"Optics," A Brides' Boys Tale for Mylodon
By Lokei
For
mylodon , who has a spring birthday she’d probably rather we all forgot.
St. Bride’s Universe Hornblower/Lord Peter Wimsey cross-over
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The fair-headed aristocratic sprigs and the gangly mathematician are none of them mine, but I promise to handle them with care!
However complacently the Dowager Duchess of Denver and the Honorable Hyacinth Kennedy may have contemplated the improvement of one son and the continued well-being of the other after their fortuitous meeting on the cricket pitch, it took the combined efforts of Euclid and The Comic History of England to bring the younger branches of the family lines back into contact.
Dr. Archie Kennedy, having agreed to join his professorial colleague and lover on a trip to London in connection with a mathematics conference, had found himself this morning abandoned at the steps of the British Museum, which example of early-Hornblower oblivious concentration might have left Dr. Kennedy in poor sorts indeed. Archie was hardly without resources, however, and upon due reflection, he had drifted inexorably to the sale of rare books towards which he had been secretly pining since seeing it announced in the paper earlier that week. An idea had been growing rather steadily in what Horatio affectionately termed ‘his devious mind’-after all they had been through, Archie wanted to surprise Horatio with something really splendid, and some obscure volume of theorems would suit, if such a thing existed.
Remembering dimly that Wimsey was reckoned a bibliophile of the first order, Archie was therefore unsurprised when a familiar tow-headed figure with a long face appeared at his elbow as Kennedy pored over an intriguing-looking specimen titled The Optics of Euclid. It was in Latin, which he expected Horatio would prefer, and appeared to have something or other to do with spheres, astronomy, and linear perspective. Nearly complete gobbledegook, but surely Horatio would love it.
“Hullo there, Kennedy,” Peter said amiably. “Found somethin’ interestin’?”
“’lo, Wimsey,” Archie smiled and passed the book over.
"Gads!” Peter said with a look of horrified fascination, “Branchin’ out a bit, aren’t you, old thing?”
Kennedy smirked. “I was thinking of it for Horatio-Dr. Hornblower.”
“Your tall dark friend from the cricket grounds-the master in mathematics?” The monocle seemed to wink at him owlishly.
“Exactly. Do you think it’s worth it?”
Wimsey’s eyes narrowed and the foolishness about the set of his mouth fell away as he eyed binding, pages, and type with a connoisseur’s eye. “I’ll grant this type of text isn’t my specialty,” he said softly, “but the quality is very good.”
Archie beamed and accepted the volume back again. “Any luck yourself, Wimsey?”
The foolish face brightened with the look of an enthusiast who has found a willing audience, though Archie reflected that ‘expert’ was a far better term than ‘enthusiast.’ Lord Peter was gesturing-a deferential and exceedingly correct figure appeared from across the room and presented a parcel to his master.
Wimsey’s whoever he was withdrew unobtrusively as Wimsey himself launched into raptures over The Comic History of England. This left Archie somewhat amazed at this example of the English valet and further amused at Wimsey’s remarkable patter, which at this moment strongly resembled the Dowager Duchess’s in both speed and leaps of association.
“And so I thought of buyin’ it for dear old Pickled Gherkins, him bein’ exactly the sort to appreciate the content when he’s old enough, but I’ve gotten rather fond of it so I’ll just be handin’ it jolly back to my man here and pay the Romans what is theirs, eh?”
Kennedy made a bemused gesture of agreement, and as they settled with the bookseller Wimsey turned an unexpectedly sharp eye on him.
“So what brings you to town? Not merely here to prey lovingly over the carcasses of Euclid and Thingummy, are you?”
Kennedy chuckled. “Not exactly. I somewhat rashly agreed to accompany Dr. Hornblower, who is here on some variety of conference on mathematics-something to do with cryptology again, I think. Horatio’s mad for it ever since the Woodville episode. I mostly came along to make sure the man leaves the library and remembers to feed himself now and then.”
Wimsey’s eyes lit up. “That so? Rather interested in all that wretched puzzlin’ myself. Heard about a curious musical cipher from a German fellow. Convinced he can use it to find secret messages in Bach, or some such thing. Fascinatin.’” He paused.
“I say,” he added as he hailed a cab, “let’s kill two birds and do the thing proper. Roust your mathematical fellow from the library in time to join me for dinner tonight at the Egotists.’ I shall feed him and pick his brain and we’ll all toddle off home happily, shall we?”
Kennedy grinned. “Seven o’clock?”
Wimsey nodded and with an energetic spring, was in the cab and shouting merry directions to the cabbie, leaving Kennedy to shake his head on the sidewalk.
- - - - - -
“Oh, really, Archie, must we?” Horatio’s exasperated voice filtered up from somewhere buried under the bed. He was searching for his shoe, which Archie had lovingly chucked at him the first time Horatio had made a face about joining the titled Balliol man for dinner. Archie had missed, purposefully, but it did require Hornblower’s diving under the bedstead to retrieve it, and meanwhile Kennedy was sitting back in a nearby chair enjoying the view.
“Yes, Dr. Hornblower, I believe we must,” Kennedy replied in a tone of severity which he had clearly gleaned from his illustrious mama. “He’s not so bad, you know. You quite got along with that whole incident with the political letters, remember?”
Horatio wriggled out from below the blankets and stood, vigorously brushing his shirt and pants with one hand while attempting to put his shoe on with the other. “He’s not exactly your family, Archie, even if he has read my paper on left arm spin,” he said with a distracted air. He presented quite the picture-hair rumpled, shirt nearly as bad, and a great deal more distress evident on his face than he was probably even aware.
It was true that for all his progress, Horatio still had difficulties in dealing with members of the aristocracy, and normally he bore it with remarkable patience and not a little wellspring of tact. And it was equally true that Wimsey had a critical eye behind that foolish monocle-a detail Horatio was unlikely to miss and very likely to take personally. Archie’s heart melted and he crossed the room to put his hands on Horatio’s arms, stilling the mathematics fellow’s movements so that he was forced to look into his partner’s blue eyes.
“You, idiot, are more than equal to a peer in an eyeglass,” Archie said fondly. “Now change your shirt, and we’ll be on our way.”
With a final grumble, Horatio swiftly changed his shirt and submitted his rumpled hair to Archie’s gentle ministrations, and they were soon out the door and on their way to Wimsey’s club.
By the time they arrived at the Egotists’ Club, Horatio had quietly worked himself into and out of a state once more, while Archie looked out the window and let him get on with it, only reaching over once or twice to give him a surreptitious squeeze on the hand. In their years together Kennedy had learned that one could jolly Hornblower out of certain moods with relative success, but that occasionally it was better to let him think whatever it was that bothered him through for a more lasting result. Therefore, it was a courteous, composed, and politely curious Dr. Hornblower who followed Dr. Kennedy through the doors and up the stairs to meet their host, and Archie made himself a mental note to congratulate Horatio later on only wrinkling his nose once as they passed through the smoking lounge to one of the private dining rooms.
Wimsey too was in fine form here on what was a kind of home turf-Horatio had raised an eloquent eyebrow at the name of the club, but Wimsey seemed to think it a fine joke and as the food was excellent, Kennedy was disposed not to quibble. The Bride’s men themselves were neither of them part of the London circle of club members, but Kennedy was relieved to see that it seemed a quiet night here on this particular evening and Horatio seemed content to think it simply a more expensive SCR.
Archie headed off an almost certain ruination of his surprise by starting the conversation with an innocent sounding expression of how pleased he had been to bump into Wimsey at the tailor’s, a subterfuge which Wimsey took up easily with a barely traceable amusement in his quick-changing eyes.
Having successfully steered clear of grounding on a conversational reef, Kennedy relaxed enough to participate in a cheerfully inane discussion of collars and the difficulty of finding a tailor who could appreciate the line of a spine, while Hornblower watched the two fair haired sprigs of nobility with a tolerant amusement that would have sat ill on his face not that many years ago.
Eventually, however, a certain literature fellow knew that even his partner’s tolerant amusement had its limits, and he generously steered the conversation back into waters which Horatio could sail with confidence as he asked Wimsey about the musical cipher the other man had mentioned earlier.
Fortunately for Archie, the food was excellent, as had been previously noted, and he was now able to give it almost his entire attention, as Horatio and Wimsey spun off into a discussion of various arcane elements of cryptography which were a code all unto themselves. Archie suggested at one break in the conversation that one really could use Shakespeare’s sonnets as a kind of codex, a suggestion which both his dinner companions took far more seriously than the spirit in which it had been offered. They discussed the possibility of using various sonnets as keys to a letter substitution code, or possibly have each stand for pre-arranged signals, until Archie was nearly dying with the effort not to laugh at their earnest tomfoolery. Nor, for that matter, was he entirely able to avoid a tendency to melt just a little to see how hard Horatio was trying to be friendly with someone like Wimsey, whose very being could make him so uncomfortable, all for-and only for-his Archie’s sake.
A chance glance from sharp eyes behind the monocle suggested that Peter, too, was enjoying the conversation on more than one level, as he smoothly transitioned back from literature to math in the realm of cryptography.
“After all, each academic field has its own offerings to any situation,” Peter was saying smoothly, and Archie wondered if Balliol always turned them out this charming. He thought not.
Horatio was not oblivious. Despite a long history of burying himself in equations and irrational numbers and whatnot, he was sharp enough to know when he was being steered. Knowing his difficult mathematics fellow far better than anyone ever had or would, Archie watched the flash of recognition cross his face, followed by curiosity, followed by a polite animation.
“I’ve actually been working on something which could have applications in that field,” Horatio offered, “a geometric shape which has more sides than fit in a two-dimensional representation.” His lips quirked up at the somewhat alarmed expression in Wimsey’s eyes. “If I might have a pen and piece of paper?”
“Certainly.”
It was a matter of very long moments before the pair of horrified and fascinated literature-types could make heads or tails of Hornblower’s folded paper, but eventually they resolved into an apparent hexagon, made of numerous triangles. With a little deft folding and warping by some well-known and thoroughly appreciated limber fingers, the triangles which made up the front and back sides of the paper shape changed, as indicated by the symbols Horatio had drawn on each face.
“There are more triangles than there are visible at any one time, due to the way it’s folded,” Horatio explained proudly as Wimsey poked at it, murmuring in something that sounded suspiciously like Greek.
“What do you call it?” Wimsey said finally.
Horatio frowned. “A flexible hexagon, for lack of a better term.”
“Hexaflexagon,” Archie offered quietly over the rim of his glass, his reward in the look of surprised pleasure Horatio couldn’t suppress. Daft man, surely he ought to know by now how proud Archie was of him-Archie smiled warmly.
“Splendid, Kennedy, you’ve caught just the turn of it,” Peter effused, but neither Bride’s fellow was particularly listening, and if the second son of the Duke of Denver noticed, he politely said nothing. Horatio had turned gleaming eyes full of promise on Archie, mellowed by the easy conversation and the fine after-dinner spirits, and Archie was happily lost in contemplation of his mathematician’s reaction to the present awaiting him at their rooms. He had looked it over carefully this afternoon and prepared several appropriate lines to deliver innocently about Euclid’s spherical astronomy and the study of heavenly bodies.
It had been a good day, after all.
For
mylodon , who has a spring birthday she’d probably rather we all forgot.
St. Bride’s Universe Hornblower/Lord Peter Wimsey cross-over
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The fair-headed aristocratic sprigs and the gangly mathematician are none of them mine, but I promise to handle them with care!
However complacently the Dowager Duchess of Denver and the Honorable Hyacinth Kennedy may have contemplated the improvement of one son and the continued well-being of the other after their fortuitous meeting on the cricket pitch, it took the combined efforts of Euclid and The Comic History of England to bring the younger branches of the family lines back into contact.
Dr. Archie Kennedy, having agreed to join his professorial colleague and lover on a trip to London in connection with a mathematics conference, had found himself this morning abandoned at the steps of the British Museum, which example of early-Hornblower oblivious concentration might have left Dr. Kennedy in poor sorts indeed. Archie was hardly without resources, however, and upon due reflection, he had drifted inexorably to the sale of rare books towards which he had been secretly pining since seeing it announced in the paper earlier that week. An idea had been growing rather steadily in what Horatio affectionately termed ‘his devious mind’-after all they had been through, Archie wanted to surprise Horatio with something really splendid, and some obscure volume of theorems would suit, if such a thing existed.
Remembering dimly that Wimsey was reckoned a bibliophile of the first order, Archie was therefore unsurprised when a familiar tow-headed figure with a long face appeared at his elbow as Kennedy pored over an intriguing-looking specimen titled The Optics of Euclid. It was in Latin, which he expected Horatio would prefer, and appeared to have something or other to do with spheres, astronomy, and linear perspective. Nearly complete gobbledegook, but surely Horatio would love it.
“Hullo there, Kennedy,” Peter said amiably. “Found somethin’ interestin’?”
“’lo, Wimsey,” Archie smiled and passed the book over.
"Gads!” Peter said with a look of horrified fascination, “Branchin’ out a bit, aren’t you, old thing?”
Kennedy smirked. “I was thinking of it for Horatio-Dr. Hornblower.”
“Your tall dark friend from the cricket grounds-the master in mathematics?” The monocle seemed to wink at him owlishly.
“Exactly. Do you think it’s worth it?”
Wimsey’s eyes narrowed and the foolishness about the set of his mouth fell away as he eyed binding, pages, and type with a connoisseur’s eye. “I’ll grant this type of text isn’t my specialty,” he said softly, “but the quality is very good.”
Archie beamed and accepted the volume back again. “Any luck yourself, Wimsey?”
The foolish face brightened with the look of an enthusiast who has found a willing audience, though Archie reflected that ‘expert’ was a far better term than ‘enthusiast.’ Lord Peter was gesturing-a deferential and exceedingly correct figure appeared from across the room and presented a parcel to his master.
Wimsey’s whoever he was withdrew unobtrusively as Wimsey himself launched into raptures over The Comic History of England. This left Archie somewhat amazed at this example of the English valet and further amused at Wimsey’s remarkable patter, which at this moment strongly resembled the Dowager Duchess’s in both speed and leaps of association.
“And so I thought of buyin’ it for dear old Pickled Gherkins, him bein’ exactly the sort to appreciate the content when he’s old enough, but I’ve gotten rather fond of it so I’ll just be handin’ it jolly back to my man here and pay the Romans what is theirs, eh?”
Kennedy made a bemused gesture of agreement, and as they settled with the bookseller Wimsey turned an unexpectedly sharp eye on him.
“So what brings you to town? Not merely here to prey lovingly over the carcasses of Euclid and Thingummy, are you?”
Kennedy chuckled. “Not exactly. I somewhat rashly agreed to accompany Dr. Hornblower, who is here on some variety of conference on mathematics-something to do with cryptology again, I think. Horatio’s mad for it ever since the Woodville episode. I mostly came along to make sure the man leaves the library and remembers to feed himself now and then.”
Wimsey’s eyes lit up. “That so? Rather interested in all that wretched puzzlin’ myself. Heard about a curious musical cipher from a German fellow. Convinced he can use it to find secret messages in Bach, or some such thing. Fascinatin.’” He paused.
“I say,” he added as he hailed a cab, “let’s kill two birds and do the thing proper. Roust your mathematical fellow from the library in time to join me for dinner tonight at the Egotists.’ I shall feed him and pick his brain and we’ll all toddle off home happily, shall we?”
Kennedy grinned. “Seven o’clock?”
Wimsey nodded and with an energetic spring, was in the cab and shouting merry directions to the cabbie, leaving Kennedy to shake his head on the sidewalk.
- - - - - -
“Oh, really, Archie, must we?” Horatio’s exasperated voice filtered up from somewhere buried under the bed. He was searching for his shoe, which Archie had lovingly chucked at him the first time Horatio had made a face about joining the titled Balliol man for dinner. Archie had missed, purposefully, but it did require Hornblower’s diving under the bedstead to retrieve it, and meanwhile Kennedy was sitting back in a nearby chair enjoying the view.
“Yes, Dr. Hornblower, I believe we must,” Kennedy replied in a tone of severity which he had clearly gleaned from his illustrious mama. “He’s not so bad, you know. You quite got along with that whole incident with the political letters, remember?”
Horatio wriggled out from below the blankets and stood, vigorously brushing his shirt and pants with one hand while attempting to put his shoe on with the other. “He’s not exactly your family, Archie, even if he has read my paper on left arm spin,” he said with a distracted air. He presented quite the picture-hair rumpled, shirt nearly as bad, and a great deal more distress evident on his face than he was probably even aware.
It was true that for all his progress, Horatio still had difficulties in dealing with members of the aristocracy, and normally he bore it with remarkable patience and not a little wellspring of tact. And it was equally true that Wimsey had a critical eye behind that foolish monocle-a detail Horatio was unlikely to miss and very likely to take personally. Archie’s heart melted and he crossed the room to put his hands on Horatio’s arms, stilling the mathematics fellow’s movements so that he was forced to look into his partner’s blue eyes.
“You, idiot, are more than equal to a peer in an eyeglass,” Archie said fondly. “Now change your shirt, and we’ll be on our way.”
With a final grumble, Horatio swiftly changed his shirt and submitted his rumpled hair to Archie’s gentle ministrations, and they were soon out the door and on their way to Wimsey’s club.
By the time they arrived at the Egotists’ Club, Horatio had quietly worked himself into and out of a state once more, while Archie looked out the window and let him get on with it, only reaching over once or twice to give him a surreptitious squeeze on the hand. In their years together Kennedy had learned that one could jolly Hornblower out of certain moods with relative success, but that occasionally it was better to let him think whatever it was that bothered him through for a more lasting result. Therefore, it was a courteous, composed, and politely curious Dr. Hornblower who followed Dr. Kennedy through the doors and up the stairs to meet their host, and Archie made himself a mental note to congratulate Horatio later on only wrinkling his nose once as they passed through the smoking lounge to one of the private dining rooms.
Wimsey too was in fine form here on what was a kind of home turf-Horatio had raised an eloquent eyebrow at the name of the club, but Wimsey seemed to think it a fine joke and as the food was excellent, Kennedy was disposed not to quibble. The Bride’s men themselves were neither of them part of the London circle of club members, but Kennedy was relieved to see that it seemed a quiet night here on this particular evening and Horatio seemed content to think it simply a more expensive SCR.
Archie headed off an almost certain ruination of his surprise by starting the conversation with an innocent sounding expression of how pleased he had been to bump into Wimsey at the tailor’s, a subterfuge which Wimsey took up easily with a barely traceable amusement in his quick-changing eyes.
Having successfully steered clear of grounding on a conversational reef, Kennedy relaxed enough to participate in a cheerfully inane discussion of collars and the difficulty of finding a tailor who could appreciate the line of a spine, while Hornblower watched the two fair haired sprigs of nobility with a tolerant amusement that would have sat ill on his face not that many years ago.
Eventually, however, a certain literature fellow knew that even his partner’s tolerant amusement had its limits, and he generously steered the conversation back into waters which Horatio could sail with confidence as he asked Wimsey about the musical cipher the other man had mentioned earlier.
Fortunately for Archie, the food was excellent, as had been previously noted, and he was now able to give it almost his entire attention, as Horatio and Wimsey spun off into a discussion of various arcane elements of cryptography which were a code all unto themselves. Archie suggested at one break in the conversation that one really could use Shakespeare’s sonnets as a kind of codex, a suggestion which both his dinner companions took far more seriously than the spirit in which it had been offered. They discussed the possibility of using various sonnets as keys to a letter substitution code, or possibly have each stand for pre-arranged signals, until Archie was nearly dying with the effort not to laugh at their earnest tomfoolery. Nor, for that matter, was he entirely able to avoid a tendency to melt just a little to see how hard Horatio was trying to be friendly with someone like Wimsey, whose very being could make him so uncomfortable, all for-and only for-his Archie’s sake.
A chance glance from sharp eyes behind the monocle suggested that Peter, too, was enjoying the conversation on more than one level, as he smoothly transitioned back from literature to math in the realm of cryptography.
“After all, each academic field has its own offerings to any situation,” Peter was saying smoothly, and Archie wondered if Balliol always turned them out this charming. He thought not.
Horatio was not oblivious. Despite a long history of burying himself in equations and irrational numbers and whatnot, he was sharp enough to know when he was being steered. Knowing his difficult mathematics fellow far better than anyone ever had or would, Archie watched the flash of recognition cross his face, followed by curiosity, followed by a polite animation.
“I’ve actually been working on something which could have applications in that field,” Horatio offered, “a geometric shape which has more sides than fit in a two-dimensional representation.” His lips quirked up at the somewhat alarmed expression in Wimsey’s eyes. “If I might have a pen and piece of paper?”
“Certainly.”
It was a matter of very long moments before the pair of horrified and fascinated literature-types could make heads or tails of Hornblower’s folded paper, but eventually they resolved into an apparent hexagon, made of numerous triangles. With a little deft folding and warping by some well-known and thoroughly appreciated limber fingers, the triangles which made up the front and back sides of the paper shape changed, as indicated by the symbols Horatio had drawn on each face.
“There are more triangles than there are visible at any one time, due to the way it’s folded,” Horatio explained proudly as Wimsey poked at it, murmuring in something that sounded suspiciously like Greek.
“What do you call it?” Wimsey said finally.
Horatio frowned. “A flexible hexagon, for lack of a better term.”
“Hexaflexagon,” Archie offered quietly over the rim of his glass, his reward in the look of surprised pleasure Horatio couldn’t suppress. Daft man, surely he ought to know by now how proud Archie was of him-Archie smiled warmly.
“Splendid, Kennedy, you’ve caught just the turn of it,” Peter effused, but neither Bride’s fellow was particularly listening, and if the second son of the Duke of Denver noticed, he politely said nothing. Horatio had turned gleaming eyes full of promise on Archie, mellowed by the easy conversation and the fine after-dinner spirits, and Archie was happily lost in contemplation of his mathematician’s reaction to the present awaiting him at their rooms. He had looked it over carefully this afternoon and prepared several appropriate lines to deliver innocently about Euclid’s spherical astronomy and the study of heavenly bodies.
It had been a good day, after all.