Sunday is Three Thousand Years Away and Other SF Classics

by Raymond F. Jones

  For the first time the full impact of the situation struck George.

  These citizens of a super-world twenty-six hundred years beyond his own, viewing him, a strange anachronism. He wondered how a group of his own people would have reacted to the appearance of one of Pythagoras’ pupils in a social gathering.

  He tried to shake off the shrinking feeling of inferiority, knowing the analogy was imperfect. These were all seasoned travelers, tourists in time. They understood him for what he was. They did not expect him to act according to their standards.

  They expected only the standards of a savage, he thought, with a slightly bitter smile as he faced them. Even if this were a civilization where people did not lie to each other did it mean they would be kind to a savage?

  Coming toward them was a woman who looked as if she could be Rena’s twin. He could scarcely have told that one was any older. It was not in the clear tone of her skin that matched Rena’s nor in the black fall of hair about her shoulders.

  Rena said, “Here comes Mother. It’s first names only among us. I forgot to tell you, George.” And to her mother, who came up, “Doran, this is George. You have heard me speak of him.”

  The woman extended a hand and smiled at George. “I haven’t heard of much else lately except you and this experiment with Cell Four. We’re glad to have you here, George.

  “Most of us have visited in your time. We’ll do our best to make you feel at home. Old travelers like us know the discomfort of being thrown out of one’s familiar culture. See to refreshments, Rena, and I’ll introduce George.”

  There was an indefinable tension, George thought. It was impossible to tell whether it was in the others or in himself. More likely the latter—but Rena’s mother was overdoing it, trying too hard to make it seem like home.

  Like handshaking—Rena hadn’t told him it was no longer a custom but he knew from the way her mother did it that it was not their way.

  He met Rena’s father next. Cramer was a portly man who would have been a Solid Citizen twenty-six centuries earlier. Then there was Dr. Harkase.

  It was more difficult to catalogue the Historian. He seemed to possess an undercurrent of knowledge that gave his face a near cynical expression. George wondered if he knew already the details of all the rest of George’s life.

  The others were all students at the University, classmates of Rena.

  They were gracious, civil and friendly but in the back of his mind George could not erase the image of a Neanderthal-like character, dressed in a leopard skin and clutching a knotted war club himself in the presence of this company.

  The circle completed, Doran said, “I thought perhaps you’d like an evening of music. I obtained some of your own especially for your visit. Rena mentioned once that you were a singer. I’ll get some of the others.”

  “Well—I might have mentioned to Rena that I did some barbershop singing in college but that’s about the limit. Don’t get anything beyond Clementine or you’ll be over my depth.”

  Doran frowned. “Clementine? I don’t believe I know that one, but I do have one of your loveliest quartets.”

  She beckoned to some of the others and handed out some music. George gulped and choked when he saw what it was—the Quartet from Rigoletto.

  He saw Rena coming and grimaced frantically at her. She came up and took his arm. “Don’t make George perform tonight, Mother. He’d much rather listen to us.”

  “I really would,” said George hastily.

  “Well—of course, if you’d rather.” Doran beckoned to her husband.

  “You take the baritone then, Cramer. Let’s see what George thinks of our rendition of his music.”

  She sat down at a keyboard instrument that was too small to contain strings. The moment her fingers touched the keys George knew it would make a grand piano sound like a spinet. And then the group broke into song.

  He sat back in unbelief. His own abilities were strictly of the barbershop variety but he could understand operatic quality when he heard it. The casual art of the four singers was something that would have made Metropolitan directors weep—and run for a contract form.

  He should have been enjoying it, George thought, but he was miserable. He looked at Rena. She smiled and pressed his hand. How could he possibly attract her, a product of this culture whose casual evidences made him feel as if he’d swung down from the trees only yesterday? What did she see in him that she found in a member of her own people? Was it possible that he was only an essential element in her experiment after all?

  In vicious anger at himself he forced the thought from his mind—but it wouldn’t leave. It only shrank back and hid in the dark recess of his subconscious. He looked at her and she seemed to read the doubt in his mind. She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  There was other music, then Rena’s mother sang and her voice held George against his will. Compared with it, he thought, Rena Sachs would have resembled a factory whistle.

  Dr. Harkase at last suggested, “Rena, let’s have a scene from the University play you are doing next month. The one you and Bradwell have together!”

  “Oh, no. Let’s have more music. You sing one of our own compositions, Dr. Harkase. Let George hear what our music is like.”

  “You can’t refuse your Professor,” be insisted. “I think we’d enjoy some drama.”

  They made it impossible for her. She left George’s side and he felt more alone and inadequate than ever, though Rena’s father moved over to join him.

  Rena took her place in the center of the room with Bradwell. The fellow was a graduate in math at the University. George shuddered to think what Bradwell might be able to show him in that field.

  They were beginning. Everyone seemed to understand what it was about though it was a single scene lifted from a long classic drama. To George the allusions to this strange culture were unintelligible. But the emotion of the scene would have been common language in any age.

  It was Rena’s scene. Bradwell was only a foil against the torrent of emotion with which she dealt.

  While George watched, Rena seemed to become a stranger whom he had never met. As the character in the play she became a tormented being, caught in a snarl of tangled loves and hates. The fury of anger and the tenderness of love mingled with clashing discord in her voice, her expression, her entire being.

  It was something beyond mere acting. George felt a thin shadow of horror overlay his mind. Rena was inseparably of her own age and time. What he knew of her was like the knowledge gained by looking at sunlight while all the vast spectrum lies on either side, unknown and undetected.

  He sensed now some of the unknown that was Rena.

  She finished. He felt physically weakened by the barrage of emotion that she had produced.

  She returned and sat on the other side of him from her father. She was partly breathless when she spoke. “It’s our annual play. Did you like it?”

  “You’ve seen plays in my time. What do you think? I didn’t know you were such an actress. I’ll bet you sing as well as your mother, too. Is there anything that the average citizen here can’t do?”

  “Of course, darling. These things are simply the skills and hobbies of your own day brought to greater perfection. The skills of genius in one age become the hobbies of the citizens in the next. Just as Pythagoras would not have passed through one of your high schools on the knowledge out of his own culture — “

  “That’s hardly the answer,” interrupted Cramer quietly. ‘Perhaps you haven’t explained to George about genetic control.”

  “No,” laughed Rena. I left that for you. I knew that you would expound at great length on the benefits of g.c. He’s a Division Geneticist.” she explained to George. He thinks the world spins on its genes.”

  “The term implies any of a number of possible techniques to my mind,” said George. “What does it mean?”

  “No such barbarous procedures as I’m sure you’re thinking of,” said Cramer gently. “You must u
nderstand, to begin with, that all of the population of the Earth does not participate in the program. There is nothing compulsory about it. The only force is that of social pressure.

  “With five hundred years of genetic selection in one’s ancestry, such as Rena has, he simply does not marry out of that group that shares that history of selection. With seven or eight million who have such a history, it is not difficult to mate within one’s own category.

  “Occasionally one steps over the line and mixes with the unselected segments of the population. That automatically grades his own posterity downward. We have pedigrees, which are simply gene charts. The pedigree divisions among us are seldom crossed.”

  George looked across at Rena. Her face was expressionless as if awaiting for his own reaction.

  Savage—irrevocably savage. No training, polish or veneer could be applied to him which would render him anything more than savage in their midst. They would be kind, they would not lie—but they wanted none of his genes mixed with theirs.

  Rena—he understood now why she had warned him that he would always be a savage. It drowned the faint hope that had been rising within him that he might find a place among her people.

  His face felt hot and his throat dry. He said, “How is control accomplished — or is that something too far beyond my comprehension?”

  CHAPTER IV: The Gulf

  If Cramer detected the trace of bitterness he ignored it. He laughed. “The theory is simple if not the technique. From the beginning cells to be mated were controlled gene by gene. Random hereditary manipulation no longer existed and deliberate selection of desired genes was made.

  “If a desired characteristic lay in a single recessive gene the dominant undesirable was blocked out so that the child possessed the characteristic of the desired gene.

  “Generation by generation this process has continued so that all of us have hundreds of characteristics we want instead of the few picked at random for us by heredity. But scores of these might disappear in our offspring with a single random mating.

  “As a result those of us whom you see here have characteristics in abundance which were once reserved only for the so-called ‘gifted.’ The least of us can make such music as only the greatest artists of your day.

  “Emotional sensibilities are heightened, intellectual abilities and physical and mental health are abundant. And we have only begun to realize the possibilities of the human body and mind. Do you wonder that few of us care to abandon such a pedigreed heritage?”

  George shook his head. He felt an almost unbearable impulse to escape. He knew without a doubt that Cramer understood the effect of this revelation upon him. The geneticist was aware of his squirming desire to hide his inferiority like some uncleanliness suddenly revealed in this immaculate company. And Doran had known it too, he thought, when she had tried to get him to join their singing. She had done it deliberately.

  George said, “What of the others—the lower castes who have not participated in the genetic program? Can nothing be done for them?”

  “Originally the plan was made available to all who would participate. I’m sure from your knowledge of your age that you can appreciate the slowness with which it caught on. But eventually the facilities were overburdened and those who had participated for three or four generations were so far ahead of those who hadn’t that a natural division sprang up.

  “For a time no new families were admitted to the program. That caused serious conflict. Now we have in operation numerous plans on different levels and are building them up as fast as they want it. You would be surprised to know, however, how many hundreds of millions of people still refuse to have anything to do with it.”

  He glanced up. “I think my wife has been trying to get my attention. You’ll excuse me, please?”

  Rena moved closer to George.

  “So now I know,” he said with undisguised bitterness.

  “Now you know—why we have to go away from here,” said Rena softly.

  “What else can you do that I can’t? Besides singing and acting like the best professionals of my time. ESP? Telepathy? Middle age at ninety?”

  “Darling, please!” Rena’s face was distorted with pain.

  “Are there any of those things?”

  “A little—just a little. I’ll tell you about it but we can’t talk now. Oh, darling, don’t look at me that way. Don’t you see? I chose you.”

  “I’m sorry, Rena.” George hit his lip in tension. “It gets me a little to realize that I really am a savage in comparison with you. I thought it meant just a difference in culture and learning, not a difference in kind.”

  “That’s not it. Please don’t say that. But here comes Dr. Harkase.

  He’ll want to talk to you about the experiment. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The room and the people seemed to recede with Rena as she walked away.

  George felt alone, locked behind glass barriers he could not cross.

  The room came back into focus with the approaching figure of Dr. Harkase. He sat down and looked across the room thoughtfully.

  “A wonderful girl, Rena, and a wonderful student,” he said. “She’ll be one of the finest Historians we’ve ever had. There is some risk in her approach to Cell Four but her return is quite reasonably certain.”

  He turned to face George directly. “I want you to know that we appreciate very much your willingness to cooperate. I suppose Rena has spoken briefly of the nature of our work?”

  “A little. I can’t say that I understand any of it, however. She spoke of me as a closed-cycle temporal type and implied that it means a total historical impotence, which doesn’t seem to be a very flattering situation.”

  “I’m not so sure that is the entire truth,” said Dr. Harkase. “Our own theories are in a state of flux at the present time. You see the Cell Four represents a very critical historical situation for us.

  “Many years ago we made certain alterations that set us off on a new probability branch. At that time we were unable to detect these closed cells. Now that their existence is determined, we find we are approaching one, Four is just six hundred years ago.

  “Beyond it—there is just no beyond as far as our instruments can detect. It’s as if it were some kind of bud at the end of a tree branch. Only a very few of us know the seriousness of the situation. We would go back and change the original probability alteration but it is irreversible.

  “So we’ve got to find the meaning of these closed cells and what lies beyond them. If there is nothing we’ve got to find some means of grafting back into the main stream we left. That involves paradoxical impossibilities which we cannot resolve at present.

  “I am doing some new work involving closed cycle histories, however, which indicates that they may be a factor in such resolution. The closed cycle was rather a theoretical freak, much neglected until the discovery of Rena and you. Only since then has there been renewed interest.”

  “But she spoke of an affiliation between me and the other side of Cell Four. If there is no other side — “

  “What I was speaking of to her was that there is just one slim finger of probability between the Cell and the main stream we left. You are involved deeply in that probability—which is not a definite link, you understand. I am inclined to believe you will be instrumental in resolving our difficulty.”

  George glanced at the little knots of polished people across the room. His lips compressed involuntarily. “And I’ll soon be a savage — “

  “Eh—what’s that?”

  “I’m sorry. A savage has difficulty in staying out of character for very long at a time.”

  “I see. You’ve been talking to Cramer, Perhaps a moment’s reflection might help you to understand that while we all benefit from the science we are not all such avid geneticists.”

  “I think the segregation of your society answers that.”

  Harkase sighed. “Young man, if you could solve that problem for us you would have bested the
scientists of the last half millennium. Segregation has led to prejudice, hate and war. But what are we to do? We tried compulsory genetic control for a brief time. That brought revolt and civil war.

  “Should we abandon what we have gained? Worst of all the portion of humanity outside the program seems to be receding farther and farther. Their genes are almost barren of art or science. Many groups of them are nearly subhuman. So far there is no answer.”

  Dr. Harkase rose to leave. “I’ll notify you as soon as we are ready to extend you.”

  George left his chair and strolled across the room towards the garden. Through the invisible dome he could see the stars. A sense of relief came over him as he watched them. There at least was something familiar. Twenty-six centuries of history made little difference to the stars.

  But what vast changes it had made in humanity. Genetic control had produced a new race, he thought. He had only glimpsed the skills they possessed. But Rena had admitted the others. And she was one of them.

  He was startled by a step behind him. “Good evening, sir. I was hoping I’d get a chance to speak with you.”

  It was Bradwell, the young mathematician.

  “Hello,” said George. “I enjoyed your performance very much.”

  “Thank you. It was Rena’s, of course. I’d like you to see the whole thing if you expect to be here when we put it on.”

  “I don’t know. I think perhaps I’ll be leaving soon. Dr. Harkase seemed to indicate that he’ll need me within a short time.”

  Bradwell stared at the horizon of the sky beyond the garden. “I’ve never had much to do with the alternator,” he said thoughtfully. “I took a short extension or two several years ago but I didn’t like it. My earliest studies were in the physics of historical extension but I soon abandoned them.”

  “Why did you dislike the subject?”

  “I think it’s detrimental to our civilization. It has deadened our own initiative. You wouldn’t know from your short visit here but we’re not a productive people. We’re parasites. We rely on what we can pilfer from other ages. We rely on historical extensions to produce improvements.