Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  IV

  Mix fell asleep at once but wakened as soon as the rays of the sun fell on his face through the open window. He rose, put on his kilt, and splashed water from a broad shallow fired-clay basin on the table. He did not have to bother about shaving, for all men had been resurrected permanently beardless.

  He took a roll of paper (the copias provided this, too), and found his desired destination by following his nose. This was a long bamboo hut built over a deep ditch.

  He found that, if daily bathing was not widespread, other sanitary customs were observed. The deposits were hauled up at regular intervals to be dropped in a deep canyon (aptly and directly named) in the mountains. Mix asked if there was any sulfur in the area. He was told that there was none. That explained to him why these people did not extract nitrate crystals from processed excrement and mix it with charcoal and sulfur to make gunpowder. In other areas of the valley, bombs and rockets in bamboo cases were common.

  On returning to his cottage, he intended to invite Yeshua and his woman to go with him to the nearest charging stone. A few paces from their door, he halted. They were arguing loudly in their heavily accented English, Later, he wondered why they did not use Hebrew or Aramaic, which would have been ununderstandable to any overhearer. Discreet inquiry would reveal that Bithniah did not know Aramaic. Also, her Hebrew was too archaic and had too many Egyptian and colloquial words, which later had dropped out of the language. Moreover, Yeshua knew Hebrew only as a liturgical and scholarly tongue and could converse in it only with hesitation. The only common speech to both was 17-century English, and then-use of it was, to Tom Mix, a half-garble.

  “I will not go up with you to live in the mountains!” Bithniah said. “I don’t want to be alone, to sit on top of a rock with no one but a walking tomb to talk to. I love people, and I love to talk. No, I will not go!”

  “I won’t stop you from going down into the plains to talk,” Yeshua said. “Now do I plan to live entirely as a hermit. I’ll have to work, probably as a carpenter, but I don’t…”

  * * * *

  Here Mix couldn’t understand the next few sentences. He had no trouble comprehending most of Bithniah’s retort, however.

  “I don’t know why I stick to you! But I know why you want me around! It’s just because I knew Mosheh and Aaron and I was on the march from Egypt! Your only interest in me is to drain me of all I know about your great hero Mosheh! Well, let me tell you, Yeshua, he was a louse! He was always preaching against adultery and strange women, but I happen to know what he practiced! Believe me, I was one of the women!”

  Yeshua said, “I am interested in what you have to say about your life, although there are times when I wish I’d never heard a word of it. But great is the truth.”

  Here he continued in Hebrew or Aramaic, evidently quoting something.

  “Stick to English!” Bithniah screamed. “I got so fed up with the so-called holy men always quoting proverbs and the holy writings, and all the time their own sins stank like a camel! Furthermore, you know all about me, you told me nothing about yourself. All I know is that you were a holy man, or you claimed to be. Maybe you’re telling me the truth. I think that your religion ruined you. Certainly you’re no good except when you take that dreamgum and you’re out of your mind. What kind of a man is that, I ask you? Personally, I think…”

  Yeshua’s voice, suddenly so low that Mix could not make out the words, interrupted Bithniah. Mix strained to hear, then shrugged. He glanced at the sun. A few minutes more, and the stones would give up their energy. If they did not hurry, they’d have to go breakfastless, unless they wanted to eat fish, of which he was very tired.

  He knocked loudly on the door. The two within fell silent. Bithniah swung the door open violently, but she managed to smile at him as if nothing had occurred. “Yes, I know. “We’ll be with you at once.”

  “Not I,” said Yeshua. “I don’t feel hungry now.”

  “That’s right!” Bithniah said loudly. “Try to make me feel guilty, blame your upset stomach on me. Well, I’m hungry, and I’m going to eat, and you can sit here and sulk for all I care!”

  “No matter what you say, I am going to live in the mountains.”

  “Go ahead! You must have something to hide! Who’s after you? Who are you that you’re so afraid of meeting people? Well, I have nothing to hide!”

  * * * *

  Bithniah picked up her copia bhy the handle and stormed out. Mix walked along with her and tried to make pleasant conversation. But she was too angry to cooperate. As it was, they had just come into sight of the nearest mushroom-shaped rock, located between two hills, when blue flames soared up from the top and a roar like a lion’s came to them. Bithniah stopped and burst into her native language. Obviously she was cursing. Mix contented himself with one short word.

  “Got a smoke?” she said.

  “In my hut. But you’ll have to pay me back later. I usually trade my cigarettes for liquor.”

  “Cigarettes? That’s your word for pipekins?”

  He nodded and they returned to his hut. Yeshua was not in sight. Mix purposely left his door open. He trusted neither Bithniah nor himself.

  Bithniah glanced at the door. “You must think me a fool. Right next door to Yeshua!”

  Mix grinned. “You never lived in Hollywood.” He gave her a cigarette. She used the lighter that the copia had furnished: a thin metallic box which extended a whitely glowing wire when pressed on the side.

  “You must have overheard us,” she said. “Both of us were shouting our fool heads off. He’s a very difficult man. Sometimes he frightens me, and I don’t scare easily. There’s something very deep—and very different, almost alien, maybe unhuman, about him. Not that he isn’t very kind or that he doesn’t understand people. He does, too much so.

  “But he seems so aloof most of the time. Sometimes, he laughs very much, and he makes me laugh, for he has a wonderful sense of humor. Other times, though, he delivers harsh judgments, so harsh they hurt me because I know that I’m included in the indictment. Now, I don’t have any illusions about men or women. I know what they are and what to expect. But I accept this. People are people, although they often pretend to be better than they are. But expect the worst, I say, and you now and then get a pleasant surprise because you don’t get the worst.”

  “That’s pretty much my attitude,” Mix said. “Even horses aren’t predictable, and men are much more complicated. So you can’t always tell what a horse or a man’s going to do or what’s driving him. One thing you can bet on. You’re Number One to yourself, but to the other guy, Number One is himself or herself. If somebody acts like you’re Number One, and she’s sacrificing herself for you, she’s just fooling herself.”

  “You sound as if you’d had some trouble with your wife.”

  “Wives. That, by the way, is one of the things I like about this world. You don’t have to go through any courts or pay any alimony when you split up. You just pick up your bucket, towels and weapons, and take off. No property settlements, no in-laws, no kids to worry about.”

  “I bore twelve children,” she said. “All but three died before they were two years old. Thank God, I don’t have to go through that here.”

  “Whoever sterilized us knew what he was doing,” Mix said. “If we could have kids, this valley’d be jammed tight as a pig-trough at feeding time.

  He moved close to her and grinned. “Anyway, we men still have our guns, even if they’re loaded with blanks.”

  “You can stop where you are,” she said, although she was still smiling. “Even if I leave Yeshua, I may not want you. You’re too much like him.”

  “I might show you the difference,” he said, but he moved away from her and picked up a piece of dried fish from his leather bag. Between bites, he asked her about the Mosheh she had mentioned in her quarrel.

  “Would you get angry or beat me if I told you the truth?” she said.

  “No, why should I?” he asked.

 
; “Because I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut about my Earthly life. The first time I told about it, I was beaten badly and thrown into the river. The Englishmen I was talking to were, what were they called? Oh, yes, Puritans! They were outraged; I was lucky not to have been tortured and burned.”

  “I’d like to hear the real story,” he said. “I could care less if it’s not what I learned in Sunday school.”

  “You won’t tell anybody else around here?”

  “Cross my heart and promise to fall off Tony.”

  V

  She looked blankly at him, then decided that he was giving a twentieth-century oath. She was, she said, born in the province of Goshen of the land of Egypt. Her tribe was that of Judah and they were not, technically, slaves. The Hebrews had originally come in to work for the state under contract. Conditions were not as bad as those depicted in the Book of Exodus.

  She had never, of course, read this book or any of the Judaic scriptures. The first she had heard of them was from the inhabitants of the area of the rivervalley in which she had been resurrected.

  There was a mixture of religions in the several tribes of Goshen. Her mother worshipped El, the original god of the Hebrews, among others. Her father favored the gods of Egypt, but he occasionally participated in the rites of El. She knew Mosheh (or Moses, as the English called him). She grew up with him. He was a wild kid (her own words), half-Hebrew, half-Egyptian. When Mosheh was about ten he had been adopted by an Egyptian priest who had lost his two sons. Five years later, Mosheh was back with the Hebrews. His fosterfather had been arrested and charged with practicing the forbidden religion of Aton, founded by the accursed Pharaoh Akhnaton. The fosterfather was executed.

  Years later, Mosheh announced that the Hebrews had been taken under custody by an unknown god, Yahweh of the Midianites. This came as a surprise to the Hebrews, most of whom had never heard of Yahweh. But Mosheh was a man who had seen a vision; he seemed truly to burn as brightly with the light of Yahweh as the burning bush of which he told. And he offered them release from their bondage.

  “What about the plagues, the river of blood, the slaying of the firstborn of the Egyptians?”

  Bithniah laughed. “I saw nothing like that. There was a plague raging through the land, but it was killing as many Hebrews as Egyptians.”

  “What about the tablets of stone?”

  “Mosheh did write the commandments on two tablets, but I couldn’t read them. Three-fourths of the tribe couldn’t. I never learned to read or write anything except a few simple Egyptian signs.”

  * * * *

  Mix wanted to question her further, but he was interrupted by a soldier. Stafford wanted to see the three of them. Yeshua came out of his hut at the summons and followed them without saying a word.

  They entered the Council Hall and were greeted by Stafford. He asked them pointblank if they intended to stay.

  All three answered that they would. Stafford said, “Very well. We believe that the citizen owes the state certain debts in return for its protection. Now, what would you wish to do?”

  They talked a while. The result was that Mix entered the army as a private. Stafford apologized for the lowly position. He realized that a man of his training and experience should have a commisison. But it was the policy to start all newcomers off at the bottom. This avoided unhappiness and jealousy among those who had established their status.

  However, since Mix had stone weapons of his own, and there were few of these in this area, Mix would be assigned to the elite squad of axemen. After a few months, he could be promoted to a sergeancy. That was the lowest permanent rank in the axemen.

  Yeshua asked for a job as a carpenter. He did not want anything to do with the military, for he objected to shedding human blood. Stafford frowned at this. It was the state’s policy to call on all able bodies, men or women, to fight for Albion. However, in view of Yeshua’s ownership of flint tools and his undoubted usefulness, he could be admitted as a second-class citizen. This meant that he would not get any of the bonuses given out by the state every three months: the extra cigarettes, liquor, etc. At the same time, he would have to contribute a certain amount from his own copia to the state treasury. And, in case of war, he would have to submit to being kept in a stockade until the fighting was over. The state did this to make sure that the second-class citizens, of whom there were not many, would not get in the way of the military.

  Yeshua agreed to this.

  Bithniah was assigned to a woman’s labor division. At present, this was busy adding to the southern wall dividing Albion from its neighboring state, Anglia.

  Mix reported to Captain Hawkins. He spent the morning drilling and practicing throwing his axe and spears. That afternoon, he instructed craftsmen how to make boomerangs, unknown to this area.

  Several hours before dusk, he was dismissed. After bathing in the river, he returned to his hut. Bithniah was home but Yeshua was gone.

  “He went up into the mountains,” she said. “He wanted to become pure again!”

  She raved on until Mix quit listening. He waited until she had run out of breath and tears, then he asked her if she wanted to move into his cottage. She replied that he reminded her too much of Yeshua, and would he please leave? Mix shrugged and went to the nearest stone to charge his copia.

  While there, he met a pretty blonde who had recently parted with her hutmate because of their quarrels over his unreasonable jealousy. Delores and he had more in common than a desire to find a mate. Their lives on Earth had not had a chronological overlap, for she was born five years after he had rammed his car into the barricade on the road between Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. She had never seen any of his movies, but she did know who he was. Since one of her father’s childhood heroes was Tom Mix, she had heard her father discuss him more than once. And, when the family had moved to Arizona for a while, her father had insisted they go see the monument that marked the site of the accident.

  * * * *

  For the first time, Mix heard details of what happened after his death. He felt hurt that the onlookers had been more interested in catching the many dollar bills that had flown like green snow around the barricade than in determining whether he was alive or not. But in a few minutes, he smiled to himself.

  That the money meant more than a human life to those workers was only natural. If he had been in their skins, and their situation, he might have done the same. The sight of a thousand-dollar bill blown along by the wind was very tempting—to those who did not earn in two years what he made in a week. He could not really blame the slobs.

  Mix and Delores Rambaut went to her hut to live, since her former mate had walked out and, therefore, lost his right to the property. Mix would have to make a formal application and pay a slight tax, cigarettes or labor, for the use of the house, but the whole procedure was routine.

  He was looking forward to night when he was summoned by Stafford. The lord was grave and perturbed.

  “My spies in Kramer’s land tell me he is getting ready for a big attack. But they don’t know on whom, for Kramer has not told even his highest officers. He knows that we have spies there, just as he undoubtedly has here.”

  “I hope you still don’t think that I’m a spy,” Mix said.

  Stafford smiled slightly. “No. I’ve checked out your story. You’re not a spy unless you’re part of a diabolically clever plot by Kramer to sacrifice a good boat and fighting men to convince me you’re what you claim to be. I doubt it, for Kramer is not the sort of man to release Jewish prisoners. On one hand, I can’t believe Kramer could find among his followers the caliber of man to deliberately allow himself to be killed to further Kramer’s ambitions. On the other hand, he does have a number of religious fanatics who might do just that.”

  * * * *

  It soon became apparent why Stafford was consulting him, a stranger, a lowly private, and an American colonist. For Stafford, despite his outward politeness, could not conceal his feelings of his own superiority, both as
a blue-blooded lord and an Englishman. Mix was a “provincial,” one of the inferior and wild breeds. Mix, aware of this, felt only slight resentment and more than a slight amusement. What would Stafford say if he were told that England had become the American “province” in Mix’s time?

  Stafford, however, was impressed by the showing of Mix in the river battle and his Earthly military background. Moreover, Mix knew Kramer’s land, and he had made the statement the night before that the only way to defeat Kramer was to beat him to the punch.

  Just what did he mean by that?

  “As I understand it,” Mix said, “Kramer’s method of expansion is to leapfrog one state and conquer the one beyond it. After consolidating his conquest, he then squeezes the bypassed area between his two armies. This is an excellent method, but it wouldn’t work if the other states would ally against him. Unfortunately, they’re too jealous of their own prerogatives to submit to being lead by another state. Besides which, they don’t trust each other. So Kramer has been having his own way.

  “But I think that if we could deliver at least a crippling blow, the other states would then jump in like a pack of wolves and finish him off. So my idea is to make a night raid—by boat, of course—and burn his fleet. Maybe even a landing and a suicide force to try to kill Kramer. Knock him off, and his state will fall apart.”