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Hexagons by Robert Reed

My mother always made a lot of noise about keeping busy, and how much she hated tripping over kids

who were doing nothing but reading books or watching the electric vase. That’s why my brother and

I belonged to the biggest, most important swim team in our little end of the world. It was to keep

us fit and keep us from being underfoot. Chester was one of the stars on the team. I wasn’t.

Nobody ever explained how I got accepted into those lofty ranks. But if I know my mom, she told

the coach, "Fair is fair. And if you want one of my boys, you’ve got to take both of them." Mom

loved to talk about things like fair play and decency, but mostly, it was just awfully convenient

having the two of us involved in the same sport. It meant less driving, and fewer events to

attend. Which is a kind of fairness, I suppose–making life easy on your folks.

I wasn’t an awful swimmer. In a flat-out race, Chester and I were pretty much equal. Pretty much.

But my brother happened to be four years younger than me–four years and seven months, to be

exact–which made him one of the top seven-year-olds in the province. And made me his big-assed

sidekick. Our coach was pretty plain about his own affections. He’d stalk the sides of the bath,

hollering instructions down at poor Chester. Elbows, legs, breathing, and then back to the elbows

again. Swimming is a ferociously technical business. It demands a muscular grace that I’ve never

been able to maintain. Occasionally the coach would check on me, making sure I wasn’t dead in the

deep end. But in general, my value with the team was more of a spiritual order: I made the other

twelve-year-olds feel good about their abilities. Lapping me was a great game. Boys and girls

could play that game all night. You can see why I didn’t exactly adore the sport. But it wasn’t

that awful, either. I got to stare at girls wearing tight wet silks. That’s always a benefit. And

since nobody expected anything from me, I was free to cling to the side for minutes at a stretch,

watching the girls and listening to the coach roaring at my brother. "Pull through the water!

Through, Chester! Down the middle of your body. And bring your hand out this way. This way! With

your elbow up . . . oh, Christ . . . what in hell is that. . . ?"

I don’t remember that night’s workout. And I don’t have any special recollections of getting

dressed in the locker room afterward. We always took showers, but I never got rid of the chlorine

smell. The stuff clung to my hair, and if my goggles leaked–and they usually did–my eyes would

burn for hours. Then we’d put our school uniforms back on again, and I always had to make sure

that Chester remembered his silk trunks and goggles. I assume all those usual things happened that

night. But what I do remember, without question, was that our father was supposed to pick us up.

That gave the evening a dramatic kick. In our lives, Dad was something of a wild card. You could

never guess where he was or what was so important, but his busy life had its way of dividing his

allegiances, spreading him thin. I can’t count the nights when it was Chester and me sitting on

the steps of the Young Legionnaires’ Club, waiting for that old green Testudo to pull up.

That night was different, however. The old man surprised us. Not only was he waiting at the locker

door, he’d actually seen the last few minutes of the workout. "You looked strong out there," he

told Chester, rubbing at his stubbly hair. Then to me, with a pushed-along concern, he asked, "Are

you hurt? I saw you doing a lot of standing in the shallow end."

I could have lied. I could have told him, "Yeah, I had a cramp." I should have made up a great

story, my twisting, pain-wracked body sinking to the bottom and half a dozen girls in wet silks

fighting for the honor of pulling me up again. But instead, I just shrugged and told him, "No, I

wasn’t hurt."

"Then what were you doing?"

"Standing," I said. And I left it there.

Our father wasn’t a big man, or small. There was a time in life when he seemed wondrously

powerful–a titan capable of casting shadows and flinging snowballs clear over our house. But at

the wise age of twelve, I was realizing that shadows were easy and our house wasn’t all that big.

And everything about my father was beginning to diminish. He had a fondness for overcoats that

were too large for him. He was a smiling man. A salesman by trade and by temperament, he had a

smiling voice and an easy charm and the sort of rough, unspectacular looks that helped people

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believe whatever he was trying to sell them. We might have been rich, if Dad had just stuck to

selling. But he had this dangerous streak of imagination. Every few years, he’d start up some new

business. Each venture began with hope and considerable energy, and each lasted for a year or

maybe eighteen months. At some point, we’d stop hearing about his new career. Dad would stay away

from home, at least past dinnertime. Toward the end, he couldn’t make it back until midnight, and

I would lie in bed, wrestling with my brain, trying desperately to make myself sleep before Mom

had the chance to corner him and the shouting began.

That night was a winter night. Windy and bitter. With Dad leading the charge, we stepped out into

the cold dark air, our breath smoky and my wet hair starting to freeze. The old Testudo, big and

square, was parked under a light. Hadrian was sitting in the back, in his straw, watching for us.

I liked that cat, but he worried me. He liked to nip fingers. My fingers, mostly. All those

generations of careful breeding and the fancy Asian splicing, but really, cheetahs are still as

wild as they are tame. And while I thought it was neat to have a cheetah, Mom held a rather

different opinion. "Do you know why your father bought him?" she asked me once. "Because he’s

going bald."

"The cat is?" I asked.

"No, your father is," she rumbled. Which, frankly, made no more sense to me than the cat going

bald.

I climbed into the back seat, just so I could stick one of my least favorite fingers through the

wire mesh, that dog-like face greeting me with a rough lick and a quick pinch of incisors. Chester

was sitting up front with Dad. Dad cranked the motor, and it came on and then died again. He tried

again, and there was a roar and cough and silence again. That was my father’s life with machines.

He decided the motor had flooded, and so he turned on the ceiling light and waited. He smiled back

at me, or at his cat. I could never feel sure which of us was getting the smile. Then with an odd,

important voice, he said, "I want to show you something."

I said, "Okay."

He reached inside his big overcoat, pulling out a folded-up newspaper. It was already turned to

page two. One tiny article was circled. "Read it," he advised, handing the paper back to me. And

even before I could start, he asked, "What do you think?"

I saw my father’s name.

"Leonard Dunlop, 38, has filed as a candidate for Senate in District 8," I read. Then I held the

article up to the weak light, eyes blinking from the chlorine, little tears giving every word a

mushy, dreamy look. "If he wins," I read, "Mr. Dunlop intends to use his salary to help pay for

his children’s university education."

Again, Dad asked, "What do you think?"

"You’re running for what?" I asked, using an unfortunate tone. A doubting tone.

"The Senate," he said, pointing proudly at the tiny article.

"The big one?" Chester asked. "In New Rome?"

I snorted. Twelve years old and not particularly wise in the ways of politics, but I still had

enough sense to dismiss that possibility. "He means the little senate. For our province, that’s

all."

Which wasn’t the best way to phrase things.

Dad gave me a look. Then he turned forward and started the car, listening to the ugly engine cough

and die. Then he turned to Chester, telling him, "But this is just the beginning."

With his salesman’s voice, he sounded convinced, saying, "This is an important district. If we

win, it’s a launching pad to New Rome. And from there, who knows? Who knows?"

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My father’s sense of politics was always shaky. For instance, he might have been smart to warn Mom

about his impending candidacy. Instead, he never quite mentioned his plans to her, and she had to

learn about it when friends and relatives began calling. Or maybe on second thought, Dad had a

good, clear sense of politics. Because if he had said something, I think Mom would have told him

half a thousand reasons why it was the wrong thing to do, and stupid; and against his better

judgment, he might have listened to her wise counsel.

As it was, Mom pretty much amazed me. She was waiting for us at the dinner table, and she was

furious. But she didn’t do anything worse than give Dad a good hard glare. Then she sat her boys

down and said, "I think your father would make a good senator. If he happens to win."

There. That’s why she wasn’t screaming. Mom had a good rational sense about the world, and she

knew the old man didn’t have a chance.

I don’t remember much else about that night. We watched the electric vase, waiting for the late

news. We waited to hear Dad’s name. But with all the national stuff to talk about, and the

international stuff, and a report from the Mars mission, plus the weather and sports, there wasn’t

a lot of room left for local news. I went to bed wondering if he really was running. Or was his

candidacy just a bunch of misprints in a newspaper famous for its mistakes?

But Dad was running, and it didn’t stay secret. Friends and classmates heard about it from their

parents. My best friend knew even before I did. Nathan was this part-Jewish kid, sharp and smart

in all sorts of ways. He was older than me by a few months, but it felt like years. He always knew

stuff that I never even thought about knowing. We rode the same bus to school, and since his house

was a couple of stops before mine, he was usually waiting for me. That next morning, wearing a big

grin, he said, "I heard about your dad."

"What’d you hear?" I blurted, suddenly alarmed. I always had a what’s-he-done-now feeling about my

father.

"He’s running for the provincial senate," Nathan told me.

"Oh, yeah."

"He entered just before the deadline," he told me.

I had no idea there were deadlines. But then again, life seemed a lot like school, and school was

nothing but a string of deadlines.

"You know who he’s running against?" Nathan asked.

I said, "Maybe."

"You don’t."

"Maybe not," I agreed.

He named four names. Today, only one of those names matters. But I doubt if I learned any of them

that morning. Nathan could have been speaking Mandarin, for all I cared.

"They’re running against your father," he explained. "In the primary, this spring. Then the two

candidates who earn the most votes–"

"I know how it works," I complained.

"Run against each other," he finished. "Next autumn."

That was nearly a year off. Nothing that remote could matter, and so I told Nathan, "He’s going to

win."

"Who is? Your father?"

I said, "Sure," with a faltering conviction.

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Nathan didn’t make fun of me. I expected teasing, and I probably deserved it. But he just looked

down the length of the bus, nodding to himself. "That wouldn’t be the worst thing," he muttered.

"Not by a long ways."

I liked Nathan for reasons other than Nathan. He lived up on the hill, in a genuinely enormous

house, and because his family was wealthy, he always had fancier toys and every good game. His

mother was beautiful and Jewish, which made her doubly exotic to me. His father was a government

man in one of those big bureaus that helped protect our nation’s industries, which made him

important. But Nathan’s grandfather was my favorite. The old man had emigrated from Britain,

escaping some ill-defined trouble, and now he lived with his son’s family, tucked away in their

guest quarters. He was a fat man, a cigar smoker and a determined drinker, who’d sit and talk to

me. We had actual conversations about real, adult topics. The man had this massive intelligence

and endless opinions, and with a booming voice, he could speak forever about things that I never

knew were important. And where Nathan would ridicule my ideas, his grandfather seemed to accept

much of what I said, correcting me where I was horribly wrong, and congratulating me on my

occasional and rather tiny insights.

"What you should do," Nathan once told me. "Ask to see his war game."

I’d been coming to the house for a year or two, but the game had never been mentioned.

"It’s kind of a secret. But I think he’ll show it to you. If you ask nice, and if you pick the

right time."

"What’s the right time?" I asked.

"After he’s drunk too much," my friend confided, winking with a conspiratorial glee.

Looking back, I can see exactly what Nathan wanted. He wanted the excuse to see the secret game

for himself. But regardless of reasons, I was curious. A few weeks later, when his grandfather

seemed properly stewed, I mentioned the mysterious game. The old man stared at me for a minute,

smiling in that thin way people use when they’re trying not to look too pleased. Then with a low,

rumbling voice, he asked, "And what, dear boy, have you heard about this game?"

"It’s about the world, and war," I answered. Then I lied, saying, "That’s all I know."

We were sitting in the enormous dining room. The old man planted a half-finished cigar into his

buttery face, and with a calm deep voice, he said to Nathan, "Take your good friend upstairs. When

I am ready, I will sound the horns of war."

We obeyed, sitting anxiously on Nathan’s bedroom floor. His teenaged sister was upstairs, too.

Wearing nothing but a white slip, she was jumping from her room to the bathroom and back again. I

don’t need to mention, there was another benefit in Nathan’s friendship. I was watching for his

sister, and he told me, "This’ll be fun." Then his grandfather hollered, and we had to go

downstairs again.

The game board had been brought out of its hiding place. With a glance, I knew why it was such a

secret. All the words were Mandarin. The board looked new and modern, filled with a cold, slick

light. With the drapes closed, the dining room was lit up by the game. Someone had spliced extra

chips into the mechanical brain.

With a touch of the keypad, the old man changed the Mandarin into New Latin, and a huge map of the

world emerged on a background of neat black hexagons.

"Technically," he said, "this is an illegal possession."

I knew that already.

"It came from China, and it was smuggled through the Aztec Republic. A friend of a friend did

this, for a fee."

I nodded, feeling nothing but impressed.

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"In the Old Empire," he explained, "a toy such as this would be labeled ideologically dangerous.

In the New Lands, thankfully, we are a little less obsessed about maintaining the fabled status

quo. But still, our government would be within its rights to take this from me, if only to harvest

the mechanical mind. This is not a new game, but its circuits are still superior to anything we

can build today."

He didn’t have to tell me.

"Sit," he suggested.

I plopped into a hard chair.

"Who do you wish to be?" he asked.

Boundaries had appeared on the map. This wasn’t our world, I realized. It was the past. Instead of

the New Lands, there was an empty continent floating in a silvery mist. The enormity of Asia lay

before me. At the far end was the Roman Empire, its territories marked with a sickly gray, while

the Chinese Empire was under my hands, its green lands dotted with cities and roads and tiny

military units existing as images floating inside that wondrous game board.

"You may become any civilization," the old man explained. "Your responsibility is to control the

nation, or nations, that comprise your civilization."

"Be Rome," Nathan blurted. "Or India. Or Persia. Or Mongolia."

I said, "China."

A fresh cigar was lit, and a fresh whiskey was poured. And the old man grinned at me, his smooth

and pale and very fat flesh shining in the game’s light. There was a deep, scorching wisdom in his

eyes. And with a voice holding ironies that I couldn’t hear, he asked, "How did I know?"

He said, "Naturally. You wish to pick the winner."

Once the senate campaign began, we started attending church regularly.

I was pretty much of one mind about those Sunday mornings. I hated every part of them. I’d

outgrown my one good suit months ago, and I could never tie the fake-silk tie properly, and the

stiff leather shoes made my toes cross and ache. I hated how my complaints about my wardrobe were

met with stony silence. I despised the boredom of sitting in church while strangers sang and

prayed and sat silent, listening while the elderly priests gave us God’s lofty opinions about the

state of the world. Sometimes, in secret, I didn’t mind hearing the choir singing. I also

appreciated the teenage girls swishing along in their best dresses. And when I wanted, I could

open the Bible and hunt for bloody passages. Not even Mom could complain about that, sitting stiff

and tired beside me, smiling for the world to see.

We belonged to the Celtic Reformed Church. I didn’t appreciate it then, but our little branch of

God’s Word had some very wealthy believers. Our church was a new and expensive building, larger

than necessary and just a little short of beautiful. Donations helped pay the tariffs and bribes

required to import exotic lumber and foreign stone. Even the lights were a little

spectacular–floating Japanese-made orbs that moved according to invisible commands, their shapes

changing to light up the entire room, or to focus on a very specific, very important spot.

During the sermons, every light shone on the pulpit. One special morning, our bishop came to

deliver the sermon, and he spoke forever about poverty and its beauty in God’s eye. He explained

how Christendom was special in every important way. God had blessed our faith and the Empire. How

else could we have survived to this day, against titanic odds? True, we might not possess the

wealth of some nations. And we didn’t have spaceships or cities riding on the waves. And perhaps

our science seemed backward to some observers. But what did science matter? Where was the value in

flying to Mars? Nonbelievers could never enter heaven, and wasn’t Heaven the only worthwhile

destination in this brief, brief life of ours?

Our bishop was a very old man, and at the end of the service, when he walked past me, I heard his

Indian-built heart beating like a hammer somewhere down in his belly. I thought that was odd.

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