The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories by Ian Watson, Ian Whates Page A

in a different Grassmarket.
     
    “What is this?” she cried, gazing around bewildered at the suddenly airier, cleaner, brighter and even noisier space of the plaza. She let go off me, and took a swift pace or two back and looked at me with suspicion and dread. “What arts of the East have you used, Mr Jones? Sorcery? Illusion?”
     
    “Not these, I fear,” I said. “This is real. It is a different reality than that to which you are accustomed - one in which history took a different turn, centuries ago.”
     
    She seemed to grasp the concept at once.
     
    “Are there many such?”
     
    “An infinite number,” I told her.
     
    “But how marvellous! And yet how obvious, that the Creator’s infinity should be reflected in His creations!”
     
    “That’s one way of looking at it,” I allowed.
     
    Mary Ann looked around again, more calmly now, though I could see her quivering.
     
    “I see this is a history in which the Covenanters’ memory is honoured,” she said. She pointed to one of a trio of statues. “I recognize that visage, of Richard Cameron. But who are the others?”
     
    “They will mean nothing to you,” I said.
     
    “I want to see them, all the same.”
     
    She was intrigued by the pedestrian crossing, and impressed by the vehicles, tinny and two-stroke though they were. I nudged her to stop her staring at women with bare heads and short skirts. We stopped beneath the statues.
     
    The stern man in the homburg, with upraised, didactic, forefinger:
     
    “John Maclean,” she read from the plinth. “A preacher, was he?”
     
    “In a manner of speaking,” I said. “And in his manner of public speech, by all accounts.”
     
    The man in the short coat, with glasses and pipe - and, Scotland being Scotland in all manifestations, with a traffic cone on his head:
     
    “And ‘Harold Wilson, martyr of British democracy’?” She recoiled almost, frowning. “A democrat ? A radical?”
     
    “Not precisely,” I said, looking around distractedly. “It would take too long to explain. That man who confronted us -he may catch up at any moment. I must go.”
     
    “What about me, Mr Jones?” Mary Ann said.
     
    “I’m sorry,” I said, still looking about. “I can’t take you with me. It’s far too dangerous. You’ll be safe here for now.” My gaze alighted on a tall concrete building, from which hung a banner with a jowly, frowning, face and the letters “GB”. I pointed.
     
    “Remove your bonnet,” I said. “It’s not customary here. Your dress will pass. Go to that building, ask for the Women’s Institute, and say that you have just arrived from London, penniless. Say nothing of where you really come from, lest you be consigned to a lunatic asylum. You will be made welcome, and given employment. Learn what you can in this world, and as soon as possible I’ll take you back to yours.”
     
    “But - “
     
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my pursuer emerge from the pub called The Last Drop, and peer around.
     
    “Goodbye, Miss Dykes,” I said.
     
    I handed her the oranges - they were for here, after all, where they were scarce - and sidestepped as far as I’d ever dared in a single jump.
     
    * * * *
     
    4. Storm Constantinople!
     
    And fell briefly into a world of Latin buzz and blazing neon, of fairy lights suspended on nothing above a grassy park, on which robe-clad dark-skinned people strolled beneath a Rock with no Castle, and with an evening sky alight with the artificial constellations of celestial cities in orbit overhead. I sprinted across the sward, towards where the King’s Stables Road wouldn’t be. I’d never been in this probability, but I recognized it by report: this is the one where Spartacus won, slavery fell, capitalism rose, and the Romans reached the Moon in about 500 (Not) AD and Alpha Centauri a century or two later . . .
     
    I leaped a stream that in most other worlds had long since been a sewer, sidestepped in mid-air, in a familiar