Michael Moorcock - Gloriana

“No, no, no. On with it, Doctor Dee.” Gloriana tapped with the royal baton.

“Yes, Your Majesty. (On with it, aye. On to your warm bones with mine…. ) I have another plan, more detailed, of a section of our cosmos.” He moved towards Patch, rolling the chart as he approached, plucked the end from the boy’s soft hand, strode to the sideboard and, selecting another chart, returned. Again the boy and the man moved, as if in a dance, to display the next chart. “Here are familiar constellations, marked in red. Behind these are the same constellations, but at a different angle, in blue-then the constellations again, in black-and again, and again, in these yellows and greens. The constellation in red is the one we observed with the naked eye. The constellations in other colours are those which might exist, but which are separated from our ordinary perception by some means-layers of ether, perhaps, hiding one from the next. (Oh, those fingers! Her hands! Would that they tickled my manhood now…. ) I have not, Lord Montfallcon, observed such constellations through telescopes. They are theoretical constellations. There have been reports, of course. I am even now, alchemically, devising a means of crossing from one world to another, but so far I have had poor success.”

“You have no need to defend yourself from Lord Montfallcon’s ignorance, Doctor Dee.” Queen Gloriana reached out towards her Chancellor, placating him with a gesture as she placated her Philosopher with a word. “You seem distracted, Doctor Dee.”

He looked up, controlling the fires which sprang behind his eyes. He ignored the enquiry. “Certain persons have been brought to me in the course of the years, gracious Majesty who have seemed mad. These men and women have all claimed to originate upon other worlds. I have found them logical and consistent-sane, save for their single, central delusion, that this world is not their own. I have had them draw their spheres for me. They are all, in basic, the same as our own. The names for nations and continents are sometimes different. The societies described are often alien and barbaric.” He rolled the second chart, moved to the sideboard, came back with a third. “This is one, for instance. Similar to ours, yet not entirely the same.” Patch took the left, Dee the right, to display the detailed map of the globe. “See. The names are not at all like ours, though a few correspondences exist. I had this from a poor lunatic who claimed to have been a king over all the German states, some Emperor Charlemagne, though with considerable magical powers-”

“With designs on Albion?” The grey voice.

Pedantic Lord Montfallcon was ignored. Una, Countess of Scaith, looked with great interest at the map. It was almost as if it was familiar to her. “It is very good.”

“Fanciful, you mean, my lady?” asked Dee.

“If you like.”

“I believe it to be a true representation. This is the only full one I have made. My informant, as it happened, was obsessed with maps. I have yet, gracious Majesty, to map the geography of any other spheres.” He let Patch roll up this last map and take it to place it with the others. “However, from reports brought to me I can produce a scheme-a broad plan of the positions of these spheres and how they might relate to our own. We are at the centre (again for argument’s purpose) of a pool. Our activities produce ripples and eddies throughout this pool. We are for the most part unaware of these movements, save when, by fluke, a backwash, a momentary current, brings us evidence. This evidence was feared by our ancestors. Devils, angels, poltergeists, pixies, elves, gods and their works were held to be the cause of these disruptions to our ordered world. Why, there are those who still call that noble musician Lord Caudolon a demon, because he came so suddenly to our sphere, speaking of strange lands and works and wondering of everything he found (Lady, I would your lips would touch this pounding prick), yet soon he calmed and judged himself recovered from our enchantments-or a dream. As I said, some spheres are not dissimmilar. Their histories, even, have resemblances-there are other Glorianas, other Dees, other Lords Chancellors, no doubt-shadows, sometimes faint, sometimes distorted, of our own selves.”

Gloriana eyed the distance. “Doctor Dee, think you we shall one day travel between these spheres?”

“I work, intermittently, upon that very problem, madam (your lips and then your legs shall part for me), and hope one day to effect the means of moving freely from sphere to sphere, as a pike crosses beneath the surface of his pond.”

“Sorcery!” grunted Lord Montfallcon. “Is this not always where your mathematick leads? Now you see, great Majesty, why I’d abolish such studies-though I blame not the misguided scholar.” A sidelong glance of malice. Doctor Dee shrugged it back.

“It is our wish,” murmured the Queen, “that all arts shall be studied at our Court.”

“Then let the Queen look to the security of her Realm, lest she find it torn asunder by warring demons admitted to our sphere by Doctor Dee’s experiments.” Lord Montfallcon spoke without a great deal of conviction.

“My sovereign,” a wincing bow from Dee, “the Science of Cabalism…”

Her foot moved. “You think this diversion likely, Doctor Dee?”

He bowed again, sucked in a breath or two. (Blood of Zeus! These pantaloons will make a eunuch of me yet!) “I fear not, my sovereign. Devils are the name we give to beings whose origins are obscure to us. Those few travellers who have passed between the spheres are men and women like ourselves. Sometimes they think they are reincarnated, in past or future; sometimes they find our sphere Heaven, sometimes Hell. Doubtless, if we visited them unwillingly, we should think of their worlds in a similar way ( I swear it-your breasts shall bloom to the heat of my tongue) ” .’

“Look to your soul, madam!” The Chancellor’s words were actually addressed to his rival. A warning. “The Pit lies, inevitably, at the end of Doctor Dee’s dark road.”

Dee was evidently astonished by this expression of a previous century’s superstition-words which might have come from Montfallcon’s famous witch-seeking grandfather. He decided diplomacy: “The Universe, madam, is not our concern, perhaps. ( To have her arse in love and pain!) This planet and its facets, its shadows, is complex enough, without our needing to discourse on the question of rival spheres. (Oh, she is the universe, mother of galaxies-I would grasp her tits until she gave voice to the Last Trump!) If my lord the Chancellor cautions discretion…”

“It is my duty to protect the whole Realm-including you, Doctor Dee-as best I can.” Frowning, Montfallcon drew a fold or two of heavy cloth about him.

“I respect your sincerity, my lord.” Dee’s tone showed puzzlement. “However, you seem unusually disturbed by what is, after all, no more than a discussion of possibilities.”

Montfallcon snorted. “My business is with possibilities. I have many to consider at this moment.”

“You are agitated, my lord, because we keep you from your Duty.” Gloriana became placatory, impressed by Montfallcon’s manner, at last. “You may go to it.”

“I am grateful, madam.” A bow, a swift, disapproving glance at Dee, and Montfallcon fled for his mysterious rooms.

“I had no intention…” began Dee, biting his lip a little, his white beard flat against his chest.

“Lord Montfallcon is distracted. Matters of State, as you know. I am to blame. It was capricious of me. You’ll need finance for further experiments, I take it, Doctor Dee?”

“Madam, I did not come-”