"Yes, Your Grace, it certainly would be far more moving as a live performance. And Mozart, were he still alive, would be annoyed at our treating his music so casually. In fact he was annoyed with the noblemen of his time who had hired him, when they proceeded to talk while he was performing. You see, they chose to ignore him just as we are currently choosing to ignore the servants who are waiting on us. This gets us to another advantage of an industrialized culture. In America and the Western world, there are very few servants, except for the case of a working mother who sometimes needs help with her children. Here, the wealthy enjoy a leisurely life largely at the expense of the poor. Among our people, the poorest are at least theoretically equal with the richest. I, for example, have often met with my own employees after work and enjoyed a beer or two with them."
"Indeed. For my own part, I think that when a person tries to be what he is not, he becomes an unhappy person. He may even become a dangerous one. In all cultures, there are leaders and there are those who are led. That is the way it should be simply because nothing else works. I suppose that some of my attitude comes from my being the product of seventy-eight generations of very careful breeding, but so be it. I am exactly what I am, and I'm not the least bit ashamed of it. Rest assured that if I ever permit my people's culture to change, it will change very slowly."
There had been no change in the duke's pleasant demeanor, but his words said that he was not entirely pleased with my ideas of democracy. Sometimes I think that I have a permanent case of foot-in-mouth disease.
Adam came to the rescue. "Your Grace, I wonder if I might interest you and your vassals in seeing some of the sights of your own islands that you have never seen before. Would you like to go swimming in Avalon Bay with a snorkeling rig? The coral and fishes down there are unbelievably beautiful."
"Yes, I definitely would. It was one of the reasons that I came down here today. I also want to see your television and such, but I expect that the bay would be better seen while the sun is yet high."
Everyone on the islands could swim, and the duke's party had brought their swimsuits because of the rumors they'd heard.
As Adam led them off with fins and masks borrowed back from the boys, the warlock stayed behind for a moment to talk to me in English.
"Look, you ninny!" he said in a whisper. "You can hardly expect a hereditary absolute ruler to be enthralled with the glories of democracy! He is a good lord who takes the welfare of his people very seriously, but he also has an obligation to almost a hundred generations of ancestors, to hand his country intact down to his successor. He takes that duty very seriously as well. Any more nonsense out of you and you could spend the rest of your life under house arrest! Understood?"
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"Good. Don't forget it."
The warlock followed the rest of the group to the beach, and I sat back down and put my head in my hands, wondering just how badly I had screwed the whole thing up this time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Roxanna came up behind me and started rubbing my neck and shoulders. "My lord, it is not that bad. The duke is a very wise and understanding man. He knows all about the social customs of your country, and you have not seriously offended him by telling him again about them. Come. You have yet to show me the wonders of your television and your VCR. Show me something light and amusing."
A truly marvelous woman. I resolved to propose marriage to her again, and this time with all the formalities.
Roxanna's English wasn't up to understanding the verbal byplay of most comedies, so I found a pair of old silent films, Harold Lloyd's His Royal Slyness and then his Haunted Spooks. And by the end, I was laughing as much as the ladies, apprentices, and servants, or perhaps a bit harder.
The duke returned with his crowd as I was rewinding the tape. Adam kept the whole thing in hand, starting with giving the boys back their equipment. He put one of them in charge, and told them to get to work without us.
Adam started at the far end of the warehouse with some of the navigation equipment, displaying a laser ROM disk that contained charts of every sea, coastline, and harbor in the world. Then there was the Global Positioning System, that could locate us to within ten meters of our actual position. Combining these two, it was possible to navigate in complete darkness, without radar or sonar, through most of the channels, coral reefs, and harbors of the world. Providing, of course, that you didn't hit something that wasn't on the electronic charts. Another ship, for example.
He talked about how the radar and sonar worked, but couldn't actually demonstrate them with the ship being where it was. Then there were the radios. An all-band receiver and two marine-band transceivers. The duke was familiar with shortwave. Indeed, it had been his main source of information about the outside world. The satellite phone system really surprised him, however.
"Do you mean to tell me that it is possible to contact any single person anywhere in the world? Instantly?"
"Anyone who has a telephone, Your Grace, which is most people in the civilized world. And almost instantly. There's a half-second delay. Watch. I'll demonstrate. It's been too long since I called my mother, anyway. She worries about me, you know," Adam said.
And with that, he picked up the handset, dialed up her number, and put the phone on speaker mode, so everyone could listen in.
"Hello?"
"Good morning, Ma. It's Adam."
"Adam! Where are you? You haven't called in months! I was getting worried that you got shipwrecked or injured or something horrible like that."
"I'm just fine, Ma. I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We had a little trouble with our satellite phone and I couldn't call, but we got it fixed now. The good news is that I met this girl, or rather these two girls. They're sisters, and each of them is as good a woman as your mother was. I just might get serious about them, as soon as I can figure out which one I want."
"Then Adam, if either one of them will take you, you should marry her right now before the poor girl comes to her senses! If you are ever going to get me any grandchildren, you'd better start soon, because you're already almost too old."
"Forty-six is not too old to get married, and I'll keep you posted on the ladies. Got to run now."
"Good. About the nice girls you've met, I mean. You call me every two weeks from now on, you hear?"
"Yes, Ma. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Adam."
The line went dead.
"You see, Your Grace. It's that easy."
"Remarkable. Those buttons you pushed before you contacted her, they were some sort of instructions for the machine?"
"Yes, Your Grace. It's called a phone number. They have books listing them, or if you know where a person lives, and that person has not given instructions that they wish their number to be kept a secret, an operator, a person who works for the phone company, will give you their number."
"I see. So if a person wishes privacy, he is granted it."
"Yes. Privacy is very important in our culture. If there had been an emergency, however, the police would be able to contact anyone who needed contacting," Adam explained.
"So your people don't have privacy from their government."
"Well, yes and no, Your Grace. Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly where to draw the line, if you get my meaning."
"Indeed, I do. Another thing. I just observed you telling your mother a lie. Two lies. You were both shipwrecked and seriously injured. Do you often tell her lies?"
"Your Grace, had I told her that I had been in a shipwreck, that I had broken five bones, and that I nearly drowned, she would have been upset for months. There's nothing that she can do about it, and all the danger's over, so why should I make her worry? So to answer your question, yes, of course I lie to my mother. In fact, I do it fairly often."
The duke thought about it a moment, then shook his head, declining comment.
The next item was a personal computer, and explaining everything it could do took a half hour. The only s
urprise for me was when Adam produced a CD-ROM that had the Encyclopaedia Britannica on it. I hadn't known that we had such a thing, but then most people never use an encyclopedia anyway. It's just important to have one.
That left the entertainment equipment. After the stereo, there was only the TV and the VCR. Some of the duke's party wanted something religious and others wanted an adventure story, so Adam put on Ben Hur.
All four hours of it.
It was well past dark when the last tape finally started to rewind, and I was eager to get home and in bed with Roxanna.
People were actually getting up to leave when Adam said, "Your Grace, were you aware of the various news channels available to us?"
And so we watched CNN until midnight, which left not nearly enough time for properly loving Roxanna. Sometimes Adam blows it, too.
* * *
Entirely too early in the morning, five more of the warlock's subordinates were waiting for us. Three were scholars who wanted to do research with our computerized encyclopedia, one was to watch the news channel and take notes for the bulletin boards, the local equivalent of a newspaper, and the fifth, who was to take us on the warlock's promised tour of the islands, was Journeyman Judah ben Salomen ha-Cohen.
"A remarkable name for a Christian," I said.
"I chose it myself," he said. "You see, my father was a chevalier, a great-grandson of the old duke. As a great-great-grandson, I of course am a commoner. But if every descendent of the ducal line kept the family name of Alberigo, well, there wouldn't be much left but Alberigos in the entire country. Because of this, the custom is for those in my position to chose our own names. I wanted something different."
"You certainly got it," Adam said.
It took only a few minutes to get the reporter and the researchers set up and familiar with the controls of their equipment. As I've often said, these people were all remarkably intelligent. Roxanna used the time to give instructions to her cook about making sure that the apprentices were fed lunch, since she wanted to take the tour as well.
Judah ben et cetera had brought a map with him, the first I had ever seen of the Western Islands. It was now obvious why they were sometimes referred to in the singular and sometimes in the plural. It was one single land mass, one rock, really, which naturally made it singular. This rock was irregular in shape, about seven miles long and four miles across at the widest. Most of the rock was not above the waterline. There were five separate peaks that went above the waves, so that from the surface there appeared to be five islands plus a number of smaller, mostly barren outcroppings. Hence the frequent use of the plural.
These peaks enclosed a fair sized lagoon, the Llyr, toward the center of the complex, and a number of channels going out to the ocean. Much of the islands' local transportation went on in these protected waters, along with some fishing, aquaculture, and water sports.
With Roxanna and the Pelitier sisters along, we had a pleasant day. I won't bore you with the whole tour, but some things we saw are worth relating.
There was a lot more depth to the culture of the islands than I had been led to expect. Besides libraries and churches, there were concert halls, dance halls, bars, inns, and restaurants. They had public beaches, small but carefully tended parks, and picnic grounds. Many people were active in sports, and they were served by gymnasiums, playing fields and arenas, most of which were underground. In fact, everything that could possibly be underground, was, including most of the beaches. At least, they usually had a massive overhang cantilevered above them, with carefully cultivated plants growing on top. There was even a five team semipro league, playing a sort of water polo.
All of these facilities were open to the nobility, the wealthy, and the servant class, although the same two-world mentality that I had noticed at the party was maintained, with the nobility and the wealthy on one team, and everybody else on the other. A weird attitude, but it had the benefit of effectively doubling the facilities available to everyone. People acted as though members of the other caste simply didn't exist. You actually got the feeling that they couldn't see each other, and maybe they didn't. What would have looked crowded to a normal person simply had half as many people there so far as they were concerned.
I've heard that the reason why native speakers of Japanese have difficulty pronouncing the "L" and "R" sounds in English is that they never learned, as small children, to differentiate between the two. To them, both sounds are alike, and they can't hear any difference. Well, if acculturation can account for such an obvious (to me) auditory illusion, why can't the same process result in a visual one? Maybe the islanders actually could not see members of the other class when they were in certain social situations!
Not having been raised in their culture, I could see everybody who was there, and I never could get used to the Westronese way of ignoring some people. It was never obvious to me how they told a member of one class from a member of the other. There was no class difference in the swimming suits worn, for example, but everyone still seemed to know who was who. It couldn't have been that they all knew each other as individuals, not with twelve thousand people around.
Roxanna was of no help in solving the problem for me. To her, the difference was so obvious that it was difficult to talk about. It was as though I had asked her how to tell a fish from a milk cow. The best I could get from her was that it depended on how the other person looked at you, but that just begged the question, since I then had to ask how the other person knew who was who. I still could get no satisfactory answer.
* * *
The school system was run by the church, for the first twelve grades, and was both free and mandatory for all children. Yet here too, the double world thing went on, with the nobles and the wealthy sitting to the right while the servants sat to the left. Instruction was absolutely equal, but also absolutely separate.
Instruction was absolutely unequal and separate when it came to sex. From grade one, the girls went to some classes and the boys went to others. Girls had women teaching them and boys had men. Women's Lib wouldn't get very far around this place.
After graduation, the kids were tested, as I mentioned earlier, and some of the boys were sent off to get a higher education. The rest found jobs. Some of the girls were sent off to mandatory marriages, and the low scorers got to find the husbands that they wanted. I wondered how many of the girls tried very hard on the tests, and how many boys deliberately passed up a higher education in order to marry the girls they wanted.
I suppose that any child anywhere has a hard time expressing his individuality, but the amount of personal freedom allowed them on the islands was less than anyplace else I've ever heard of. When I was a child, I'm not sure that I could have stood it here. Or maybe I could. Kids are pretty malleable. But if I had gone through this educational system, I would have been a much different person than I am today. It makes me wonder if I would have been a better one.
We ended the day at a pleasant bar with a three-piece dance band. A curious island custom was that the woman normally paid the tab, anywhere she went with her husband or protector. This was in line with the way they handled all the other household expenses, but it struck me as being rather strange. In the real world where I came from, the man always prefers to pick up the tab, in part to affirm his dominance over the situation. Here, the wife always acted subordinately, yet she had complete charge of all the money. I don't think that it could have worked in America. In Japan, maybe.
We enjoyed ourselves. Roxanna actually got me out on the dance floor, showed me the local steps, and I never once fell down. This was rare accomplishment for me, since something in me always used to confuse social dancing with the katas used in Karate training. Before long I always used to end up treating dancing as training rather than as social intercourse. Most of my dance partners were not amused, although a few thought I was hilarious.
Our guide said that the next day's portion of the tour would be more technical, and thus probably wouldn't interest the la
dies. They promptly agreed with him, saying that they had found suitable lodgings near the warehouse for Adam and the Pelitier sisters, and would rather spend the day getting the new household set up. That night in bed, I asked Roxanna if she had really wanted to go on the next tour.
"A woman should never go where it is suggested that she might not be amused."
"An American woman wouldn't say a thing like that," I said.
"Would you rather that I was an American woman?"
"No."
"Then you should consider yourself answered."
TWENTY-EIGHT
After the heralds finished their long-winded introductions for three men who had known each other for more than half a century, the duke waved them and the rest of the lackeys out except for the privy secretary, who sat quietly taking notes.
"Gentlemen, I have called you together for a short meeting of the privy counsel to discuss what we each have learned about our guests, Mr. Kulczynski and Mr. Nguyen. This is to be a preliminary discussion only, but sometime in the next several months a series of decisions must be made concerning them. I will ask our good Warlock to start us out."
"Thank you, Your Grace. The short of it is that my own impressions have been entirely positive. Both men are well educated, remarkably intelligent, and quite competent in both engineering and business. They are basically honest and hardworking. They are becoming increasingly dedicated to the best interests of the Western Islands, in part because Your Grace's choice of women for them was particularly good. Both men are bonding well with the ladies who have been hosting them.
"As I have often said to both of you before, it is becoming increasingly necessary for us to prepare to come to terms with the outside world. Aside from the fact that we are sinking, we are becoming increasingly visible to their satellite cameras. Our discovery is inevitable, and our political and economic positions will be far better if we go to them than if we wait and then have them come to us. Especially since they just might come to us with an army behind them! Do you realize that a single one of their aircraft carriers can have more adult men aboard than we have on our entire island? There are hundreds of unruly nations out there with armies big enough to conquer us without difficulty.
The Fata Morgana Page 19