The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  About that time, some of the warlock's men came by with all of the electronic gear that had been taken from us by him for safekeeping. They brought a letter from him saying that we might as well keep everything together, and could I please see what could be done about generating some power for them. I answered his question by switching on the lights for his men. It would have been more dramatic had it been dark, but they acted impressed, anyway.

  I set up the satellite dish just outside of the cave, and soon got its automatic tracker going. The guards stared bug-eyed and nervous at the dish, never having seen an inanimate object move before. Culture shock all over the floor.

  After that, I got antenna wire, data lines, and power cables to the computer, the television, and the VCR before deciding that the system needed a more thorough test and that I wanted a break, anyway. I was just getting into a tape of Star Wars when Adam and his dripping-wet crew came in. The boys were enthralled.

  I stopped the tape and set it to rewinding.

  "Gentlemen, this entertainment is best seen from the beginning. Before we start, I want to mention that one of the highest art forms practiced in the outside world is called science fiction. It exists mostly in the form of written stories and in theatrical presentations like the one you are about to enjoy. In this art form, the writer creates not only the characters and all of the things that happen to them, but also the very universe that all of the action takes place in. Thus, he is absolutely free of all constraints, and may exercise his art to the limits of his creativity. Done properly, this fictional world is as internally consistent as the real world around us, so that it becomes easy for the reader or viewer to suspend his disbelief and become thoroughly immersed in the story.

  "I tell you this because to you, the real world outside of your island might seem to you to have some of the aspects of science fiction. Out there, they have many devices and forms of communication and transportation that you are not yet familiar with. Please remember that they do not have ships that can travel between the stars, or robots that can talk and think like human beings, or weapons that can destroy entire planets, although they are working on it. Anyway, the following is fiction, it has no purpose but to stretch your mind while you are enjoying yourself, and I wish you a pleasant few hours."

  Then I turned the set back on and let them watch those marvelous opening scenes. Judging from their comments, they seemed to be able to follow the plot reasonably well, despite their lack of proficiency in English. It was dark when I sent them home. They had missed supper, except for some junk food I'd broken out of stores, but they didn't seem to mind. They'd just seen their second totally new world in two days.

  TWENTY-SIX

  "Your Grace has heard of the entertainments now being proffered by the outsiders? Brutal tales, where men are shot down in the hundreds, where entire planets are blown up and destroyed, and where even the hero and heroine perform the entire play without ever going to church, or even once dedicating themselves to God?" The archbishop was shaking in his rage.

  "I heard that the boys who are spending their days working underwater to keep the rest of us afloat saw one of those `movies' we've been hearing about for the last fifty years. By all counts, they completely enjoyed themselves. And as to the lack of religious content in the thing, well, Phillias, would you really have been happier if the hero had been worshiping the God of the Jews, or perhaps one of the many Hindu Gods?"

  "No, I suppose not, Your Grace. Still, there is great danger in these entertainments. They will have to be controlled."

  "I suppose that you are right. Did you know that almost every political body in the outside world makes some efforts to control the sort of entertainments available to its citizens? Some of those nations are so haphazard that it boggles the mind to try to think of what it is that they could possibly find offensive. Indeed, I'm not sure that I want to know."

  "You would doubtless be much happier in your ignorance, Your Grace. I take it that you agree that any new outside influences will have to be carefully controlled?"

  "I'll agree with that in principle, although the details of how it is done and what precisely will be forbidden will have to be worked out. It is too early yet to do anything definite."

  "But not too early to at least think about it. Thank you, Your Grace," the archbishop said as he left the royal chamber.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next morning, I was getting ready to go back to the warehouse, eager to get to work, when Roxanna reminded me, rather coldly, that this was Sunday. Working on anything but absolutely necessary tasks was improper, and anyway, we had to go to mass.

  Adam was right again. There wasn't any point in getting married, since I could get plenty of nagging without having to go through the bother of the ceremony. I gritted my teeth and wasted half the morning sitting with a room full of other equally bored people, listening to some fool in a fancy outfit spout off about something or another that I neither cared about at the time nor ever remembered afterward.

  In the afternoon, we joined Adam and the Pelitier sisters and went to the beach. The girls had heard about snorkeling, and had to try it. It was a busman's holiday for two men who had just spent two days under water, but what can you do? Furthermore, the scenery at an American beach is much better than the beach scenery on the island, what with their use of long johns instead of bikinis or less. The girls fell in love with the face masks, the flippers, and the snorkeling rigs, but I'd been spending enough time underwater lately.

  Afterward, I found out that, in honor of the guy who came up with the wine at a wedding feast, the bars were all closed on Sundays. Grumble.

  I spent the next morning getting the rest of our electronic equipment going. I started without very high hopes. Our equipment had all been through a shipwreck, with all the mechanical shock, saltwater immersion, and other trauma that implies. It had been dismantled by clumsy if well-meaning hands, hauled all the way up to the warlock's chambers and there inspected by who knows how many less than competent people. It had then been hauled back down to the warehouse, and left on the floor, where I was trying to get it all back together again. Some of it, like the navigation gear, had been built to withstand the rigors of a nautical environment, but much of the rest, like the stereo equipment, was only built to the usual, shoddy commercial standards.

  Most of the nautical gear had originally been mounted in the aft cockpit, but that was on its side now along with the rest of the ship, so I set all the gear out on top of garbage bag covered cases of who-knew-what and started wiring it up with cables I'd scrounged from the boat. I gave myself even odds that I could get maybe seventy percent of it going again in three days, but I surprised myself.

  By noon, I had every single piece of equipment up and running. Every single one of the radios, transmitters, telephones, fax machines, stereos, navigation gadgets, and computers worked. Not to mention the refrigerator and the microwave from the galley. Amazing! Even the radar and sonar equipment checked out, though of course they weren't actually working, the radar dome and sonar transponders still being affixed to The Brick Royal, which was on dry land and in a stone warehouse.

  When they had gotten back to their barracks last Saturday night, the boys had naturally told all of their friends about the wonders of television and Star Wars. By noon, Sunday or not, word of these wonders had filtered all the way up to the warlock and the duke himself.

  Modern people in the outside world keep in touch mostly through the television and radio news programs. Without these conveniences (or curses, depending on your point of view), people keep in touch mostly by talking to one another.

  On the islands, they do what people must have been doing throughout the history of mankind, until recently. Everybody knew everything because of constant gossiping. It is a remarkably efficient system, and I have had things that I told to people as I was leaving the warehouse repeated back to me within minutes of my arrival home.

  And while television or rad
io news will let you know, in general, what is happening to the nation at large, gossip can be, and often is, personalized. Each bit of information actually tends to direct itself to those people most concerned. The case in point was that one of our workers told Adam that the duke was coming over. He'd heard about it through a string of nine people starting with his grace's chamberlain.

  Think about that. Since people tend to talk about what their listeners want to hear about, the information steered itself through increasingly more interested people until it got to us!

  The modern world lost a lot when we traded gossip for the news, although we just might be getting some of it back with the internet. Time will tell.

  * * *

  Not that knowing about the duke's visit made me any happier. I wasn't looking forward to meeting the duke, or the archbishop either, for that matter, for the very same reason that I have never looked forward to meeting any other governmental figure.

  Governments are essentially negative organizations. Their whole function in life seems to be to tell you to not do the things that you want to do. Since you naturally don't want to not do the things that you want to do, they then take great pleasure in causing you as much pain as possible when you do them anyway. (Think of it as a cryptogram.)

  They'll kill you or throw you in jail unless they think that you can make more money for them to steal if you are on the outside. If you've ever wondered why the rich hardly ever go to jail, well, that's the reason. It's not that they have undue influence with the courts. They don't. Judges and juries don't like rich people either. It's that when a rich man is free, he can make more money than a poor man can for the government to plunder. Now you know.

  Oh, governments also tell you not to do the things that you don't want to do, too, but that doesn't count, since you can generally ignore such rules and not get into too much trouble. The fact is that they have so many laws that it is impossible for anyone, including the numberless and nameless people who work for the government, to know exactly what all those rules are.

  To get on in this world, your best bet is to do what you want, to do it in as quiet a way as possible, and to avoid governments whenever you can. It's the only way to get anything done. One of the quickest ways to spot a nonachiever is to see if he starts out on a project by asking somebody's permission. The shakers and the movers of this world just go ahead and do things, and the best ones try hard not to be noticed by anyone. The people who show up in the news and on talk shows are mostly phonies.

  * * *

  The ladies had again provided an excellent seafood dinner, I had some Mozart going on the stereo, and Adam and the boys were eating with us when a gaudily dressed herald stepped in and announced that His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI was here, along with Thomas Strong, E.E., Warlock of the Western Islands. The dozen or so people who were with them were not announced, and therefore must have been flunkies.

  I felt a moment of panic, not knowing what to do. Then everyone else stood and bowed deeply, which made me feel better. Now I knew what one did when the duke interrupted your lunch. You stood up and then bent over.

  Thinking about it, bowing is just like what baboons do when approached by a superior male. The subordinate male bends over and the boss mounts him, just as if he were a willing female. Which shows that "the powers that be" have been fucking us since before we were people.

  * * *

  The duke was a tall, athletic-looking man, and looked to be in his mid-fifties, though his white hair and white full beard suggested a greater age. His clothing was vaguely Elizabethan, like that worn by everyone else on the islands, except that his was richer in texture, and the embroidery was much finer. When he came close, you could see that the needlework was so tiny that it gave the impression of being photographic lithography, rather than being done by hand. He wore a simple, unpretentious crown made of gold wire that was not much thicker than a man's wedding ring, but it was his bearing that hit you first and hardest. Here was a man who was born and bred for leadership, and no one who saw him could possibly doubt it. All told, he was pretty impressive, having nothing in common with the typical American politician.

  "Welcome, Your Grace," I said in my best Westronese. I hoped "your grace" was right.

  "Yes, welcome, Your Grace and Your Excellency. Could we offer to share our poor dinner fare with you?" Adam seconded.

  "Why, thank you, yes," the duke said in English that had the slight Oxford accent favored by announcers on the BBC. "I've heard a great deal about the excellent preserved food that you brought with you, and I'd rather enjoy trying some."

  "With pleasure, Your Grace," I said as I went to the cases of canned food we had there.

  I picked up at least one of everything, plus four cans of the absurdly popular Spam. Back in Bay City, I would have been embarrassed serving Spam to my lowest minimum-wage employee, but here, well, if the duke wanted Spam, he would get Spam. I was but a stranger in a strange land.

  The table was full, with as many people as chairs, but with the speed and precision of a crack drill team, the apprentices picked up their plates, glasses, and silverware, left the table, and went back by the wall, to picnic there on the floor, out of the way. The ladies and their servants quickly cleaned up where the boys had been eating, spread a new tablecloth that appeared as if by real magic, and put out new table settings fresh from the packing cases. By the time the duke, the warlock, and both of their entourages had walked the length of the warehouse, their places at the table were ready, almost as if we had planned it that way.

  The duke sat down opposite me, and the rest of the entourage took their places without further ceremony. Our ladies then started to sit, so Adam and I took the hint and joined them.

  Why a pair of staunchly egalitarian Americans like us should feel so awkward around an insignificant country's nobility was hard to explain, but there it was. It probably had something to do with the way the duke had trained long and hard in the art of being impressive, and we poor slobs had never been exposed to the tricks of his trade before.

  The duke puzzled for a moment with a fork and then put it down. I opened a can of Vienna sausages, showing how the key worked, and the duke promptly opened a can of Spam in the same fashion.

  "What method is used to keep the meat from spoiling?" he asked, switching back to Westronese so everyone else could understand. Seeing me use a fork, he promptly used his in the same manner.

  "First sealing the food away from any further contamination, and then cooking, to kill any decay organisms present. In practice, the meat is soldered into the cans when raw, and the cans are cooked under pressure for several hours to insure sterility," I said.

  "Interesting. Still, it seems an expensive way to do things." The duke was sampling each offering directly from the can. Naturally, nobody tried to stop him long enough to put the things on a plate.

  "Not really, Your Grace. Not with mass production. If you are making millions of the same product, it becomes practical to build specialized machinery that operates quickly and almost by itself. This makes each product very inexpensive. In my country, a skilled workingman's daily wage will purchase a ton of steel, which is what the cans are mostly made of. They have a thin coating of tin, or sometimes plastic, since iron would react with the food in the can. With mass production, the price of that can of Spam would be at most a quarter hour's wages after taxes for a minimum-wage worker."

  "Hmm. And what would be the wage differential between your least and most skilled workers?"

  Having tried everything I could offer, and passing the cans down to his subordinates, the duke settled in on a can of Spam, as I had somehow known he would. He was really chowing down.

  "Oh, perhaps five dollars an hour for the least capable beginner up to perhaps fifty for a master machinist or model maker. Certain professions, medical doctors and lawyers, make much more, although they pay for their own offices, equipment and staffs."

  "I see. On the Western Isles, the range is no
t so large." The man was actually opening another can of Spam.

  "True, Your Grace, but here, people spend much of their income on food, whereas in the United States, a person can buy enough to survive on for ten or twenty dollars a week. Oh, they spend more than that on food, normally, but most of the difference goes to buying more-convenient, already-prepared, or better- tasting food. What I'm trying to say is, among us, most of what most people earn goes towards the purchase of things that they don't absolutely need, but merely want."

  "So with their most basic needs easily supplied, they spend their time earning money to buy toys. Yes, I suppose that makes sense."

  "It's also true that most of our people worry so much about their toys that they have made them into absolute necessities, psychologically, at least," Adam said without a trace of his usual Hamtramck accent. "Because of this, from an objective standpoint, all wealth beyond a certain point is largely an illusion. Still and all, I think that we lead richer lives than your people do. We are better informed, physically more comfortable, and intellectually more stimulated, on the average, than I think the people of the Western Islands are."

  "Perhaps this is true, although you still know very little about us. Time will easily cure the problem, I'm sure. For now, well, the good warlock has discussed your proposal with me, and I must say that I find it interesting. Some of the things you propose, reducing the dead weight to increase the flotation of our islands, for example, are so obviously beneficial to my people that they need no discussion. Increasing our food supply would be equally wonderful, could I be convinced that it can be done without subjecting my people to a series of deadly plagues, or the invasion of some foreign power. The other things, the `toys' as you have several times called them, I am not sure about. Consider, for example, that your excellent machines are currently serenading us with Mozart's Haffner Symphony. An excellent piece of work, one of my favorites, and your equipment reproduces it better than I could have possibly imagined. But we are ignoring it as we talk together here. Not only are we spoiling our own enjoyment of it, but I think that Mozart would not be altogether pleased. Wouldn't it be better to listen to it in a concert hall, with live performers?"