The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  Roxanna and I went through a curtained doorway into a small changing room. Without any preamble, Roxanna promptly stripped herself completely naked. Just not what I had expected, at all.

  Her actions, that is, not her appearance. She looked just like what I'd been dreaming of for weeks. Fine, firm breasts with tiny pink nipples, a very small waist, nicely flaring hips and wonderfully long legs that went all the way down to the floor. Like the dancers of a few nights before, she was completely depilated, a custom that I found myself liking.

  But this was not the right place for an erection, not when I could hear a crowd of people on the other side of the curtain. There was nothing for it but for me to strip down as well, hang my clothes up beside hers, and hope that my body wouldn't do anything embarrassing.

  We went into a huge room full of naked people, and I soon started to feel less awkward. I mean, if everybody was doing it, well, why not? After a bit, I realized that I would probably have felt more awkward if I had been the only one who had clothes on.

  In some ways, the bath was sort of Japanesey. I mean, you washed up first, and then you took a bath. Roxanna led the way to where a fountain squirted warm, fresh water into the air almost like a shower. We wet ourselves down, and went to the side to suds down with a soft, brown soap. She scrubbed down my newly healed back, so I returned the favor by doing the same to her back.

  And to both sides, and to her front. She took it as nothing out of the ordinary, as did the people all around us. She was even talking to a lady friend of hers as I finished up. I don't know why I was so forward. I mean, I'm usually rather shy. But it seemed like a good idea at the time so I did it. After rinsing off at the fountain, we went to something that was halfway between a small swimming pool and a monster Jacuzzi.

  Once we were sitting in the almost too warm water, I said, "Roxanna, why were you walking different?"

  "Walking different? What do you mean?"

  "Well, when you women are wearing a long dress, you sort of glide along, as if you were on skids, or skates, or wheels. Now that you're naked, you walk like everybody else I've ever known. Why is that?"

  "You don't like the way I walk?"

  "I absolutely love the way you walk. I only want to know why you walk one way some times, and another way at other times."

  "Oh. Well, it looks nicer that way."

  "I don't understand."

  "All right. Look." She got out of the pool and walked away. "When your legs aren't covered, you want them to look as nice as possible, yes?"

  She walked towards me in a normal fashion, her feet pointed straight forward.

  "Yes, Roxanna, you have very lovely legs."

  She accepted the compliment as only being her due. She walked away again, and came back walking like some comedian from a silent movie, with her toes spread out almost sideways and her knees slightly bent. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but after a bit I realized that this strange method of locomotion made her body above the waist absolutely motionless.

  "You're right," I said. "I can see now why you'd want a thing like that covered by a long dress."

  She had really been walking like that all the time? Well, some cultures think that a bone through the nose is the high point of beauty, and by comparison, I suppose that I lucked out.

  After a long soak, Roxanna asked me if I felt like a massage, and I said yes, hoping that she meant to do it herself. Unfortunately, such things were done here by professionals, and I soon found myself stretched out on the table next to hers. The masseurs were both men, I suppose because it takes strong arms to do the job properly. I am nonetheless convinced that sometimes there is much to be said for inefficiency. After that, we took a swim in a larger, cooler pool.

  Perhaps I had a misspent childhood, and was entirely too serious and formal myself, but this was my first actual experience with public nudity, at least when I was one of the nudes.

  It's a very odd thing. At a stag party, where the ladies aren't wearing clothes and you are, you just naturally feel lecherous towards them. But when you're naked too, and in public, you just don't feel that way anymore. Oh, you can certainly appreciate a beautiful body, in an intellectual sort of way, but the sexy feeling isn't there anymore. Maybe that's why less than one American in a thousand is a nudist. It's not that nudists are being overly sexual with each other, but the precise opposite. And most people, given the choice, would really rather be lecherous.

  Which launches another thought. In most countries in the civilized world, church and state agree vigorously in condemning public nakedness. They instill this taboo into their people with great vigor and effectiveness, to the point that people have been known to choose death by fire rather than leave a burning building naked. Many men (and some women, although they seem to be less effected than we are) would prefer torture, mutilation, and bankruptcy to walking down the street without their pants on. The prohibition of nakedness seems to be stronger than that condemning theft, or even violence. Being naked in public is probably the most common childhood nightmare, far more prevalent than bad dreams about, say, stealing from the neighbors.

  I suspect that the reason for this is that the leaders of both church and state desperately want to increase the size of the populations subordinate to them. More people means more taxpayers, more cannon fodder, and more contributors to the holy cause. They say that whenever the old Indian chiefs got together, the main topic of conversation was always the relative lack of Indians.

  The best way to make more people is by keeping your men sexually frustrated most of the time, and then permitting them to release those frustrations when they are locked away in private with their wives. Forcing people to cover their bodies increases the level of frustration, and thus, from a ruler's point of view, it must be a good thing.

  Consider the way the populations of the Arab countries, where women are often forced to wear mobile tents, are exploding. On the other hand, in the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, where public nudity is common, populations are actually declining.

  The next time you see a particularly attractive young person undulating along across the street, and you wish that she was wearing a whole lot less, just remember that you are but the victim of yet another wretched government plot.

  NINETEEN

  His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI sat with one hip on the corner of the desk of Tom Strong, E.E., Warlock of the Western Islands.

  "So, Tom. What have you and your people learned about the various equipments our visitors have brought to my island?"

  "Less than I'd hoped, Your Grace. Over the shortwave, they have been talking for fifty years about the rapid progress that has been made outside in electronics, but it wasn't until I actually saw some of it that I realized, on a gut level, just how much has really been accomplished. Everything is a thousand times smaller than what we used in the war. It does a thousand times more, and seems to use less than one hundredth of the power to do it with. With most of the devices I've opened up, the truth is that I don't have any idea of how they work. I often don't even see how they could be built in the first place. Wires almost too tiny to be seen are somehow glued to thin sheets of hard plastic, and then soldered somehow to the legs of other devices as small as insects. I daren't try to unsolder anything, for my own equipment is so crude by comparison that I would surely do damage. And my understanding is far cruder than my equipment!"

  "But surely there's something that you've learned."

  "I think that I know what some of this stuff is supposed to accomplish, Your Grace. Five of these things are radios of various sorts, that operate on various frequencies. This suggests that the shortwave sets that I have managed to keep operating can receive only a small portion of the broadcasting that is actually going on out there.

  "There are several televisions, which receive a full-color moving picture, along with the sound that an ordinary radio would reproduce. There are two devices that also reproduce a picture, but do it on paper. This
is in addition to a printing device that connects only to a thing called a `computer,' but which seems to do other things besides computation. This disc, clearly labeled `The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' fits into a slot in the computer, which suggests all sorts of things."

  "And what might this Britannica thing be?"

  "When I was out there, it was a set of large volumes printed on very thin paper that took up seven feet of shelf space. It was a summation of all human knowledge."

  "And now all of that is apparently on this small, shiny disc, along with all the new things that they've learned in the last fifty years. Yes, I see your problem. I take it then that you will recommend that our visitors explain it all to you."

  "Yes, Your Grace, and that they get it all working again. This equipment can teach us a great deal about the outside world, things that we will need to know, if we are ever to deal with them on any but disastrous terms."

  "And you think these men can be trusted? When helping us might mean hurting their own world?"

  "Sire, you are used to thinking of the outside as being a single entity, as the Western Islands are a single social, political, and economic entity. This is a mistake. The outside world consists of many separate, disorganized governments, with many conflicting interests. This fact is one of the few in our favor."

  "We have other strengths, Tom. Don't forget that we of the Islands are each the result of seventy-five generations of very careful selective breeding. We are a superior people, and that will tell more than any other factor when we go out to face the world."

  "I hope so, Your Grace, for face them we must, and soon."

  * * *

  * * *

  Spiffed up and dressed in my best, it was with considerable trepidation that I followed the warlock's page past two clerks who doubled as armed guards, up a bodaciously long spiral staircase, over a stone bridge that spanned a cleft in the central mountain that had to be over three hundred feet deep, and finally into the great man's inner sanctum high above the Bay of Avalon.

  It wasn't at all what I had been expecting. The room was huge, as were almost all rooms on the Western Isles, but whereas every other area I'd seen was extremely underfurnished, to the point of looking naked, this place was crowded with tables that were piled high with arcane equipment.

  The equipment wasn't what Hollywood told you a warlock's workshop should have, either. There was not one eye of newt or ear of toad in the place. No bubbling retorts, no imps and devils staring out from sealed bottles.

  On the wall, where one would have expected stuffed owls and mummified bats, there was instead a hand- drawn chart of the Periodic Table of Elements, with the last ten or so at the bottom missing. There was some ceramic chemistry equipment standing long unused in one corner, but mostly the place was filled with books and old electrical junk. In truth, the room looked more like a World War II electronics lab than anything else that came to mind, with lots of ancient tube-type equipment lying around in various states of disrepair.

  In addition to all the old stuff, three big tables were covered with all of the new electronic stuff that had been taken from The Brick Royal, while a fourth held much of our library.

  "Ah! G'day, mate," said a voice in English with a strong Australian accent. "Tom Strong here. Welcome aboard and all that."

  I turned to find the warlock sitting at a rolltop desk on a swivel chair. The fellow looked to be in his sixties, with white hair and clear blue eyes. He was wearing a long black robe, and there was a tall pointed black hat on the credenza behind his desk, but his outfit wasn't embroidered with the astrological symbols that you'd just naturally expect. It was embroidered with tube-type circuit schematics.

  "Thanks for the gifts you sent me, though you really sent too much. The gold in particular, well, you might as well take it back. I just wouldn't have any use for it. Later on, if you still feel generous, maybe I can talk you out of some of your incredible electronic gear."

  "As you wish, sir. You're Australian?" I said.

  "Right. I was on a bomber during the last big war, one of your B-17s, actually, when our navigator and our pilot got each other lost on a dark and stormy night. The twits had us a thousand miles in the wrong direction, the fuel ran out, and the pilot had to make a dead-stick landing on the island. Made a complete hash of it. Been here ever since. Have a chair, won't you?"

  "What happened to the rest of you?" I said, sitting down.

  "Well, only three us survived the crash, and one of the gunners was killed a few months later doing something really stupid. That was over fifty years ago, and Johnny died last year. Cancer, I think it was, although they're not much for autopsies around here. I'm the last one left. It's one of the reasons that I'm so happy that you bastards have arrived. Someone from the outside world to talk to, you see."

  I reminded myself that "bastard" was a polite term, if you were an Australian.

  "Then why have you waited two months before you asked me to visit you?"

  "In part because of the quarantine rules, in part to give you time to heal from your wounds, and to give you a bit of time to start learning the language. Also, it took me a few weeks to recover from that mild form of influenza that you chaps gifted us with. Then, too, there's a bit of politics going on between me and the good archbishop, but you don't want to hear about that. Anyway, after fifty years, what's a few more months?"

  "So you've been here the whole while? You never thought of going home?"

  "Oh, at first I did, but there was really no way to do it. I didn't bring a boat the way you folks did, and the old bird I came in on was total loss and no mistake. Then, after a while, well, this place sort of grows on you. I married, settled in, and prospered. But look here. I'm the one who is supposed to be questioning you, and not the other way around." He pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Nguyen Hien Treet. That's Indochinese, isn't it."

  "Vietnamese, actually."

  "But it says here that you're a U.S. citizen."

  "I am. I was born and raised in the United States. In fact, this `vacation' is my first extended trip away from there."

  "And how does a Vietnamese fellow like you get born in the U.S.?"

  "It didn't take much talent, I assure you. After the same war that you fought in, my parents found work as a nanny and a gardener, employed by a British general. He promised them long-term employment and British citizenship if they would go back to England with him. Naturally, they jumped at the chance, and sailed there with him. But after the war, England was forced to go on an extreme austerity program. The general found that he could no longer afford many servants, and was forced to let my parents go. He was an honorable man, however, and even after they were no longer his employees, he used his influence to see to it that they received the promised citizenship papers. Despite this, my parent's financial prospects in England were not good. Those few jobs that were available always seemed to go to Anglo-Saxons. In time, though, they discovered that as British subjects, it was fairly easy to get a visa to the United States, and their friend the general was able to arrange free military transportation for them to Michigan. They got there in 1948, and eventually, as you say, they prospered. I was born in 1953."

  "I see. I was wondering why you had a Yank accent and not an Indochinese one."

  "I'm sorry to say that growing up, I learned very little Vietnamese. My parents felt that I would be better off learning only English. The problem with that was that they barely spoke the language themselves, so my first language was actually broken English. To make matters worse, they used Vietnamese between themselves when they wanted to discuss something that we children shouldn't know about. I think that I must have internalized the strange attitude that somehow, other languages were something that I shouldn't know. Anyway, in school, I really blew it, trying to learn Latin and later Russian."

  "But I understand that your Westronese is coming along quite well, Treet," he said in Westronese.

  "I think they call it total immersion. But look. Could you answe
r just a few questions for me?"

  "Certainly, mate, in a few minutes. First though, what was your profession? I mean, you seem to be an educated man, but what did you do with yourself?"

  "I was an engineer, working in the special machine tool trade in Michigan. My partner and I owned our own company, and we mostly designed and built special machines for the auto companies."

  "Special machines? That's like lathes and drill presses?"

  "Hardly. Most of the machines we built were completely automated, without any workers at all. They did things like assembling automatic transmissions or rebuilding used crankshafts."

  "Humph. Not much call for that sort of thing around here, I'm afraid. Your friend Adam Kulczynski was also an engineer?"

  "Yes, we were partners. Mostly, he took care of the shop and I took care of sales, although we each filled in wherever needed."

  "Pity. Well now, I'll answer your questions then. Within reason, of course."

  "Thank you. First, could you please tell me just where in the hell we are, and just how someplace as obviously impossible as this island can seem to exist?"

  "Now that takes quite a long answer. I don't imagine that there's any chance that you brought any tobacco with you, is there?"

  "Sorry. I used to smoke, but everybody back home is quitting it now, since the habit was proved to cause long-term damage to one's health. We've got some Foster's beer stored somewhere, though, if you could see fit to answer my questions."

  "Bribery, I see. Very well, then. I'll expect a few cases tomorrow. To answer your question, I suppose that the story starts some fifty thousand years ago, during the last ice age. So much water was tied up in the ice caps that covered half of Europe, Asia and North America that the sea level was down several hundred yards, and most of the world's continental shelves were exposed.

  "A series of volcanoes erupted in an area that was then dry land, but is now a hundred miles off the west coast of France.

  "Now, most volcanoes come in one of three varieties. They spit out either lava, or dust, or mud, or sometimes all three. But there is a very rare sort where the lava is glassy and has just the right amount of gasses absorbed in it. When this sort of lava oozes out slowly, the absorbed gasses come out of solution and form bubbles in the lava. There's one like that in Hawaii, they tell me, and when the molten rock flows out on the ocean, the fluffy stuff just floats away. Well, the lava from our ice-age volcanoes didn't float away just then because it was a hundred miles from the ocean. It just kept on oozing and solidifying, and piling higher, wider, and deeper.