The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology] Read online

  On the whole, our spectral community took heart in their epitaphs, and I believe I know why. Now that our deaths have been duly marked and lamented, the bereaved back home can begin, however haltingly, to get on with the business of existence. Yes, throughout April the mourning families knew only raw grief, but in recent weeks they have surely entered upon wistful remembrance and the bittersweet rewards of daily life, wisely heeding our Lord’s words from the Gospel of Matthew, “Let the dead bury their dead.”

  * * * *

  18June 1912

  Lat. 25°31’N, Long. 53°33’W

  To reward our steerage passengers for accepting the Medusa initiative with such élan, I made no move to stop them when, shortly after sunrise, they killed and ate Mr Ismay. I could see their point of view. By all accounts, from the moment we left Cherbourg Ismay had kept pressing the captain for more steam, so that we might arrive in New York on Tuesday night rather than Wednesday morning. Evidently Ismay wanted to set a record, whereby the crossing-time for the maiden voyage of the Titanic would beat that of her sister ship, the Olympic. Also, nobody really liked the man.

  I also went along with the strangling and devouring of Mr Murdoch. There was nothing personal or vindictive in my decision. I would have acquiesced even if we didn’t detest each other. Had Murdoch not issued such a boneheaded command at 11.40 p.m. on the night of 14 April, we wouldn’t be in this mess. “Hard a-starboard!” he ordered. So far, so good. If he’d left it at that, we would’ve steamed past the iceberg with several feet to spare. But instead he added, “Full astern.” What the bloody hell was Murdoch trying to do? Back up the ship like a bloody motorcar? All he accomplished was to severely compromise the rudder, and so the colossus slit us like a hot knife cutting lard.

  When it came to Mr Andrews, however, I drew the line. Yes, before the Titanic sailed he should have protested the paucity of lifeboats. And, yes, when designing her he should have run the bulkheads clear to the brink, so that in the event of rupture the watertight compartments would not systematically feed one another with ton after ton of brine. But even in his wildest fancies, Mr. Andrews could not have imagined a three-hundred-foot gash in his creation’s hull.

  “Let him amongst you who has designed a more unsinkable ship than RMS Titanic cast the first stone,” I told the mob. Slowly, reluctantly, they backed away. Today I have made an eternal friend in Thomas Andrews.

  * * * *

  5 December 1912

  Lat. 20°16 ‘N, Long. 52°40 ‘W

  Looking through my journal, I am chagrined to discover that the entries appear at such erratic intervals. What can I say? Writing does not come easily for me, and I am forever solving problems more pressing than keeping this tub’s log up to date.

  Since getting below the Tropic of Cancer, we have endured one episode of becalming after another. Naturally Mr Futrelle supplied me with an appropriate stanza from Coleridge. “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down - ‘twas sad as sad could be, and we did only speak to break silence of the sea.” And yet we are much more than the poet’s painted ship upon a painted ocean. The Ada abides. Life goes on.

  In August, young Mrs Astor gave birth to her baby, faithfully attended by Dr Alice Leader, the only female physician on board. (Mother and child are both thriving.) September’s highlights included a spellbinding public recitation by Mr Futrelle of his latest Thinking Machine detective story, which he will commit to paper when we reach dry land. (The plot is so devilishly clever that I dare not reveal any particulars.) Last month our resident theatre company staged a production of The Tempest, directed by Margaret Brown and featuring our fetching movie-serial actress Dorothy Gibson as Miranda. (The shipwreck scene provoked unhappy memories, but otherwise we were enchanted.) And, of course, each dawn brings a plethora of birthdays to celebrate. Mr Futrelle informs me of the counterintuitive fact that, out of any group of twenty-three persons, the chances are better than fifty-fifty that two will share a birthday. I couldn’t follow his logic, but I’m not about to question it.

  On the romantic front, I’ve been pleased to observe that our young wireless operator, Harold Bride, has set his cap for a twenty-one-year-old Irish emigrant named Katie Mullen. (Though Mr Bride has not been pleased to observe me observing him.) In June, Mr and Mrs Strauss marked their forty-first wedding anniversary. (Mr Lightoller arranged a candlelit dinner for them above pontoon F.) In July, Mr Guggenheim and his mistress, Mme Léotine Aubert, finally got married, Rabbi Minkoff officiating. (They passed their honeymoon in the gazebo above pontoon D.) Sad to say, last month Mr and Mrs Widener decided to get divorced, despite the protests of Father Byles and Father Montvila. The Wideners insist their decision has nothing to do with the stress of the sinking, and everything to do with their disagreements over women’s suffrage. I personally don’t understand why the gentler sex wishes to sully its sensibility with politics, but if ladies really want the vote, I say give it them.

  * * * *

  7 July 1913

  Lat. 9°19’N, Long. 44°42 ‘W

  For reasons that defy my powers of analysis, a steady cheerfulness obtains aboard the Ada. Despite our isolation, or perhaps because of it, we’ve become quite attached to our crowded little hamlet. Notwithstanding the occasional doldrums, literal and figurative, our peripatetic tropical isle remains a remarkably congenial place.

  I am aided immeasurably by the incompetence of captains who came before me. Thanks to the superfluity of wrecks, and our skill in plundering the flotsam and jetsam, we are blessed with a continual supply of fresh meat, good ale, novel toys for the children, au courant fashions for the first-cabin women, lumber for new architectural projects, rigging to improve our manoeuvrability, firearms to discourage pirates, and lambskin sheaths to curb our population. Drop by the Ada on any given Saturday night, and you will witness dance marathons, bridge tournaments, poker games, lotto contests, sing-a-longs, and amorous encounters of every variety, sometimes across class lines. We are a merry raft.

  Even our library is flourishing. This last circumstance has proved especially heartening to young Harry Widener, our resident bibliophile, who needs bucking up after his parents’ divorce. Jane Austen is continually in circulation, likewise Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Conan Doyle, and an epic Polish novel, at once reverent and earthy, called Quo Vadis. We also have The Oxford Book of English Verse, compiled in 1900 by Arthur Quiller-Couch, so now I need no longer pester Mr Futrelle when I wish to ornament my log with epigraphs.

  At least ten weeks have passed since anybody has asked when we’re going to reach the Lesser Antilles. How might I account for this cavalier attitude to our rescue? I suspect that the phenomenon traces in part to the special editions of the New York Herald-Tribune and the Manchester Guardian that we salvaged last May. In both cases, the theme of the issue was “The Titanic Catastrophe: One Year Later”. Evidently the outside world has managed to extract a profound moral lesson from the tragedy. Man, our beneficiaries have learned, is a flawed, fallible and naked creature. Our pride is nothing of which to be proud. For all our technological ingenuity, we are not gods or even demiurges. If a person wishes to be happy, he would do better planting his garden than polishing his gaskets, better cultivating his soul than multiplying his possessions.

  Given the ethos that now obtains throughout North America, Europe and the British Empire, how can we blithely go waltzing home? How dare we disillusion Western civilization by returning from the dead? I’ve consulted with representatives from steerage, amidships and the aristocracy, and they’ve all ratified my conclusion. Showing up now would amount to saying, “Sorry, friends and neighbours, but you’ve been living in a Rousseauesque fantasy, for the Titanic’s resourceful company defeated Nature after all. Once again human cleverness has triumphed over cosmic indifference, so let’s put aside all this sentimental talk of hubris and continue to fill the planet to bursting with our contrivances and toys.”

  To be sure, we also have certain personal - you might even say selfish - rea
sons to keep the Ada as our address. Colonel Astor, Mr Widener and Mr Guggenheim note, with great exasperation, that according to our salvaged newspapers the American Treasury Department intends to levy a severe tax on people at their level of income. (Ironically, these revenues will be due each year on the day the Titanic went down.) Reverend Bateman and Father Byles aver that their castaway flocks have proven a hundred times more attentive to the Christian message than were their congregations on dry land. At least half our married men, regardless of class, confess that they’ve grown weary of their wives back home, and many have started courting the nubile colleens from steerage. Surprisingly, some of our unescorted married women admit to analogous sentiments. Consider the case of Margaret Brown, our Denver suffragette and rabble-rouser, who avers that her marriage to J. J. Brown lost its magic many years ago, hence her proclivity for throwing herself at me in a most shocking and, I must say, exciting manner.

  And, of course, we continue to expand our material amenities. Last week we put in a squash court. This morning Mr Andrews showed me his plans for a Turkish bath. Tomorrow my officers and I shall consider whether to allocate our canvas reserves to a canopy for the emigrants, analogous to the protection enjoyed by our second-cabin and forward residents. All in all, it would appear that, as captain of this community, I am obligated to defer our deliverance indefinitely, an attitude with which the vivacious Mrs Brown heartily agrees.

  * * * *

  11 December 1913

  Lat. 10°17’S, Long. 32°52’ W

  Looking back on Vasil Plotcharsky’s attempt to foment a socialist revolution aboard the Ada, I would say that it was all for the best. Just as I suspected, the man is besotted with Trotsky. At first he confined his political activities to organizing marches, rallies and strikes amongst the steerage passengers and former Titanic victualling staff, his aim being to protest what he called “the tyrannical regime of Czar Henry Wilde and his decadent courtiers”. Alas, it wasn’t long before Mr Plotcharsky and his followers broke into the arms locker and equipped themselves with pistols, whereupon they started advocating the violent overthrow of my regime.

  But for the intervention of our resident logic meister, Mr Futrelle, who can be as quick as his fictional Thinking Machine, Plotcharsky’s exhortations might have led to bloodshed. Instead, Futrelle explained to the Trotskyites that, per Karl Marx’s momentous revelation, the land of collectivist milk and classless honey is destined to rise only from the rubble of the Western imperialist democracies. The Workers’ Paradise cannot be successfully organized within feudal societies such as contemporary Russia or, for that matter, the good ship Ada. In due time, with scientific inevitability, the world’s capitalist economies will yield to the iron imperatives of history, but for now even the most ardent Bolshevik must practise forbearance.

  Mr Plotcharsky listened attentively, spent the following day in a brown study, and cancelled the revolution. To tell you the truth, I don’t think his heart was in it.

  Of course, not all of Vasil Plotcharsky’s partisans were happy with this turn of events, and one of them - a Southampton butcher named Charles Barrow - argued that we should forthwith institute a democracy aboard the Ada, as an essential first step towards a socialist Utopia. Initially I resisted Mr Barrow’s argument, whereupon he introduced his cleaver into the conversation, and I assured him that I would not stand in the way of progress.

  And so a bright new day has dawned aboard the Ada. Mr Andrews’ astounding machine is now considerably more than a raft, and I am now considerably less than her captain. On 13 October, by a nearly unanimous vote, Mr Plotcharsky and Colonel Astor abstaining, we became the People’s Republic of Adaland. Our constitutional convention, drawing representatives from the aristocracy, the second-cabin precincts and steerage, dragged on for two weeks. George Widener, John Thayer and Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon were scandalized by the resulting document, mostly because it forbade the establishment of a state church, instituted a unitary Parliament oblivious to class distinctions, and - owing to the tireless efforts of Margaret Brown and her sorority of suffragettes - enfranchised every adult female citizen. I keep trying to convince Widener, Thayer and Duff-Gordon that certain concessions to modernity are better than the Bolshevik alternative.

  On 13 November I was elected the first Prime Minister of Adaland in a landslide, thereby vindicating the platform of my Egalitarian Party and giving pause to Father Peruschitz’s Catholic Workers Party, Sir Cosmo’s Christian Entrepreneurs Party, Thomas Andrews’s Technotopia Party and Vasil Plotcharsky’s Communist Party. Two days after my triumph at the polls, I asked Maggie Brown to marry me. She’d done a splendid job as my campaign manager, attracting over eighty per cent of the female vote to our cause, and I knew she would make an excellent wife as well.

  * * * *

  17 April 1914

  Lat. 13°15’ N, Long. 29°11 W

  The week began with an extraordinary stroke of luck. Shortly after noon, poking through the wreck of a frigate called the Ganymede, we happened upon a wireless set, plus a petrol engine to supply it with power. In short order John Phillips and Harold Bride got the rig working. “Once again I have the ears of an angel,” enthused a beaming Phillips. “I can tell you all the gossip of a troubled and tumultuous world.”

  Woodrow Wilson has been elected the 28th President of the United States. The Second Balkans War has ended with a peace treaty between Serbia and Turkey. Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian Passive Resistance Movement, has been arrested. Pope Pius X has died, succeeded by Cardinal della Chiesa as Pope Benedict XV. Ernest Shackleton is headed for the Antarctic. The feisty suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst languishes in prison after attempting to blow up Lloyd George. Nickelodeon audiences have fallen in love with a character called the Little Tramp. A great canal through the Isthmus of Panama is about to open. The second anniversary of the Titanic disaster occasioned sermons, speeches, editorials and religious observances throughout the Western world.

  Good Lord, has it been two years already? It seems only yesterday that I watched Mr Andrews unfurl his blueprint in the chartroom. So much has happened since then: the launching of the Ada, the consumption of Ismay and Murdoch, the reports of our collective demise, our decision to remain waterborne for the nonce, the birth of this republic - not to mention my marriage to the redoubtable Maggie.

  Adaland continues to ply the Atlantic in a loop bounded on the north by the Tropic of Cancer and on the south by the Tropic of Capricorn. We last crossed the equator in late February. Mrs Wilde marked the event by organizing an elaborate masquerade ball reminiscent of the fabled Brazilian Carnaval. The affair was a huge success, and we shall probably do the same thing three months hence when we hit the line again.

  At least once a week we find ourselves within hailing distance of yet another pesky freighter or presumptuous steamer. By paddling furiously and hoisting all sails - our spars now collectively carry ten thousand square feet - we always manage to outrun the intruder. In theory, thanks to our wireless rig, we have endured the last of these nerve-wracking chases, for Phillips and Bride can now sound the alarm well before we become objects of unwanted charity.

  * * * *

  2 September 1914

  Lat. 25°48’S, Long. 33°16’ W

  Against the dictates of reason, in defiance of all decency, with contempt for every Christian virtue, the world has gone to war. According to our wireless intercepts, the Western Front stretches a staggering four hundred and seventy-five miles across northern France, the Boche on one side, the Allies on the other, both armies dug in and defending themselves with machine guns. In my mind’s eye I see the intervening terrain: a no-man’s-land presided over by Death, now on holiday from Coleridge’s skeletal ship and reigning over a kingdom of muck, blood, bone, mustard gas and barbed wire, whilst Life-in-Death combs her yellow locks, paints her ruby lips, and sports with the boys in the trenches. Between 4 August and 29 August, Phillips informs me, 260,000 French soldiers died the most wretched, agonizing and pointless
deaths imaginable.

  “I was under the impression that, since the Titanic allegedly went down two years ago, self-delusion had lost favour in Europe,” Mrs Wilde remarked. “How does one account for this madness?”

  “I can’t explain it,” I replied. “But I would say we now have more reason than ever to remain aboard the Ada.”