyebrows at the weight and feel of the cloth and then look at the shelves where the remainder of my work was stored.

'They're all counted.' I warned. 'Just let me note down the ones they are - so I can keep a tally.'

I had put in a code number on the edge of what would be the lower edge of the under apron, so I knew where in the order of weaving they came.

'I hope that Hamish will soon have recovered from the journey and be back amongst us again.' I said, fishing for information.

'I expect that it will be only a few days.'

'In time for Christmas?' I dangled the bait.

'Possibly.' was all I caught.

'And how is the Chairman doing in the Laboratory?'

'Ah, well, he seems to be having some trouble with the focus.'

'If he needs any help with the maths, just let me know.' I said, putting on my most willing to be helpful expression.

They departed in a flurry of excuses, and I frowned at their backs. They might be me, but the local society was having a detrimental effect on them

Next day Hamish and the Chairman had a violent argument, the Chairman went to sulk in the Library, and Hamish followed him there and saw the empty shelves. There was an even greater row then, and the Chairman went to his apartment and locked himself in, calling for his closest henchmen to occupy the corridors outside.

I instantly saw my opportunity to visit the Laboratory, and see just how much work had been done using the disrupter to facilitate distortion of timelines. I hurried along the gloomy corridor, found the door unlocked and unguarded, and slipped inside, sliding the bolts home to prevent any disturbance.

[Pleater]

The benches were thick with dust, only one small area had been kept clean and a small space made for an experimental rig.

I spent several hours just working out what had been done, as there were no notes, but in looking for something to clean off some more space I found a clipboard with a wad of papers on it. The metal part had rusted and marked the paper through several layers, but I was able to write out the information, and once that was done I realised the problem. The measurements were in feet but the rig had been made using inches.

I was able to move one of the benches which had for some reason been unbolted from the floor, and laid out the components on the floor at the correct spacing. The exertion, the constant rising and crouching, lying flat or on my side, combined with a lack of water and to a lesser extent of food, eventually made me feel dizzy. Standing over the rig, I was contantly reminded of a stone circle, and felt that I should be walking around it chanting and waving - something.

The light was fading, and I glanced at my watch. It was almost sunset on the Winter Solstice.

The sun would be 180 degrees opposite to the sunrise at the Summer Solstice.

Feeling that it would in some way be a significant moment I made a control unit, using two of the eveyday sets of dials and four of the wiring harnesses. The diameter of the rig meant that I would have to place the control unit in the centre of the ring of components, and also stand there whilst working it.

As I neared the completion of the work a faint golden light illuminated the room, a light without shadows, which helped considerably in making the last few circuits. My arms and shoulders ached from crimping connectors onto wires, but it was rather at a distance by then, I was so light headed.

I had, fortunately, written down the settings I had decided to try, and so did not need to do any further calculations. I checked them three times and pressed the red button.

[Pleater]

I had tried a synchronous move, so the spatial coordinates were approximately the same, and the ley lines would do the fine tuning, so was still in the same place, at the same hour and day of the year, just in another century.

I stepped out of the circle and looked around. I recognised the electrical connections on the wall, but they looked new and shiny. Several leads hung on a hook nearby and I connected the rig to the mains to preserve the batteries.

The key was in the lock, so I removed it, went outside and locked the door.

The house was lit with electric lighting, and in splendid repair. I went along to the nearest bathroom and drank several glasses of water, drew a hot steaming bath whilst I washed my linen and hose, then sponged my kilt and plaid and hung them up, then placed my linen in the drying cabinet before sinking into the hot water with the greatest pleasure.

I had to keep my eye on my watch to ensure I did not soak for too long, but what time I had was sufficient to restore me and my garments to a presentable condition. I drank another couple of glasses of water, combed my hair and tied it back, put on my plaid and checked that the bathroom looked none the worse for my use of it, but other than there being one less towel on the pile and another damp one in the washing basket, there was nothing amiss.

I checked my appearance in the long mirror and drew myself up into an appropriate stance - the Victorians did not slouch.

I called in at the small room next door and reflected that the one thing which I had any regret at leaving behind was soft toilet tissue. I was greatly relieved to recall that I had a pack of tissues in my pouch, and did not have to use the hard shiny stuff.

I walked along the corridor on thick rugs and highly polished wood - a deathtrap for anyone in a hurry. The layout was entirely familiar to me but it was novel to see it furnished and at the height of its stately glory.

I stepped into the porter's room and stole one of the doorstep sized sandwiches from his tea tray, then went to the window to look out onto the long sweep of the drive. Down at the gate, visible in the darkness as it too had electric lighting, there was a carriage. As I watched, several outriders appeared and scanned the area around the door. One even stood on his saddle and surveyed the top of the porch where it is possible to hide quite a number of men. One of them retraced their tracks to call to the carriage driver to proceed, so I carefully dusted off any traces of sandwich and walked to the door to open it in good time. Three of the outriders entered and surveyed the hallway. I simply stood at attention holding onto the doorknob whilst the pageant unfolded.

One of the outriders returned to the doorway.

'Where is the Duke?' he growled.
'Taking tea in the Blue Drawing Room, Sir, the Porter has run to alert him, but he might have fallen, the corridors are treacherous to a man in a hurry.'
'Which way to the Blue Drawing room?'
'Up the main stairs, turn right and it is the third door, on the left.'
He nodded and must have run, but with his cloak streaming behind him he might very well have been flying up the stairs.

I glanced out and saw Prince Albert following Queen Victoria from the coach, just for a second before one of her men got between me and the Royals, and I quickly side stepped out of the hall and made my way back to the Laboratory. I turned off the power, disconnected the lead, reset the controls for the future and pressed the button.

Carefully I set the controls on the floor and stepped out of the ring. I turned off the power, and danced the few steps to the door. I unbolted it, stepped out cautiously and then put the key I had brought with me into the lock. It was difficult to turn but with a little jiggling it eventually went home, and I walked along the darkened corridor hugging myself in glee.