The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (59 page)

The Lord Chamberlain, at Tsui’s side, motioned for the foreign devil to step forward. A tall, thin white man, he had a pile of pale brown hair on his head, and wispy mustaches that crept around the corners of his mouth towards his chin. A pair of round-framed glasses pinched the bridge of his nose, and his black wool suit was worn at the edges, the knees worn thin and shiny.

“Ten thousand pardons, your majesty,” the Lord Chamberlain began, bowing from the waist, “but may I introduce to you the Proctor Napier, scientific attaché to the Imperial Capital from the subjugated land of Britain, conquered in centuries past by your glorious ancestors.”

The Emperor inclined his head slightly, indicating that the foreign devil could continue.

“Many thanks for this indulgence, O Emperor,” Proctor Napier began. “I come seeking your patronage.”

The Emperor twitched the fingers of one hand, a precise motion.

“I was sent to these shores by your servant government in my home island,” Napier continued, “to assist in Imperial research. My specialty is logic, and the ordering of information, and over the course of the past years I have become increasingly involved with the questions of computation. The grand designs of your majesty’s long-range plans, whether to explore the moon and far planets, or to chart the course of the stars across the heavens, demand that complex calculations be performed at every step, and each of these calculations require both men, materials and time. It is my hope that each of these three prerequisites might be eliminated to a degree, so as to speed the progress towards your goals.”

Tsui, not certain before this moment why he had been called before the Emperor, now harbored a suspicion, and stifled the desire to shout down the foreign devil. At the Chamberlain’s side, he listened on, his hands curled into tense fists in his long sleeves.

“With your majesty’s kind indulgence,” Napier said, “I would take a moment to explain the fundamentals of my invention.” With a timid hand, he gestured towards the oily contraption on the floor behind him. “The basic principle of its operation is a number system of only two values. I call this system ‘binary’. Though an innovation of Europe, this system has its basis in the ancient wisdom of China, and as such it seems appropriate that your divine majesty is the one to whom it is presented.

“The trigrams of the I Ching are based on the structure of Yin and Yang, the complementary forces of nature. These trigrams, the building blocks of the I Ching, are composed either of broken or of unbroken lines. Starting from this pair of values, any number of combinations can be generated. Gottfried Liebniz, a German sage, adapted this basic structure some two hundred years ago into a full number system, capable of encoding any value using only two symbols. He chose the Arabic numerals ‘1’ and ‘0’, but the ideograms for Yin and Yang can be substituted and the system still functions the same. The decoding is key. Using the Arabic notation, the number one is represented as ‘1’, the number two as ‘10’, the number three as ‘11’, the number four as ‘100’, and so on.”

The Emperor sighed, pointedly, and glanced to the spacecraft model in his lap, signifying that he was growing weary of the presentation.

“Oh, dear,” Napier whispered under his breath, and then hastened to add, “which brings me to my invention.” He turned, and stepped to the side of the construct of oily metal and wood on the floor. It was about the height of a man’s knee, almost as wide, a roughly cubical shape of copper and iron plain and unadorned. The top face was surmounted by a brass frame, into which was set a series of wooden blocks, each face of which was carved with a number or symbol. On the cube face presented towards the Emperor was centered an array of articulated brass buttons, three rows of fifteen, the brassy sheen dulled by smudges of oil and grime.

“I call it the Analytical Engine. Powered by a simple motor, the engine comprises a series of switches, each of which can be set either to an ‘on’ or ‘off’ state by the manipulation of gears and cogs. By assigning a binary value to each of the two states, we are then able to represent with the engine any numerical value conceivable, so long as there are a sufficient number of switches available. With the inclusion of five operational variables, and the ability to display results immediately,” he indicated the series of blocks crowning the device, “a fully functional Analytical Engine would theoretically be capable of solving quickly any equation put to it. Anyone with a rudimentary ability to read and input values can produce results more quickly and efficiently than a team of trained abacusists. This is only a prototype model, of course, capable of working only up to a limited number of digits, but with the proper funding I’m confident we could construct an engine free of this limitation.”

Tsui’s pulse raged in his ears, though he kept silent and calm in the view of the Emperor.

“If I may?” Napier said, glancing from the Emperor to his invention with an eyebrow raised.

The Emperor twitched, almost imperceptibly, and in response the Chamberlain stepped forward.

“You may exhibit your device,” the Chamberlain announced, bowing his head fractionally but never letting his eyes leave Napier’s.

Wiping his hands nervously on the thin fabric of his pants, Napier crouched down and gripped the wood-handled crank at the rear of the engine. Leaning in, the strain showing on his pale face, he cranked through a dozen revolutions that produced a grinding clatter that set Tsui’s teeth on edge. Finally, when the Chief Computator was sure he could stand the torture no longer, the engine sputtered, coughed, and vibrated to clanking life. Little plumes of acrid smoke bellowed up from the corners of the metal cube, and a slow drip of oil from one side puddled in a growing pool on the lacquered floor.

Licking his lips, Napier worked his way around to the front of the device, and rested his fingers on the rows of brass buttons.

“I’ll start with a simple operation,” he announced. “Can anyone provide two numbers?”

No one ventured an answer, all too occupied with the clattering machine on the floor, afraid that it might do them some harm.

“You, sir?” Napier said, pointing at Tsui. “Can you provide me with two numbers for my experiment?”

All eyes on him, not least of which the Emperor’s, Tsui could only nod, biting back the answer that crouched behind his teeth, hoping to pounce.

“One and two,” Tsui answered simply, eyes on the floor.

With a last look around the assembled for any other response, Napier hit four buttons in sequence.

“I’ve just instructed the engine to compute the sum of the two provided values,” he explained, pausing for a brief resigned sigh, “and when I press this final button the calculation will occur immediately and the result will be displayed above.”

Demonstrating a flair for the dramatic, Napier reached back his hand, and stabbed a finger at the final button with a flourish. The engine smoked and wheezed even more than before, and with a final clatter the rightmost of the blocks crowning the device spun on its brass axis and displayed the symbol for “3” face up.

“There, you see?” Napier said. “The answer produced, without any human intervention beyond the initial input.”

“I have seen horses,” the Emperor replied in a quiet voice, “clopping their hoofs on cobblestones, do more complicated sums than this.”

“Perhaps, your majesty,” the Chamberlain said, stepping forward, “a more evaluative demonstration is in order. Chief Computator Tsui?” The Chamberlain motioned to him with a brief wave of his hand, and Tsui inched forward, his fingers laced fiercely together in front of him.

The Chamberlain then snapped his fingers, and a page glided out of the shadows into the center of the hall, a small stool in one hand, an abacus in the other. Setting the stool down a few paces from the foreign devil’s instrument, the page presented the abacus to Tsui and, bowing low, glided back into the shadows.

“I would suggest, with your majesty’s permission,” the Chamberlain said, “that a series of calculations be performed, both by the Proctor Napier and his machine, and by our own Chief Computator and his abacus. Which of the two performs more reliably and efficiently will no doubt tell us more than any other demonstration could.”

The Emperor twitched his eyebrows, slightly, suggesting a nod.

“Let us begin,” said the Chamberlain.

Tsui seated himself on the stool. The abacus on his lap was cool and smooth at his touch, the beads when tested sliding frictionless over the frame of rods. Tilting the frame of the abacus up, he set the beads at their starting position, and then left his fingers hovering over the rightmost row, ready to begin.

* * * *

The Chamberlain officiated, providing values and operations from a slip of paper he produced from his sleeve. That he’d anticipated this test of man and machine was obvious, though it was inappropriate for any involved to suggest the Chamberlain had orchestrated the events to his ends.

The first calculation was a simple addition, producing the sum of two six-digit numbers. Tsui had his answer while Napier’s engine was still sputtering and wheezing, taking less than a third of the time needed for the machine to calculate and display the correct answer on blocks.

The second calculation was multiplication, and here again Tsui finished first. The lapse of time between Tsui calling out his answer and Napier calling out his, though, dwindled in this second round, the engine taking perhaps only twice as long.

The third calculation was division, a four-digit number divided into a six-digit one. Tsui, pulse racing, called out his answer only an instant before Napier. The ruling of the Chamberlain named the Chief Computator the victor, even after Napier protested that he had inadvertently set his engine to calculate to two decimal places, and that as a result his answer was in fact more accurate.

The fourth and final calculation was to find the cube root of a six-digit number. This time, with his previous failure in mind, Napier shouted out after the numbers had been read that the answer should be calculated to two decimal points. The Chamberlain, eyes on the two men, nodded gravely and agreed to this condition. Tsui, who was already fiercely at work on the solution, felt the icy grip of dread. Each additional decimal place in a cube root operation increased the time necessary for the computation exponentially, and even without them he wasn’t sure if he would finish first.

Fingers racing over the beads, too tense even to breathe, Tsui labored. The answer was within reach, he knew, with only seconds until he would be named the victor. The abhorrent clattering machine of the foreign interloper would be exposed for a fraud, and the place of the Chief Computator, and of the Imperial House of Computation, would be secure.

“I have it!” Napier shouted, and stepped back from the Analytical Engine to let the assembled see the displayed solution. There was a manic gleam in his eyes, and he looked directly at the Emperor without reservation or shame, as though expecting something like applause.

Tsui was frozen, struck dumb. Reviewing his mental calculations, he realized he’d been nowhere near an answer, would have required minutes more even to come close. He looked up, saw the symbols displayed on the first blocks of the device, and knew that Napier’s answer was the correct one.

“It is decided, then,” the Chamberlain announced, striding to Tsui’s side. “Of the four tests, the methods of our tradition won out more often than they did not, and only by changing the parameters of the examination after calculations had begun was the Proctor Napier able to prevail. Napier’s device is a failure.”

“But...” Napier began, on the edge of objection. Seeing the stern expression on the Chamberlain’s face, and looking to the palace guards that ringed the room, the foreigner relented. He’d agreed that his machine should be judged by a majority of tests, and had to abide by the results. To object now would risk a loss of face, at best, and a loss of something much more dire at worst.

Tsui, too numb still to speak, rose shakily to his feet and handed the abacus back to the page who appeared again from the shadows. Bowing to the Emperor, he backed towards the exit, face burning with self-recrimination.

“The Emperor demands a brief moment,” the Emperor announced, sitting forward with something resembling interest. “British, how much time and work would be needed for you to complete the improvements you mentioned earlier? How many of your countrymen are trained in the arts of this device, who could assist you in the process?”