Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (47 page)

The judge looked back at Verily. “Anything more from you?”

“Just one question,” said Verily. “Alvin, you heard the things Amy Sump said about you and her and the baby she’s carrying. Any truth to that?”

Alvin shook his head. “I never left the jail cell. It’s true that I left Vigor Church at least partly because of the stories she was putting out about me. They were false stories, but I needed to leave anyway, and I hoped that with me gone, she’d forget about dreaming me into her life and fall in love with some fellow her own age. I never laid a hand on her. I’m under oath and I swear it before God. I’m sorry she’s having trouble, and I hope the baby she’s carrying turns out fine and strong and makes a good son for her.”

“It’s a boy?” asked Verily.

“Oh yes,” said Alvin. “A boy. But not my son.”

“Now we’re finished,” said Verily.

It was time for final statements, but the judge didn’t give the word to begin. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a long moment. “Folks, this has been a strange trial, and it’s taken some sorry turns along the way. But right now there’s only a few points at issue. If Makepeace Smith and
Hank Dowser are right, and the gold was found not made, then I think it’s fair to say the plow is flat out Makepeace’s property.”

“Damn straight!” cried Makepeace.

“Bailiff, take Makepeace Smith into custody please,” said the judge. “He’s spending the night in jail for contempt of court, and before he can say another word I’ll inform him that every word he says will add another night to his sentence.”

Makepeace nearly burst, but he didn’t say another word as the bailiff led him from the courtroom.

“The other possibility is that Alvin made the gold out of iron, as he says, and that the gold is something called ‘living gold,’ and therefore the plow belongs to itself. Well, I can’t say the law allows any room for farm implements to be self-owning entities, but I will say that since Makepeace gave Alvin a certain weight of iron, then if Alvin made that iron disappear, he owes Makepeace the same weight of iron back again, or the monetary equivalent in legal tender. This is how it seems to me at this moment, though I know the jury may see other possibilities that escape me. The trouble is that right now I don’t know how the jury can possibly make a fair decision. How can they forget all the business about Alvin maybe or maybe not having scandalous liaisons? A part of me says I ought to declare a mistrial, but then another part of me says, that wouldn’t be right, to make this town go through yet another round of this trial. So here’s what I propose to do. There’s one fact in all of this that we can actually test. We can go out to the smithy and have Hank Dowser show us the spot where he called for the well to be dug. Then we can dig down and see if we find either the remnants of some treasure chest—and water—or a shelf of stone, the way Alvin said, and not a drop of water. It seems to me then we’ll at least know something, whereas at the present moment we don’t know much at all, except that Vilate Franker, God bless her, has false teeth.”

Neither the defense nor the prosecution had any objections.

“Then let’s convene this court at Makepeace’s smithy at ten in the morning. No, not tomorrow—that’s Friday, election day.

I see no way around it, we’ll have to do it Monday morning. Another weekend in jail, I’m afraid, Alvin.”

“Your Honor,” said Verily Cooper. “There’s only the one jail in this town, and with Makepeace Smith forced to share a cell in the same room with my client—”

“All right,” said the judge. “Sheriff, you can release Makepeace when you get Alvin back over there.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Verily.

“We’re adjourned till ten on Monday.” The gavel struck and the spectacle ended for the day.

  17  

Because Calvin used to keep to himself so much in Vigor Church, he always thought of himself as a solitary sort of fellow. Everybody in Vigor who wasn’t besotted with Alvin turned out to be pretty much of an idiot, when it came down to it. What did Calvin want with pranks like luring skunks under porches or pushing over outhouses? Alvin had him cut out of anything that mattered, and any other friends he might have had didn’t amount to much.

In New Amsterdam and London, Calvin was even more alone, being concentrated as he was on the single-minded goal of getting to Napoleon. It was the same on the streets of Paris, when he was going around trying to get a reputation as a healer. And once he got the Emperor’s attention, it was all study and work.

For a while. Because after a few weeks it became pretty clear that Napoleon was going to stretch out his teaching as long and slow as possible. Why should he do otherwise? As soon as Calvin was satisfied that he had learned enough, he’d
leave and then Napoleon would be the victim of gout. Calvin toyed with the idea of putting on some pressure by increasing Napoleon’s pain, and with that in mind he went and found the place in the Emperor’s brain where pain was registered. He had some idea of using his doodling bug to poke directly into that place of pure agony, and then see if Napoleon didn’t suddenly remember to teach Calvin a few things that he’d overlooked till now.

That was fine for daydreaming, but Calvin wasn’t no fool. He could do that agony trick once, and get one day’s worth of teaching, but then before he next fell asleep, he’d better be long gone from Paris, from France, and from anywhere on God’s green Earth where Napoleon’s agents might find him. No, he couldn’t force Napoleon. He had to stay and put up with the excruciatingly slow pace of the lessons, the sheer repetitiveness. In the meantime, he observed carefully, trying to see what it was Napoleon was doing that Calvin didn’t understand. He never saw a thing that made sense.

What was left for him, then, but to try out the things Napoleon
had
taught him about manipulating other people, and see if he could figure out more by pure experimentation? That was what finally brought him into contact with other people—the desire to learn how to control them.

Trouble was, the only people around were the staff, and they were all busy. What’s worse, they were also under Napoleon’s direct control, and it wouldn’t do to let the Emperor see that somebody else was trying to win control of his toadies. He might get the wrong idea. He might think Calvin was trying to undermine his power, which wasn’t true—Calvin didn’t care a hoot about taking Napoleon’s place. What was a mere Emperor when there was a Maker in the world?

Two Makers, that is. Two.

Who could Calvin try out his new-learned powers on? After a little wandering around the palace and the government buildings, he began to realize that there was another class of person
altogether. Idle and frustrated, they were Calvin’s natural subjects: the sons of Napoleon’s clerks and courtiers.

They all had roughly the same biography: As their fathers rose to positions of influence, they got sent away to steadily better boarding schools, then emerged at sixteen or seventeen with education, ambition, and no social prestige whatsoever, which meant that most doors were closed to them except to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become completely dependent upon the Emperor. For some of them, this was perfectly all right; Calvin left those hardworking, contented souls alone.

The ones he found interesting were the desultory law students, the enthusiastically untalented poets and dramatists, the gossiping seducers looking around for women rich enough to be desirable and stupid enough to be taken in by such pretenders. Calvin’s French improved greatly the more he conversed with them, and even as he followed Napoleon’s lessons and learned to find what vices drove these young men, so he could flatter and exploit and control them, he also discovered that he enjoyed their company. Even the fools among them were entertaining, with their lassitude and cynicism, and now and then he found some truly clever and fascinating companions.

Those were the most difficult to win control of, and Calvin told himself that it was the challenge rather than the pleasure of their company that kept him coming back to them again and again. One of them most of all: Honoré. A skinny, short man with prematurely rotten teeth, he was a year older than Calvin’s brother Alvin. Honoré was without manners; Calvin soon learned that it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to behave, but rather because he wished to shock people, to show his contempt for their stale forms, and most of all because he wished to command their attention, and being faintly repulsive all the time had the desired effect. He might start with their contempt or disgust, but within fifteen minutes he always had them laughing at his wit, nodding at his insights, their eyes shining with the dazzlement of his conversation.

Calvin even allowed himself to think that Honoré had some
of the same gift Napoleon had been born with, that by studying him Calvin might learn a few of the secrets the Emperor still withheld.

At first Honoré ignored Calvin, not in particular but in the general way that he ignored everyone who had nothing to offer him. Then he must have heard from someone that Calvin saw the Emperor every day, that in fact the Emperor used him as his personal healer. At once Calvin became acceptable, so much so that Honoré began inviting him along on his nighttime jaunts.

“I am studying Paris,” said Honoré. “No, let me correct myself—I am studying humankind, and Paris has a large enough sampling of that species to keep me occupied for many years. I study all people who depart from the norm, for their very abnormalities teach me about human nature: If the actions of this man surprise me, it is because I must have learned, over the years, to expect men to behave in a different way. Thus I learn not only the oddity of the one, but also the normality of the many.”

“And how am I odd?” asked Calvin.

“You are odd because you actually listen to my ideas instead of my wit. You are an eager student of genius, and I half suspect that you may have genius yourself.”

“Genius?” asked Calvin.

“The extraordinary spirit that makes great men great. It is perfect piety that turns men into saints or angels, but what about men who are indifferently pious but perfectly intelligent or wise or perceptive? What do they become? Geniuses. Patron saints of the mind, of the eye, of the mind’s eye! I intend, when I die, to have my name invoked by those who pray for wisdom. Let the saints have the prayers of those who need miracles.” He cocked his head and looked up at Calvin. “You’re too tall to be honest. Tall men always tell lies, since they assume short men like me will never see clearly enough to contradict them.”

“Can’t help being tall,” said Calvin.

“Such a lie,” said Honoré. “You wanted to be tall when you were young, just as I wanted to be closer to the earth, where
my eye could see the details large men miss. Though I do hope to be fat someday, since fatness would mean I had more than enough to eat, and that, my dear Yankee, would be a delicious change. It’s a commonplace idea that geniuses are never understood and therefore never become popular or make money from their brilliance. I think this is pure foolishness. A true genius will not only be smarter than everyone else, but will be
so
clever that he’ll know how to appeal to the masses without compromising his brilliance. Hence: I write novels.”

Calvin almost laughed. “Those silly stories women read?”

“The very ones. Fainting heiresses. Dullard husbands. Dangerous lovers. Earthquakes, revolutions, fires, and interfering aunts. I write under several
noms de plume,
but my secret is that even as I master the art of being popular and therefore rich, I am also using the novel to explore the true state of humankind in this vast experimental tank known as Paris, this hive with an imperial queen who surrounds himself with drones like my poor stingless unflying father, the seventh secretary of the morning rotation—you gave him a hotfoot once, you miserable prankster, he wept that night at the humiliation of it and I vowed to kill you someday, though I think I probably won’t—I have never kept a promise yet.”

“When do you write? You’re here all the time.” Calvin gestured to include the environs of the government buildings.