Empire of Fashion

[Pleater]

Oh bother does this mean I have to start writing again now too?

Cheers

Jamie

Ah, Mr Panache, Madam gave me a message for you - though I must confess that in the confusion of her departure I neglected to obtain clarification after I realised that I was not entirely sure of what I was to convey.

Perhaps it is some personal code.

All those Panaches! (she said) Perhaps when Jamie's latest adventure is over one or more of them would care to take a sabbatical at MHICE and assist in this paradox rectification. He fences, you know. That would be useful.

I trust this is somewhat comprehensible to your good self.

I too must return to the narration with which I am entrusted, but I find myself somewhat fatigued after a hectic morning and rather good luncheon. I can hardly keep the eyes open, don't cha know. I think a short nap is called for to replenish the energies.

J.B.

[Livingston]

Oh bother does this mean I have to start writing again now too?

Cheers

Jamie

No Jamie, you need to FINISH writing. You already started, just need to finish that story.

[Weasel Mender]

Oh bother does this mean I have to start writing again now too?

Cheers

Jamie

Yes it certainly does!ith:
Weasel

[Arlen]

Wooohoo! So good to log in and find so much more of this wonderful tale to read.
It makes a tired and sore man feel better for the duration!

[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.

[Arlen]

Ooooh. This story just gets better and better.

[Pleater]

I roused the five other visiting versions of myself before dawn, and we went to the laboratory. I had coated the key in soot and the old trick worked well so the lock was not so difficult to operate.

I showed them the rig I had made and explained what I thought could be done to get them home. I thought it a little ungrateful of them that they did not wish to have a hand in the removal of the Fashion Furs equipment, but I did feel that the return to my own world could not come soon enough.

They went to get ready, to dress in their original clothing, gather what they had brought with them. I also prepared what I would need, and checked the rig carefully then my calculations three times.

I looked into the Laboratory at the time I intended to go back to, and found it empty, so when we were all assembled I locked the door and put the key in my pocket.

Carefully we stepped into the circle and I set the controls and pressed the button.

'Is that it?' someone enquired. 'No noise, no lights?'
'Sorry - there seems to be nothing to indicate that the move has occurred, other than the change in the room. Be careful of the wires as you step out of the circle.'

We went out, I locked the door and shouldered the rod which I intended to place in my own continuum, then we walked out. Knowing the routine of the House it was easy enough to avoid those corridors which would be used at that time of day, and we went out and around the House on the West side.

With a few words and nods we separated, and I went to the walled garden to wait. Each version of myself would be doing the same thing, at different points around the grounds.

I watched the gate, and as soon as the scene on the other side of it altered, I walked through, placed the rod where it was not too obvious, then walked back into the other continuum. In a few minutes I heard the sound of myself approaching, so I stood on the far side of the lean to building until I left with the Captain. I then sprinted back to the Laboratory and returned to my time of departure.