by Eric Flint
"Really? You know of a work I have not yet written? I am confounded."
"Our records are not complete, for reasons which I shall attempt to make clear, but they lead us to believe that about now you are working on a book entitled, "An Answer to the Religious Opposition to the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man."
"Your knowledge is not quite precise. I have made a few notes about the subject, solely to keep track of arguments in opposition. I believe I have said so in a letter or two."
"Yes, sir, I know, but trust me, that book will be published, in 1884."
Darwin looked unhappily at Albright. "So far in the future, then, the attacks will continue?"
"I'm afraid so."
Thwack!
Clink. Another circuit of the Sandwalk completed, another flint knocked off the pile.
"I admit to initially being puzzled, then irked, by the blind rejection of my Theory by a rigid Biblical interpretation by . . . by certain minds. And then Captain FitzRoy's suicide has preyed heavily on my mind these last months." He looked up. "You know of Captain FitzRoy?"
FitzRoy! If only Darwin knew how much he despised that name! He had been brought up under the gaze of that ubiquitous face! He had grown to hate the mutton chop sideburns, the disdainful expression, the deep-set eyes with their arrogant stare. Darwin spent five pleasant years with the man, but I have been forced to live by FitzRoy's tyrannical pronouncements all of my life! He stifled the passionate tirade that threatened to burst from his lips. Instead he nodded mutely.
Darwin seemed not to notice his companion's anguish. He continued, "Despite our initial camaraderie on the Beagle, we argued much during the voyage. I disappointed him severely by not finding substantiation for the Book of Genesis in my observations of the natural world. As I found more variation among the species, so he became more and more rigid and resisted all interpretations that conflicted in any way with the most literal reading of the Bible." He shook his head. "We last met as friends in 1857, when he came to stay at Down House for two nights, but the visit was not a success. We parted coolly, and never met again."
1857. A visit with FitzRoy. Albright made a mental note. As a leading Darwin scholar, even he hadn't been aware that the two had continued on social terms after the voyage. A familiar ache gripped him. So much has been lost.
Seemingly gripped by memories, Darwin continued his monologue, an intense expression on his face. "After the publication of the Origin, he became a violent objector to my work. I, on the other hand, could not see why Natural Selection threatened his religion. Finally, he became convinced that he had nurtured a blasphemer on board the Beagle, and he turned it over and over in his mind until I fear it unhinged him. In despair at what he viewed as the triumph of my satanic views, he took his life most cruelly April last."
"It was a tragedy," Albright said with vehemence. "His suicide created one of the most powerful martyrs in history."
Darwin turned to him with a perplexed look, but continued, "I feel compelled to set down the arguments pro and con my theory, in the hope that others of his religious rigidity might be dissuaded from this unfortunate act. The Church must not be used as an impediment to thinking!"
"And yet such an intended act of mercy will have such terrible consequences," murmured Albright.
"Indeed? My book?"
"Absolutely. That book started a chain of events that became a crusade against science throughout Europe and the Americas that continues even today, some three hundred years later."
"Three hundred years—"
Albright waved away his objections, plunged on. "Imagine, sir, that it is 1884, and your book—the book you are going to write—has just been published. As they did for the Origin, your old supporters, Huxley and Hooker, defended you most ably. And by then there were others convinced by your arguments and evidence."
"Most gratifying."
"Yes, but more importantly, the Church hierarchy took the criticism very badly. The bishops accused you of setting man's ingenuity against God's word. Worse, the public supported them, especially in the face of the very unpopular Neanderthal fossils from Germany. People did not want to believe they were descended from apes and barbarous tribes of men."
"Indeed, it is perhaps an unpopular idea, but inescapable. Man is not exempted from the rest of the animal kingdom in this regard."
"I agree, but it fueled the flames of the rebellion. Many men like FitzRoy joined together in a campaign to expunge what they termed the 'heresy of evolution.' They called themselves the Fitzrovians, and demanded a literal interpretation of the events set forth in Genesis."
"And who spoke against them?"
"Nobody, there's the tragedy. Men of science thought it would pass, and that they could safely ignore what they saw to be religious zealots. But those ideas started to snowball, and what ensued was a great resurgence of fundamentalist religion, and a suppression of science. Schools were forbidden to teach about evolution and natural selection; then it spread to the other sciences. For over two centuries, men of science have had to labor secretly, in great peril."
"I can not believe that account, Mr. Albright. Rational thought and scientific endeavor are seen as honorable professions in Europe and have for some three hundred years. Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler were great astronomers in the sixteenth century, well respected and rewarded by the Danish crown."
Thwack!
Clink.
Albright was sure those two sounds would be indelibly burned into his memory no matter what happened. That, and the sounds of the birds.
"Yes, but Kepler's mother was tried as a witch in Germany, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for insisting that the Earth circles the sun, and well into the seventeenth century, Galileo was forced to recant that same doctrine."
Darwin looked at him sharply. "You know your history well, for a man from so far in the future."
"We have learned the whole history of suppression these long years. Oh, we are desperate to be free! Believe this if nothing else." In anguish Albright tore open his shirt to reveal an elaborate, garishly colored tattoo of a cross.
"I am an acolyte of the Holy Order of Scientism, for over two centuries the only way for a few to keep alive the flame of learning untainted by religious dogma. We seek to know the world the way it is, not the way it is ordained to be by the Hierarchy of Fitzrovians. Only now are we beginning to move out from the shadow of the Church. But we have lost so much time, and it may be too late."
Darwin was visibly taken aback, and stammered, "is that . . . adornment real?"
"The tattoo? Yes, and another like it on my back. I'll take them with me to the grave."
"But . . . why? Of what use is such . . . adornment?"
"Fealty, for some. For others such as myself, disguise. Although it is true that the hold of the Church is gradually loosening, we have lost over two centuries of scientific understanding. Two centuries! Our climate is changing and we don't know why, the world's population is soaring, the forests were cut or burned, the deserts advance, the air is brown, the waters are poisoned and the people sicken."
"Surely, the leaders—"
"Either the Hierarchy doesn't care or they are unable to manage the crisis. Whichever it is, there is little expectation that we can cure the world with our present state of knowledge anyway. It was a desperate hope, but perhaps by changing the past we can recapture that lost time."
"You speak of lost time, yet you claim to be from the future, therefore you have the ability to travel through time. Surely that is remarkably advanced science."
"The time travel device was an accidental discovery. We don't know how it works, but it does, at least for short trips. If I am able to change our past, by dissuading you from publishing that book, we don't know what will happen. We hope it will change the future for the better. But maybe it cannot be changed. Our philosophers have debated long and deeply about this: maybe I exist only because the events in my past unfurled they have. Perhaps in another—"
He stopped short as a wave of dizziness hit him.
Wha—? Oh no, not yet. He peeled back his sleeve to look at his watch. It's not time yet!
Darwin was looking at him sharply. "Are you ill, sir?"
"No, just . . . dizzy. Perhaps the temporal travel device has affected me."
"Young man, your tale is most persuasive, although I can scarcely believe one book of mine could be so pivotal in history."
Albright recovered himself. "All our historical research indicates just that, sir. What we know of causality tells us that the form the future takes has a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Even a seemingly minor event can have great consequences. And, for a man of your renown, that new book was not a minor event."
Darwin stared at him intently. "Just how did you plan to dissuade me?"
"By doing what I just did, telling you what is going to happen if you do publish it."
"What if I refuse, or am not convinced? I admit that it irks me greatly that certain bishops are so opposed to my ideas." He looked at Albright sharply. "Are you prepared to accept failure?"
Albright hesitated, suddenly aware of the heavy lump in his overcoat pocket. "Mr. Darwin, sir, I—we wish you no harm, but we are determined not to fail our world."
"I see. You will stop me by force if necessary." Darwin looked at him as if appraising what means Albright would use.
Albright nodded slightly. I'm losing him, he thought unhappily. "If I can persuade you that there is independent proof of your theory, would you be satisfied?"
Darwin drew himself up. "Proof? Young man, I have labored for decades on my theory of Natural Selection. I truly believe that I have amassed an overwhelming body of evidence—"
"Someone has found the mechanism for inheritance."
Darwin stopped short. "The mechanism? What do you mean?"
"Well, not the actual . . . ah . . ." He fought back another wave of dizziness. "Well, you understand, not the actual, uh, bodies in the cell, but the mathematics of inheritance."
Darwin stared uncomprehendingly.
Albright rushed on. "There's a book, just published, by Gregor Mendel, about experiments he did with garden pea plants. He has established that there is a unit of heredity, some . . . factor passed from parent to offspring, in a regular and repeatable way. Some of these factors are transmitted visibly, and are called dominant. Others become, ah, latent in the process and are called recessive. With the correct crosses, Mendel could make them reappear in later generations, so he knew they were still there, albeit hidden."
A look of awe slowly washed over the older man's face and his mouth worked as he silently wrestled with the implications.
"So you see," continued Albright, "if an organism exhibits an unfavorable factor and dies because of it, and this happens to all the other individuals with the same factor, it will be eliminated from the population." Bright sparks flashed across his eyes. He reached into his coat and clutched the weapon. "It's the mechanism for nashural s'lection!"
"The mechanism for natural selection. Yes. It could very well be. I will need to see that book! Tell me again who is the author?"
"M . . . M . . . Mendel," he slurred. "G . . . G . . . Gregor Mendel, a m . . . m . . . monk, an Augush . . . tini . . . tian."
"What did you say? I couldn't understand. Speak up, please!"
Albright stared fuzzily. The scene around him was becoming grainy. Still time. In desperation he yanked his arm out of his pocket, aimed the antique pistol at Darwin. God help me. He squeezed the trigger as greyness descended.
* * *
The crackling noise awakened her. Solange started up, feeling woozy and a bit unclear. She absentmindedly put her hand up to her hair to tuck a stray red curl into . . . nothing.
"Rats, must've dozed off."
The screen in front of her was full of diagonal lines.
"That does it, I can't do any assignment if the freaking Viewer conks out on me."
Electronics never worked for her. This morning already her chronometer had failed to network with her wakeup implant. She'd almost missed her session with the TVS. She'd rushed to the library in the nick of time, shouldered her way past the waiting students and jammed her ID thumbprint down just as the robo-librarian was about to give her slot away. As it was she'd lost fifteen minutes.
Someone pounded on the door. "Two minutes!"
She checked the big chronometer.
"Hell, my session's over! What'd I see anyway?"
The vidrecorder was still running. She shut it off and removed the spool.
The door opened suddenly. The librarian rolled in. "Time's up," it rumbled. "Please relinquish the Temporal ViewScreen."
"Okay, Okay, keep your treads on," she muttered. "I'm leaving."
Her eye fell on the assignment sheet. "Observation of Charles Darwin during writing of The Origin of Species, 1858."
It was clearly marked "Easy." Hell, she hadn't even been able to tune the freaking gizmo to that date. It'd stuck on 1866. Well, she'd done something different. But what? She felt for the spool in her pocket.
Whatever I see, I'll just be creative with my interpretation, she thought. After all, what difference could it make what some old guy was thinking, three hundred years ago?
She hurried out into the bright new morning in search of coffee.
Double-Secret Weapon
Written by Tony Frazier
Illustrated by Luis Peres
So I'm sitting in the food court, stomach growling as the smells of corn dogs and gyros swirl around me. There's a cardboard standee to my left and a Playco rep to my right. Her name is Fleming, and she's young and pretty, fresh out of college with a marketing degree and a dazzling smile. It's her job to take money, hand out glossies and keep me in line. I don't think she likes me.
The next kid in line hangs back a little. He's only five or six, and he looks intimidated at seeing his cartoon superhero idol come to life. His dad nudges him, and the kid shuffles up and slides the picture in front of me without a word. It's not really a photo of me, just a photo of a drawing of me, the same drawing they used for the cardboard stand-up.
"That's not the real Digger," some kid says from back in the line.
"What's your name?" I ask the kid in front of me.
"Make it out to Kenny," his dad says. The kid just stares, wide-eyed.
"Oh my God, they killed Kenny! Those . . ." It suddenly occurs to me that it might be inappropriate to yell out the word bastards in a mall full of kids. You'd think I would have already learned this, but I've been known to have trouble keeping my mouth shut, which is why I've never really tried to do the secret identity thing. Well, that and the rather obvious disfigurement deal.
"Sorry," I say to Fleming. It's entirely possible that I'll go the whole day having only spoken three different words to her: hi, okay, and sorry. A lot of sorry's.
I write, "Kenny, Be a Hero, Digger," on the picture using the swooping, company-approved penmanship that Playco made me practice for the last week. It's tricky to write with these big plastic shells on my arms. I'm supposed to write my name with a big flourish, but I can't pull it off. It looks lame, so I try for the jaunty underline instead. A little better than last time. "Be careful with that. The marker's still wet," I say as I hand the picture back. The kid practically dances away with his father in tow.
"I'm serious, Mom, look. His costume's all wrinkled, and his hair's all wrong, and the DBG's look totally fake," the kid's voice continues, drawing closer as the line moves.
Of course, the Driller Beam Generators look fake, because they are fake. The animation studio's artists took some liberties with the design, so my costume has been redesigned to match. The colors of my shirt and pants are brighter, I now sport a big "D" logo on each sleeve, and my forearms are encased in shiny plastic shells like blimps. I don't mind so much; I never thought the real Drillers looked all that good. At one point, I got so bored with them that I tried to weld on little Cadillac-style fins, give them some panac
he, but after two or three battles, they were beat all to hell. Looked really pitiful.
Another picture slides in front of me, a little blond kid, about the same age as the last one, staring at me with big, round eyes. His mother nudges him. "Tell him your name, honey," she says.
"Darren. I really like your show," the kid says, "And my favorite character is Dig-Dog."
Jesus wept. Of all the things I hate about The Digger Family Amazing Power Hour, and there are several, the one I hate most is the extended family they've saddled me with: Kid Digger and Daisy Digger and Uncle Digger and the Three Lieutenant Diggers: Ditch, Posthole and Grave. But the worst, the absolute worst, is the Mighty Dig-Dog, mainly because he's the real hero of the show. They play me as a big buffoon, always getting in over my head until Dig-Dog comes in to save the day. Bastard.