Mike Resnick - The Other Teddy Roosevelts

This trip didn’t go as well as the safari. He came down with fever, he almost lost his leg, and indeed at one time he urged his party to leave him behind to die and to go ahead without him. They didn’t, of course, and eventually he was well enough to continue the expedition and finish mapping the river, which was renamed the Rio Teodoro in his honor. (I don’t really need to compare him to the hundreds of explorers who inhabit the worlds of science fiction, do I?)

He came home, wrote yet another bestseller — Through the Brazilian Wilderness — then wrote another book on African animals, as well as more books on politics…but his health never fully recovered. He campaigned vigorously for our entrance into World War I, and it was generally thought that the Presidency was his for the asking in 1920, but he died in his sleep on January 6, 1919 at the age of 60 — having crammed about seventeen lifetimes into those six decades.

He was so fascinating, so talented in so many fields, so much bigger than Life that I decided (and I hope you agree) that he belonged in the one field that could accommodate a man with those virtues — science fiction, where he could finally find some challenges that were truly worthy of his talents, from civilizing the Congo to facing down a vampire on the streets of New York.

So here they are — the assembled alternate histories of that most gifted of Americans, Theodore Roosevelt.

Back in the 1970s, when some experts had decided that Jack the Ripper was a member of the British royal family, I took a good look at their reasoning, decided they were wrong, and wrote an article on who I thought the Ripper had to be. I had hoped it might generate some discussion, or at least a bit of controversy, but it sank without a trace.

Move the clock ahead a quarter of a century. I decided to offer my conclusion to a much larger audience — the science fiction readership of Asimov’s . My Teddy Roosevelt stories had become quite popular by then, so it was an easy decision to make him the hero. He had ample reason to be in London in the late 1880s — by then his reputation as a naturalist and ornithologist had crossed the ocean…and so had his reputation as a deputy sheriff out in the Dakota Bad Lands. Who better for a harassed and befuddled police force to turn to for help?

Besides, Roosevelt succeeded at almost every task he undertook, and since I was writing alternate histories, he didn’t fare too well in some of them, so I figured it was time to let him win one.

The novelette was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2001, so clearly someone must have agreed with me about the Ripper’s identity.

“From Hell, Mr. Lusk —

Sir, I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman,

prasarved it for you

tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise

I may send you the bloody knif that too it out if you only wate a whil longer

signed

Catch me when yu can

Mishter Lusk”

— Jack the Ripper

October 16, 1888

“I have not a particle of sympathy with the sentimentality — as I deem it, the mawkishness — which overflows with foolish pity for the criminal and cares not at all for the victim of the criminal.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Autobiography

The date was September 8, 1888

A hand reached out of the darkness and shook Roosevelt by the shoulder.

He was on his feet in an instant. His right hand shot out, crunching against an unseen jaw, and sending his assailant crashing against a wall. He crouched low, peering into the shadows, trying to identify the man who was clambering slowly to his feet.

“What the devil happened?” muttered the man.

“My question precisely,” said Roosevelt, reaching for his pistol and training it on the intruder. “Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

A beam of moonlight glanced off the barrel of the gun.

“Don’t shoot, Mr. Roosevelt!” said the man, holding up his hands. “It’s me — John Hughes!”

Roosevelt lit a lamp, keeping the gun pointed at the small, dapper man. “You haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Besides losing a tooth?” said Hughes bitterly as he spit a tooth into his hand amid a spray of blood. “I need your help.”

“What is this all about?” demanded Roosevelt, looking toward the door of his hotel room as if he expected one of Hughes’ confederates to burst through it at any moment.

“Don’t you remember?” said Hughes. “We spoke for more than an hour last night, after you addressed the Royal Ornithological Society.”

“What has this got to do with birds?” said Roosevelt. “And you’d better come up with a good answer. I’m not a patient man when I’m rudely awakened in the middle of the night.”

“You don’t remember,” said Hughes accusingly.

“Remember what ?”

Hughes pulled out a badge and handed it to the American. “I am a captain of the London Metropolitan Police. After your speech we talked, and you told me how you had single-handedly captured three armed killers in your Wild West.”

Roosevelt nodded. “I remember.”

“I was most favorably impressed,” said Hughes.

“I hope you didn’t wake me just to tell me that.”

“No — but it was the fact that you have personally dealt with a trio of brutal killers that made me think — hope, actually — that you might be able to help me.” Hughes paused awkwardly as the American continued to stare at him. “You did say that if I ever needed your assistance…”

“Did I say to request it in the middle of the night?” growled Roosevelt, finally putting his pistol back on his bedtable.

“Try to calm yourself. Then I’ll explain.”

“This is as calm as I get under these circumstances.” Roosevelt took off his nightshirt, tossed it on the fourposter bed, then walked to an ornate mahogany armoire, pulled out a pair of pants and a neatly-folded shirt, and began getting dressed. “Start explaining.”

“There’s something I want you to see.”

“At this hour?” said Roosevelt suspiciously. “Where is it?”

“It’s not far,” said Hughes. “Perhaps a twenty-minute carriage ride away.”

“What is it?”

“A body.”

“And it couldn’t wait until daylight?” asked Roosevelt.

Hughes shook his head. “If we don’t have her in the morgue by daylight, there will be panic in the streets.”

“I’m certainly glad you’re not given to exaggeration,” remarked Roosevelt sardonically.

“If anything,” replied the small Englishman seriously, “that was an understatement.”

“All right. Tell me about it.”

“I would prefer that you saw it without any preconceptions.”

“Except that it could cause a riot if seen in daylight.”

“I said a panic, not a riot,” answered Hughes, still without smiling.

Roosevelt buttoned his shirt and fiddled with his tie. “What time is it, anyway?”

“6:20 AM.”

“The sun’s not an early riser in London, is it?”

“Not at this time of year.” Hughes shifted his weight awkwardly.

“Now what’s the matter?”

“We have a crisis on our hands, Mr. Roosevelt. I realize that I have no legal right to enlist your help, but we are quite desperate.”

“Enough hyperbole,” muttered Roosevelt, slipping on his coat.

“You really hunted down those murderers in a blizzard?” said Hughes suddenly.

“The Winter of the Blue Snow,” said Roosevelt, nodding his head briskly. “Doubtless exaggerated by every dime novelist in America.”