Returning Home

by Mary Carmen

  Louella invited several good friends, and Miss Gasnes prepared a number of dishes from the Fannie Farmer cookbook.

  The friends, the family, and the household staff crowded into the small theater to hear the two pianos. At the end of Mr. Worrell’s final number, Len sat with Harrison on the bench and talked about the building of the organ, which was in progress. Harrison picked out the melody of Mr. Worrell’s final number and also played a harmony note from time to time.

  I decided Harrison was the star of the concert. Len certainly beamed while the little fellow was playing.

  Some people take the words of the Bible literally. In the Gospel According to St. Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, in the English of King James I of England, “…in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

  Sharing God with Jesus, as in my timesharing CPU model, makes this literally true. You are Jesus and Jesus is you. God is experiencing your life in your time slots, and God is experiencing Jesus’ life in Jesus’ time slots. You both exist in God. If someone gives you a dollar on the street corner, that someone has given Jesus a dollar on the street corner. If someone nails Jesus to a cross, that someone has nailed you to a cross, too.

  The Alliance Surrenders

  I have described in these pages the high points of the terrible war between the Assemblage and the Alliance, mentioning only those campaigns we discussed at the Commerce Department and at home.

  Many other smaller battles and campaigns also took place, but these never reached our ears. Almost all these conflicts took place in the districts of the Alliance, and by January of 2100 their people were hungry and sick of the senseless killing of their young people.

  I saw the hospital bills. I saw the payouts for the death benefits. The Octulains would pay for this war for many, many years, both in terms of Universal Gold and in terms of goodwill among the universal community and between the two nations involved.

  In January of 2100 General Mee and his troops were surrounded by General Hsapv’s several divisions at a little place just south of the border between the two nations, Aqqonavvoy Dousvjoute. General Hsapv called General Mee on his personal telephone to ask for his surrender.

  After two days those generals met in a small building and discussed the terms of the surrender. Under these terms all Alliance weapons and military vehicles were surrendered to the Assemblage, and each Alliance soldier was issued a one-person vehicle that Mr. Mipdomp had decided would be useful for farming. All Alliance officers were allowed to keep their rank and their insignia, but noncommissioned soldiers needed to take all insignia from their uniforms immediately. Certain reparations were agreed to for each of the seceded districts, except for Nittousi, which had been occupied and had essentially fed the entire population of the Assemblage during the war.

  I looked over the proposed reparations before General Hsapv presented them to General Mee. They were payable in Universal Gold, which the Alliance did not have, and in such sums it would have taken hundreds of years for the Alliance to retire the notes. I prepared a list of fallback positions for each district, but my list was thrown out because it was not intimidating enough.

  So General Mee agreed to the reparations that I knew would never be paid, and everybody in the Assemblage believed face had been saved.

  I alone knew the platinum mines would need to be kept open for at least another seventy-five years to pay for the death benefits and hospitalization for the Assemblage’s soldiers.

  Mr. Mipdomp Celebrates

  The news of the surrender was played on all the media for the next several days. Anna and I spent most of our time during those days watching the pictures of the celebrations in cities and towns all over Octula.

  Most touching of all was a speech Mr. Mipdomp gave on the night following his reception of General Hsapv in New Philadelphia. Standing by the newly sartorially resplendent general in the most beautiful room in his mansion, he talked about the courage and dedication of both armies. He talked softly about his plan for rebuilding the districts that had seceded. He signed a new order giving each soldier on both sides a sixty-day holiday at his or her soldier’s pay.

  Among the guests in the mansion that night were Len and Louella. We caught a glimpse of them in the media in their old clothes they had worn to many of our wedding parties.

  Mr. Mipdomp ordered the movies and theaters and music halls to reopen in all districts of the planet. He organized a small theater party that included Len and Louella for the following week.

  Actors quickly rehearsed the play Ous Anesidap Doutip for the gala. Mr. Mipdomp sat in a prominent seat near the stage and smiled and waved at everyone. Len and Louella were nearby in box seats.

  Then, during the second act, one actor raised a firearm and shot Mr. Mipdomp dead.

  Do not believe someone has died too young. God does not allow it.

  Do not lament for the opera Mozart did not compose. Do not wish for the unwritten Jane Austen book.

  When it suits God’s plan, you die. The timing is neither too soon nor too late.

  Octula Mourns

  The next week was very busy. The American colony was asked to host visitors from the many districts of Octula while the few hotels in New Philadelphia were filled with dignitaries from the nearby planets.

  Miss Gasnes worked nonstop to cook for the twenty-three Octulians we were able to put up. We brought out the best of our stored foods and wines, and Anna and Len made sure the buffet table was filled at all hours.

  The new leader, Mr. Apfsex Kojptop, conducted ceremonies and hosted receptions for over three thousand visitors. Finally, Mr. Mipdomp’s body was taken for burial to the small town in a central district where had been born.

  The conjecture at the Commerce Department was not encouraging. Everyone there knew Mr. Mipdomp had been determined to treat the people of the seceded districts with as much kindness and generosity as he could get away with. Mr. Kojptop, on the other hand, had been known for years as a hardliner about making the seceded districts pay for all war expenses. Furthermore, after the assassination of Mr. Mipdomp, Mr. Kojptop’s ideas reflected the mood of the citizens of the former Assemblage.

  Anna and I were worried war might break out again, and so was Mr. Kojptop. He canceled the two months of leave with pay Mr. Mipdomp had announced and ordered his military units to occupy most of the large cities of the former Alliance. He put General Hsapv in charge of the Army and gave him an order to induct into that Army all persons between the ages of fifteen and twenty who had been born in the districts of the former Alliance.

  Our children in Vermont and Ohio wrote frantic messages, worried about our safety. The news media on Earth reported on the military occupations after Mr. Mipdomp’s funeral, and our children were worried some of the blame would be assigned to the America colony. We quickly assured them we were safe and the American colony was still in favor with the administration. We were able to send them pictures of Len and Louella with Mr. Kojptop at the funeral.

  Morris is an Olympian

  In spite of the terrible unrest on Octula, the summer of 2100 was exciting for our family. Morris had been accepted as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and he went to the Olympic Games in Madrid, Spain, as a member of the RSA’s team.

  Len followed the games night and day, tuning into the continual stream of news from Earth. Every morning I read a note he had slipped under the door of my bedroom with the latest results.

  Morris was on a relay team, and that team qualified for the finals a few days after the games started. Then, a week later, that team came in fourth in the final competition, out of the medals.

  The times of the medal winners were better than any times Morris had ever recorded, and the times of the RSA’s relay team were better than Morris’s best times at interscholastic meets. Len was more than satisfied.

  Life after the War

  During the rest of 2100, life continued much as before. My work at the Comm
erce Department was just as busy, keeping track of the expenses of the military occupation of the cities of the seceded districts and working with the Army to make sure supplies were delivered to those cities on time.

  That year I turned sixty, and Anna held a small party for our close friends. Everybody in our circle was still subject to food rationing, but we had some wines Anna’s brothers had brought from New York and some canned hams from Virginia. My health was good and my family was dear to me, so I celebrated my approaching old age with no regrets.

  Mr. Worrell worked with Harrison to teach him his letters and his numbers. He showed the boy middle C on the pianos and pointed out how middle C was noted in written music. Harrison worked most of that year on the C major scale, moving the fingers of both his hands up and down first one and then two and then three octaves. He continued to pick out tunes with just one finger after someone else had played them.

  Len worked on the organ room. The remaining parts were delivered in late 2100, and they filled the small theater. Workers separated pipes based on the written instructions from the rebuilder, and by the end of 2100 they had installed a few of the largest ones. The organ’s console was still not in place.

  Anna was forty-three that year, and she was finally able to relax. Only one child was left at home, and Miss Gasnes ran the household almost without help. By the end of the year I was nearly certain our childbearing days were behind us.

  Our four older children were making good progress with their education on Earth. Franklin was a senior at Ohio State, and he was determined to come home for a year after graduation and before graduate school. Eliza was a junior at Oberlin and amazed us, semester after semester, with her outstanding grades. Morris entered Penn in the fall and was, as an Olympian, a Big Man on Campus from the start, although he would not qualify for the next Olympics. Mattie was a sophomore in high school and was very popular with everybody there.

  The Vermont house was nearly empty, too. Miss Ruth Worrell and Jonathan were there full time, taking care of Mattie.

  The import and export business was more profitable than ever. Mr. Kojptop realized the proceeds from the sales of platinum were critical to his keeping the country running, and he was just as dependent on Len’s business advice as Mr. Mipdomp had been.

  At the start of 2101 Mr. Kojptop announced that people over the age of seventy were no longer subject to food rationing. This affected Len and Louella, and the rest of us were able to eat a little better, too. We all were thinner, especially Miss Gasnes who had been quite stout when the war started in 2081. In 2101 Len had clothes that looked as if they had not been made for him, but he insisted he felt better and had much more energy at the lighter weight. Unlike Miss Gasnes, he never regained his prewar weight.

  Len and Franklin Complete the Observatory

  It was a wonderful day in October, 2101, when we went to the spaceport and picked up Franklin. He had graduated in the top half of his class at Ohio State, and he was determined to visit his home for at least a year before continuing with his education on Earth.

  Anna and Len wept continually after he got off the craft. They hugged him and insisted he sit between them on the drive back to the compound. He was just as tall as I and had much more flesh on his bones. His blond hair had turned somewhat darker, but he looked very much the same to me as he had on the day he left.

  Of course Franklin was amazed at the changes in the house. The organ was nearly ready for its inauguration, and Len played chords for him to demonstrate its many voices.

  Most interesting to Franklin was the observatory. He had certainly been aware Len was building a telescope that was as good as anything on Octula, but he was amazed to see how up to date the technology was.

  After Franklin arrived, he and Len spent their days and nights in the room at the top of the observatory. Len continued to receive new equipment almost every month from Earth and other planets, and he and Franklin installed the updates as soon as they were received.

  Complete star maps from Octula had been available for many centuries. Without them, space flight could not take place because the locations of the stars through time were critical to the plotting of the routes back to just after the Big Bang and forward again.

  Len and Franklin began a project to add all the known planets to these maps. The astronomers from the nearby university came to our observatory to discuss how the project should be conducted and how its information should be brought together with the star maps. Len and Franklin used existing means of communications to contact Len’s business colleagues on other planets. These people put Len and Franklin in touch with astronomers and astrophysicists.

  When the word was circulated that Len and Franklin were compiling this information, other people wanted to help, including entities from planets Len had never heard of. At the end of 2102, they were communicating with 174 planets and adding location information about these planets and others in their star systems to the database of star locations. In 2012 Len was eighty-two, and he was more enthusiastic about this project than he had been about anything else.

  Octula Feeds Itself and Others

  By the middle of 2012, Eliza had graduated from Oberlin in the top tenth of her class and had decided to go onto a medical program at Johns Hopkins, the excellent school that had relocated to West Virginia after the terrible flooding of the 2020s. We were so happy with her success, but we were disappointed she would not be coming to Octula for a visit.

  During late 2102 the small one-person vehicles Mr. Mipdomp had prepared for distribution to all soldiers were entirely manufactured and delivered. These small vehicles were the start of the planet’s resurgence of dominance in agriculture in that area of the universe.

  Before the Great War, Octula had been known as an agriculture center. Famine was a faint memory, remembered only in books and photographs. Everyone on Octula was stout and happy about it. The plentiful water and energy allowed most of the lands to be very fertile.

  During the war, rationing began almost before the 2081 growing season was over. The people who had managed the great farms of the seceded lands had become military officers, and the people who had been farmhands had become soldiers. Other people were able to run the enormous farming machines, but they did not have the strength or the stamina to work the long hours required for successful planting or harvesting.

  Farming in the lands of the former Assemblage had always been less profitable. These districts had a shorter growing season, and the people there had become used to working in other professions, such as the sciences.

  When the Assemblage was left to depend upon itself for food, the rationing started. Mr. Mipdomp had certainly understood the need to get the farms of the seceded districts back in operation, and his plans facilitated this. Mr. Kojptop was so angry about the terrible costs of the war he could not see into the future. His first thought was to cancel the orders for the farming vehicles, but our Commerce Department was against it because the reunited country needed food so badly.

  And food came. By 2101 the harvest was able to feed everybody fairly well, and some rationing was lifted. By 2102 the harvest allowed all food rationing to be abandoned, and Len was able to offer canned vegetables and fruits and dried grains to his customers on other planets.

  By 2103 Anna was in charge of the foodstuffs end of the business. It was never the cash cow the platinum business always was, but selling food was an excellent way for the company to get its foot in the door. Nearly everybody needed food, and it became the loss leader that allowed sales of platinum and uranium to be discussed and frequently written up.

  Again, Anna turned to Miss Gasnes. In the kitchen of our main house, they developed several dozen recipes that used one or two of the Octulian food products with water. Anna offered to send samples to new customers via planets we already did business with, and frequently people requested these samples. It was only a few months later those people were ordering food products and a year after that they were ordering minerals.
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  Mattie Comes Home

  By the middle of 2103 Mattie had graduated from high school. She decided to come to Octula to spend time thinking about what she wanted to do with her life.

  Len was elated. Mattie had always been his favorite of our children, in my opinion, and he had missed her. She wrote to him more than to anyone else, telling him things she never would mention to me. Len was always generous in sharing the messages, and Anna pasted every one in her scrapbook for rereading over the years.

  Len had completed the great organ, and he had bought many organ recordings by famous musicians. These recordings allowed our own pipe organ to be played by the masters, and Len always included an ambitious piece of Romantic organ music as a highlight of the weekly tour.