Imperial Earth

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Washington looked a little shocked. "Of course," he said. "It's been a criminal offense for — oh — at least a hundred years to drive manually on a public highway. Though we still have occasional psychopaths who kill themselves and other people."

  That was an interesting admission; Earth had not solved all its problems. One of the greatest dangers to the Technological Society was the unpredictable madman who tried to express his frustrations — consciously or otherwise — by sabotage. There had been hideous instances of this in the past. The destruction of the Gondwana reactor in the early twenty-first century was perhaps the best-known example. Since Titan was even more vulnerable than Earth in this respect, Duncan would have liked to discuss the matter further; but to do so within an hour of his arrival would hardly be tactful.

  He was quite sure that if he did commit such a faux pas, his host would neatly divert the conversation without causing him the slightest embarrassment. During the short time they had been acquainted, Duncan had decided that George Washington was a very polished diplomat, with the self-assurance that comes only with a family tree whose roots are several hundred years deep. Yet it would have been hard to imagine anyone less like his distinguished namesake, for this George Washington was a short, bald, and rather plump brown man, very elegantly dressed and bejeweled. The baldness and plumpness were both rather surprising, since they could be so easily corrected. On the other hand, they did provide a mark of distinction, and perhaps that was the idea. But this was another sensitive subject that Duncan would be well advised to avoid — at least until he knew his host much better. And perhaps not even then.

  The car was now passing over a slender bridge spanning a wide and rather dirty river. The spectacle of so much genuine water was impressive, but it looked very cold and dismal on this dreary night.

  "The Potomac," said Washington. "But wait until you see it on a sunny day, after that silt's gone downstream. Then it's blue and sparkling, and you'd never guess it took two hundred years of hard work to get it that way. And that's Watergate — not the original, of course; that was pulled down around 2000, though the Democrats wanted to make it a national monument. And the Kennedy Center — that is the original, more or less. Every fifty years some architect tries to salvage it, but now it's been given up as a bad job."

  So this was Washington, still basking (though not very effectively, on a night like this) in its former glories. Duncan had read that the physical appearance of the city had changed very little in three hundred years, and he could well believe it. Most of the old government and public buildings had been carefully preserved. The result, said the critics, was the largest inhabited museum in the world.

  A little later, the car turned into a driveway which led through beautifully kept lawns. There was a gentle beeping from the control panel, and a sign flashed beneath the steering handle: SWITCH TO MANUAL. George Washington took over, and proceeded at a cautious twenty klicks between flower beds and sculptured bushes, coming to a halt under the portico of an obviously very old building. It seemed much too large for a private house, but rather too small for a hotel, despite the fact that it bore the sign, in lettering so elaborate that it was almost impossible to read: CENTENNIAL HOTEL.

  Professor Washington seemed to have an extraordinary knack of anticipating questions before they could be asked.

  "It was built by a railroad baron, in the late nineteenth century. He wanted to have somewhere to entertain Congress, and the investment paid him several thousand percent. We've taken it over for the occasion, and most of the official guests will be staying here."

  To Duncan's astonishment — and embarrassment, since personal service was unknown on Titan — his scanty baggage was seized by two black gentlemen wearing gorgeous liveries. One of them addressed him in a soft, musical language of which he could not comprehend a single word.

  "You're overdoing it, Henry," George Washington remonstrated mildly. "That may be genuine slave patter, but what's the point if only you linguistic historians can understand it? And where did you get that make-up? I may need some myself."

  Despite this appeal, Duncan still found the reply unintelligible. On their way up in a gilded birdcage of a tiny elevator, Washington commented: "I'm afraid Professor Murchison is entering too thoroughly into the Spirit of '76. Still, it shows we've made some progress. A couple of centuries ago, if you'd suggested to him that he play one of his humbler ancestors, even in a pageant, he'd have knocked your head off. Now he's having a perfectly wonderful time, and we not be able to get him back to his classes at Georgetown."

  Washington looked at his plump, brown hand and sighed.

  "It's getting more and more difficult to find a genuine black skin. I'm no race snob," he added hastily, "but it will be a pity when we're all the same shade of off-white. Meanwhile, I suppose you do have a slightly unfair advantage."

  Duncan looked at him for a moment with puzzled incomprehension. He had never given any more thought to his skin color than to that of his hair; indeed, if suddenly challenged, he would have been hard pressed to describe either. Certainly he had never thought of himself as black; but now he realized, with understandable satisfaction, that he was several shades darker than George Washington, descendant of African kings.

  When the door of the hotel suite closed behind him, and it was no longer necessary to keep up appearances, Duncan collapsed thankfully into one of the heavily padded chairs. It tilted backward so voluptuously that he guessed it had been especially designed for visitors from low-gravity worlds. George Washington was certainly an admirable hose and seemed to have thought of everything. Nevertheless, Duncan knew that it would be a long time before he felt really at ease.

  Quite apart from the drag of gravity, there were dozens of subtler reminders that he was not on his home world. One was the very size of the room; by Titanian standards, it was enormous. And it was furnished in such luxury as he had never seen in real life, but only in historical plays. Yet that, of course, was completely appropriate; he was living in the middle of history. This mansion had been built before the first man had ventured beyond the atmosphere, and he guessed that most of its fittings were contemporary. The cabinets full of delicate glassware, the oil paintings, the quaint old photographs of stiffly posed and long-forgotten eminences (perhaps the original Washington — no, cameras hadn't been invented then), the heavy drapes — none of these could have been matched on Titan, and Duncan doubted if their holographic patterns were even stored in the Central Library.

  The very communications console looked as if it dated back to the last century. Although all the elements were familiar — the blank gray screen, the alphanumeric keyboard, the cameral lens and speaker grille — something about the design gave it an old-fashioned appearance. When he felt that he could again walk a few yards without danger of collapse, Duncan made his way cautiously to the console and parked himself heavily on the chair in front of it.

  The type and serial numbers were in the usual place, tucked away at the side of the screen. Yes, there was a date — 2183. It was almost a hundred years old.

  Yet apart from a slight fuzziness of the "e" and "a" on the contact pads, there was practically no sign of wear. And why should there be, in a piece of equipment that did not contain a single moving part?

  This was another sharp reminder that Earth was an old world, and had learned to conserve the past. Novelty for its own sake was an unlamented relic of centuries of waste. If a piece of equipment functioned satisfactorily, it was not replaced merely because of changes in style, but only if it broke down, or there was some fundamental improvement in performance. The home communications console — or Comsole — had reached its technological plateau in the early twenty-first century, and Duncan was prepared to bet that there were units on Earth that had given continuous service for over two hundred years.

  And that was not even one tenth of the history of this world. For the first time in his life, Duncan felt an almost overwhelming sense of inferiority. He had not rea
lly believed that the Terrans would regard him as a barbarian from the outer darkness, but now he was not so sure.

  18

  Embassy

  Duncan's Minisec had been a parting gift from Colin, and he was not completely familiar with its controls. There had been nothing really wrong with his old unit, and he had left it behind with some regret; but the casing had become stained and battle-scarred, and he had to agree that it was not elegant enough for Earth.

  The ‘Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what could fit comfortably in the normal human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use in the late twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine how life would be possible without it.

  Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had not more controls than its ancestors of three centuries earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had a virtually unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation — for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode. Thus on ALPHANUMERIC, twenty-six of the studs bore the letters of the alphabet, while ten showed the digits zero to nine. On MATH, the letters disappeared from the alphabetical studs and were replaced by x, +, ÷, -, =, and all the standard mathematical functions.

  Another mode was DICTIONARY. The ‘Sec stored over a hundred thousand words, whose three-line definitions could be displayed on the bright little screen, steadily rolling over page by page if desired. CLOCK and CALENDAR also used the screen for display, but for dealing with vast amounts of information it was desirable to link the ‘Sec to the much larger screen of a standard Comsole. This could be done through the unit's optical interface — a tiny Transit-Receive bull's-eye operating in the near ultra-violet. As long as this lens was in visual range of the corresponding sensor on a Comsole, the two units could happily exchange information at the rate of megabits per second. Thus when the ’Sec's own internal memory was saturated, its contents could be dumped into a larger store for permanent keeping; or, conversely, it could be loaded up through the optical link with any special data required for a particular job.

  Duncan was now employing it for its simplest possible use — merely as a speech recorder, which was almost an insult to a machine of such power. But first there was an important matter to settle — the question of security.

  An easily remembered word, preferably one that would never be employed in this context, would be the simplest key. Better still, a word that did no even exist — then it could never accidentally trigger the ‘Sec's memory.

  Suddenly, he had it. There was one name he would never forget; and if he deliberately misspelled it...

  He carefully pecked out KALINDY, followed by the sequence of instructions that would set up the memory. Then he unplugged the tiny radiomike, pinned it on his shirt, spoke a test message, and checked that the machine would play it back only after it had been given the correct order.

  Duncan had never kept a diary, but he had decided to do so as soon as he arrived on Earth. In a few weeks he would meet more people and visit more places than in the whole of his preceding life, and would certainly have experiences that could never be repeated when he returned to Titan. He was determined to miss nothing that could be helped, for the memories he was storing now would be of inestimable value in the years ahead. How many times in his old age, he wondered, would he play back those words of his youth...?

  “2276 June 12. I'm still adapting to Earth gravity, and don't think I'll ever get really used to it. But I can stand for an hour at a time now, without developing too many aches and pains. Yesterday I saw a man actually jumping. I could hardly believe my eyes...”

  “George, who thinks of everything, has arranged a masseur for me. I don't know if that's helped at all, but it's certainly an interesting experience.”

  Duncan stopped recording and contemplated this slight understatement. Such luxuries were rare on Titan, and he had never before had a massage in his life. Bernie Patras, the amiable and uninhibited young man who had visited him, had shown a remarkable (indeed, startling) knowledge of physiology, and had also given Duncan much useful advice. He was a specialist in treating off-worlders, and recommended one sovereign cure for gravitational complaints. "Spend an hour a day floating in a bath — at least for the first month. Don't let your schedule squeeze this out, no matter how busy you are. If you have to, you can do a lot of work in a tub — reading, dictating, and so forth. Why, the Lunar Ambassador used to hold briefings with just his nose and mouth above water. Said he could think better that way..."

  That would certainly be an undiplomatic spectacle, Duncan told himself — unique even in this city, which had probably seen everything.

  "I've been here three days now and this is there first time I've had the energy — and the inclination — and the opportunity — to put my thoughts in order. But from now on, I swear, I'll do this every day...

  "The first morning after my arrival, General George — that's what everyone calls him — took me to the Embassy, which is only a few hundred meters from the hotel. Ambassador Robert Farrell apologized because he couldn't come to the spaceport. He said, ‘I knew you'd be in good hands with George — he's the world's greatest organizer.’ Then the General left us, and we had a long private talk.

  “I met Bob Farrell on his last visit to Titan, three years ago, and he remembers me well — at least, he gave that impression, which I suppose is an art all diplomats have to acquire. He was very helpful and friendly, but I got the feeling that he was sounding me out, and not telling me everything he knew. I realize that he's in an ambiguous position, being a Terran yet having to represent our interests. One day this may cause difficulties, but I don't know what we can do about it, since no native-born Titanian can ever live on Earth...”

  “Luckily there are no urgent problems, as the Hydrogen Agreement isn't due for renegotiation until ‘80. But there were dozens of little items on my shopping list, and I left him with plenty to think about. Such as: why can't we get quicker deliveries of equipment, can anything be done to improve shipping schedules, what went wrong with the new student exchange? — and similar Galaxy-shaking questions. He promised to set up appointments for me with all the people who could straighten these things out, but I tried to hint that I wanted to spend some time looking at Earth. And after all, he's not only our man in Washington but also our representative on Terra...”

  “He seemed quite surprised when I told him that I expected to stay on Earth for almost a year, but at this stage I thought it best not to give him the main reason. I'm sure he'll guess it quickly enough. When he tactfully asked about my budget, I explained that the Centennial Committee had been a great help, and there was still some Makenzie money in the World Bank which I was determined to use. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘Old Malcolm's over a hundred and twenty now, isn't he? Even on Earth, leaving as little as possible for the Community Fund to grab is a popular pastime.’ Then he added, not very hopefully, that any personal balances could be legally bequeathed to the Embassy for its running expenses. I said that was a very interesting point and I'd bear it in mind...”

  “He volunteered to give me any assistance on my speech, which was kind of him. When I said I was still working on it, he reminded me that it was essential to have a final draft by the end of June so that all of the important commentators could study it in advance. Otherwise, it would be drowned in the flood of verbiage on July Fourth. That was a very good point, which I hadn't thought of; but then I said, ‘Won't the other speakers do exactly the same?’ And he answered, ‘Of course, but I've got good friends in all the media, and there's a great interest in Titan. You're still intrepid explorers in the wilderness. There may not be many volunteer carvers around here, but we like to hear about such things.’ By that time I felt we'd got to understand each other, and so I risked teasing him ‘You mean it's true — Earth is getting decadent?’ A
nd he looked at me with a grin and answered quickly: ‘Oh, no — we aren't decadent.’ Then he paused, and added: ‘But the next generation will be.’ I wonder how far he was joking...”

  “Then we talked for ten minutes about mutual friends like the Helmers and the Wongs and the Morgans and the Lees — oh, he seems to know everyone important on Titan. And finally he asked about Grandma Ellen, and I told him that she was just the same as ever, which he understood perfectly. And then George came back and took me to his farm. It was the first chance I had of seeing the open countryside, in full daylight. I'm still trying to get over it...”

  19

  Mount Vernon

  "Don't take this program too seriously," said General George Washington. "It's still being changed every day. But your main appointments — I've marked them — aren't going to be altered. Especially on July Fourth."

  Duncan leafed through the small brochure that the other had handed to him when they entered President Bernstein's limousine. It was a daunting document — stuffed full of Addresses and Receptions and Balls and Processions and Concerts. Nobody in the capital was going to get much sleep during the first few days in July, and Duncan felt sorry for poor President Claire Hansen.

  As a gesture of courtesy, in this Centennial year she was President not only of the United States, but also of Earth. And, of course, she had not asked for either job; if she had done so — or even if she had been suspected of such a faux pas — she would have been automatically eliminated. For the last century, almost all top political appointments on Terra had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to the people who volunteer for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewd political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House — but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he'll get time off for good behavior.”